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In this far-ranging and erudite exploration of the South Asian
past, Sumit Guha discusses the shaping of social and historical
memory in world-historical context. He presents memory as the
result of both remembering and forgetting and of the preservation,
recovery, and decay of records. By describing how these processes
work through sociopolitical organizations, Guha delineates the
historiographic legacy acquired by the British in colonial India;
the creation of the centralized educational system and mass
production of textbooks that led to unification of historical
discourses under colonial auspices; and the divergence of these
discourses in the twentieth century under the impact of nationalism
and decolonization. Guha brings together sources from a range of
languages and regions to provide the first intellectual history of
the ways in which socially recognized historical memory has been
made across the subcontinent. This thoughtful study contributes to
debates beyond the field of history that complicate the
understanding of objectivity and documentation in a seemingly
post-truth world.
The perception, valuation, and manipulation of human environments
all have their own layered histories. So Sumit Guha argues in this
sweeping examination of a pivotal five hundred years when
successive empires struggled to harness lands and peoples to their
agendas across Asia. Ecologies of Empire in South Asia, 1400–1900
compares the practices of the Mughal and British Empires to
demonstrate how their fluctuating capacity for domination was
imbricated in the formation of environmental knowledge itself. The
establishment of imperial control transforms local knowledge of the
world into the aggregated information that reproduces centralized
power over it. That is the political ecology that reshapes entire
biomes. Animals and plants are translocated; human communities are
displaced or destroyed. Some species proliferate; others disappear.
But these state projects are overlaid upon the many local and
regional geographies made by sacred cosmologies and local sites,
pilgrimage routes and river fords, hot springs and fluctuating
aquifers, hunting ranges and nesting grounds, notable trees and
striking rocks. Guha uncovers these ecological histories by
scrutinizing little-used archival sources. His historically based
political ecology demonstrates how the biomes of a vast
subcontinent were changed by struggles to make and to resist
empire.
Drawing on a rich collection of sources, Sumit Guha's 1999 book
reconstructs the history of the forest communities in western India
to explore questions of tribal identity and the environment. In so
doing, he demonstrates how the ideology of indigenous cultures,
developed out of the notion of a pure and untouched ethnicity, is
in fact rooted in nineteenth-century racial and colonial
anthropology. As a challenge to this view, the author traces the
processes by which the apparently immutable identities of South
Asian populations took shape, and how these populations interacted
politically, economically and socially with civilizations outside
their immediate vicinity. While such theories have been discussed
by scholars of South-East Asia and Africa, this study examines the
South Asian case. Sumit Guha's penetrating and controversial
critique will make a significant contribution to that literature.
Drawing on a rich collection of sources, Sumit Guha's 1999 book
reconstructs the history of the forest communities in western India
to explore questions of tribal identity and the environment. In so
doing, he demonstrates how the ideology of indigenous cultures,
developed out of the notion of a pure and untouched ethnicity, is
in fact rooted in nineteenth-century racial and colonial
anthropology. As a challenge to this view, the author traces the
processes by which the apparently immutable identities of South
Asian populations took shape, and how these populations interacted
politically, economically and socially with civilizations outside
their immediate vicinity. While such theories have been discussed
by scholars of South-East Asia and Africa, this study examines the
South Asian case. Sumit Guha's penetrating and controversial
critique will make a significant contribution to that literature.
The perception, valuation, and manipulation of human environments
all have their own layered histories. So Sumit Guha argues in this
sweeping examination of a pivotal five hundred years when
successive empires struggled to harness lands and peoples to their
agendas across Asia. Ecologies of Empire in South Asia, 1400–1900
compares the practices of the Mughal and British Empires to
demonstrate how their fluctuating capacity for domination was
imbricated in the formation of environmental knowledge itself. The
establishment of imperial control transforms local knowledge of the
world into the aggregated information that reproduces centralized
power over it. That is the political ecology that reshapes entire
biomes. Animals and plants are translocated; human communities are
displaced or destroyed. Some species proliferate; others disappear.
But these state projects are overlaid upon the many local and
regional geographies made by sacred cosmologies and local sites,
pilgrimage routes and river fords, hot springs and fluctuating
aquifers, hunting ranges and nesting grounds, notable trees and
striking rocks. Guha uncovers these ecological histories by
scrutinizing little-used archival sources. His historically based
political ecology demonstrates how the biomes of a vast
subcontinent were changed by struggles to make and to resist
empire.
In this far-ranging and erudite exploration of the South Asian
past, Sumit Guha discusses the shaping of social and historical
memory in world-historical context. He presents memory as the
result of both remembering and forgetting and of the preservation,
recovery, and decay of records. By describing how these processes
work through sociopolitical organizations, Guha delineates the
historiographic legacy acquired by the British in colonial India;
the creation of the centralized educational system and mass
production of textbooks that led to unification of historical
discourses under colonial auspices; and the divergence of these
discourses in the twentieth century under the impact of nationalism
and decolonization. Guha brings together sources from a range of
languages and regions to provide the first intellectual history of
the ways in which socially recognized historical memory has been
made across the subcontinent. This thoughtful study contributes to
debates beyond the field of history that complicate the
understanding of objectivity and documentation in a seemingly
post-truth world.
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