Coolies, tea plantations and the limits of physical violence in colonial Assam

A historiographical note

Bibliographic Data

ID6039561
AuthorsJahnu Bharadwaj (0000-0002-2814-9558, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume22
Issue4
Pages542-562
Publication date2021-10-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAsian Ethnicity (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1463-1369 • E-ISSN: 1469-2953
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14631369.2019.1696666
OpenAlexW2990294936
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited15

The paper seeks to locate the violence perpetrated on the bodies of the coolies in colonial Assam. The paper observes that the existing historiography on tea plantations in colonial Assam restricts corporeal violence on the coolies within the boundaries of the plantation estates and does not talk about the permeation of such violence to spaces and coolies totally outside of the plantation production process. This paper, with the evidence from a case from nineteenth-century Assam, extends the limits of corporeal violence on the coolies beyond the physical setup of the plantations. The paper proposes that histories of corporeal violence on labour in the colonial era need to look beyond the peripheries of the plantations and towards the social regimes of power under colonialism. The paper demonstrates the complicit character of the state and newly landed and moneyed native classes in the colony, which aggravated the magnitudes of violence on labour

Archaeology · Colonialism · Historiography · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · History · Indian History and Philosophy · South Asian Studies and Conflicts

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