Description:
"This paper focuses on the historical experiences
of shifting cultivators who lived in the eastern
Himalaya in the areas around Darjeeling, Eastern
Nepal, and Southern Sikkim in the early 19th
century. These groups played an important role
in state-formation in the precolonial period, as
regionally expansive states relied upon them
for labor, military levies, and revenue. Shifting
cultivators were organized under headmen
who dispensed justice, collected taxes, and
negotiated with the state on behalf of their
clients. The author argues that such groups
formed the basis of sovereignty on the frontier,
where control over subjects was more significant
than control over clearly demarcated territory.
Patrons of labor were well-versed in political
negotiations and dexterously managed the shift
to East India Company rule in Darjeeling in 1835;
however, the Company administrators changed
the terms of governance, even as they drew upon
the headmen?s services in accessing laborers.
By positing the labor market as the appropriate
means of securing labor, the Company officials
denied the role of the state in accumulating
labor power. In addition, colonial discourse fixed
shifting cultivators as backwards and in need
of protection, undermining their important
contributions to state formation under the
previous dispensation. By distancing itself from
patron-client relationships as vital to state
formation and discrediting these networks
of labor organization in favor of market logic,
the Company in theory moved the terms of
sovereignty towards territory rather than
people....
Keywords: Darjeeling, borderlands, colonialism, history,
shifting cultivation."
Source/publisher:
Himalaya, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies: (vol34/iss1)
Date of Publication:
2014-00-00
Date of entry:
2015-03-10
Grouping:
- Individual Documents
Category:
Language:
English
Local URL:
Format:
pdf
Size:
293.58 KB