IESHR - Latest Issue (Sage)

Oral tradition, nationalism and Assamese social history: Remembering a peasant uprising

Recent advances in folklore studies makes it possible to reasonably address the complex origin of historical-ballads. This scholarship carefully explores the forms, linguistic styles and more precisely, the mental universe of the rural society embedded in historical ballads. Doli-Puran—an Assamese historical ballad narrating the events related to the peasant rebellion of 1894—could be a key to an understanding of the social history of the Assamese peasantry. The textual content of this oral narrative underwent significant transformation over the years together with the changing political landscape of Assam and the Assamese peasant society. This essay explains the dynamics of the social origin of this oral narrative and its significance. It shows how historical imagination and social memory, mostly drawn from an Assamese rural landscape, influenced the Assamese nation building process in the twentieth century.

view article | [Indian Economic & Social History Review current issue]

Struggling against Dundee: Bengal jute industry during the nineteenth century

This article seeks to situate Bengal’s jute industry during the nineteenth century in a global perspective. It was a long-established cottage industry in Bengal that entered into the global market before the advent of jute technologies at Dundee, and grew together with the Dundee mills through the mid-nineteenth century. The subsequent emergence of modern mills in Bengal further aggravated the market competition. In view of inadequate deliberations in the existing literature, we intend to investigate four important questions on the contemporary jute industry: (a) what was the development status of the traditional jute industry in Bengal around the mid-nineteenth century?; (b) when did it enter into the phase of decline?; (c) what were the sources of comparative advantages between the Dundee and Calcutta mills?; and (d) what were the nature and consequences of competition between them? These issues are discussed, and also quantified, wherever possible, on the basis of contemporary data and information. The welfare implications of Bengal jute industry are also evaluated.

view article | [Indian Economic & Social History Review current issue]

Book Review: The Small Voice of History

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Visualising a region: Phaniswarnath Renu and the archive of the 'regional-rural' in the 1950s

Anchored in the decade of 1950s, this article focuses on the writings of Phaniswarnath Renu to understand ways in which he represented the rural life of Kosi region. Also known as the old Purnea district of Bihar, this region has been historically visualised as unhealthy and backward. Following Michel Foucault’s notion of heterotopia, the article argues that Renu’s craftsmanship renders the backwardness of this region in a manner that highlights what Edward Soja calls ‘instrumentality of the space’. Unlike the dominant constructs of village life in India, Renu’s villages are neither empty of their geo-cultural specificities nor devoid of placeness. Instead, the landscape of a backward region is densely imbued with particulars that cannot be translocated to any other setting. Renu’s ‘regional–rural’ craftsmanship depended on three mutually connected factors. These include his innovative use of language forms distinguishing him from his predecessors like Premchand; his mobilisation of an enormous amount of information, which I shall call the cultural memory of the region; and third, his technique of storytelling. Together these three produce an archive for the reconstruction of the region at a particular historical juncture. This archive draws our attention to the apathy accrued to the dynamics of space by a large section of litterateurs as well as social scientists otherwise obsessed with the time.

view article | [Indian Economic & Social History Review current issue]

Rice trade in the 'rice bowl of Bengal': Burdwan 1880-1947

Burdwan district, with its advantageous position in transportation network and good resource endowments, spontaneously responded to the commercialisation of agriculture. Rice received considerable commercial importance in the second half of the nineteenth century. It found access to new markets within and outside Bengal and consequently rice trade flourished. Rice trade was carried on regularly in an organised way in Burdwan and expanded considerably from the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The business acumen as well as entrepreneurial activities of Burdwan’s traders and merchants was successfully demonstrated with the expansion of commercialisation of agriculture. The rice merchants and rice millers dominated the rice trade of Burdwan, forming associations for protecting and promoting their business. They carried on their trade independently and successfully, demonstrating their entrepreneurial ability.

view article | [Indian Economic & Social History Review current issue]

Book Review: Rebels, Wives, Saints: Designing Selves and Nations in Colonial Times

view article | [Indian Economic & Social History Review current issue]