Paper short abstract:

Highlighting connections between Mughal military campaigning in North India and the establishment of communication networks, this paper will explore how failure to establish such networks in certain areas resulted in creation of limits for Mughal political authority and rise of political frontiers.

Paper long abstract:

In early modern North India, the Mughal state presided over extremely well-connected networks of roads and communication linking different parts of the empire with the imperial metropolises. Securing these networks was crucial to Mughal state-formation. Invasion and conquest of new territory was always accompanied by the assumption of control over existing networks of communications and establishment of newer ones.

However, Mughal networks of communication failed to penetrate certain spaces sufficiently. Areas like the forested hills of southern Rajasthan, the jungles of Assam and the river-infested sectors of southeastern Bengal remained virtually out of reach for the Mughal state. In these areas, Mughal political authority was also restricted, and were home to rival polities. Thus the failure of Mughal-controlled networks of communication to penetrate certain regions, principally owing to the nature of the terrain, created limits for Mughal political authority and imperial power in different parts of the empire. Refusing to engage the Mughal armies in their preferred open spaces, rival polities, like the Rajputs, the Ahoms and the Portuguese, manipulated this terrain to resist Mughal imperial expansion and even launch military counter-offensives. This made them wicked, treacherous, and essentially evil in the eyes of the Mughals.

Through a study of Mughal chronicles, the present paper studies the connections between military campaigning and the establishment of networks of communications, the management of labour commissioned for these ventures, and how the failure to secure these networks in certain areas created limits for Mughal imperial power and gave rise to political frontiers.

Paper short abstract:

This paper deals with interdependence of state policy making and circulation of oral/written information and its carriers: messengers, mercenaries, traders etc., and with facilities and means of traveling through roads leading to and from Maheshvar on the Narmada river in the early 1780s.

Paper long abstract:

By the end of the eighteenth century Maheshwar had got the reputation of 'the Northern Gate of Poona, i.e. of the Maratha Confederacy. Its geographical location on the intersection of various routes, and its pious woman-ruler who reigned throughout almost three decades, led to population increase and as a result to traffic intensity. As per a Latin aphorism, scientia potentia est, appropriation and command of information was an important attribute of accomplished statehood.

Though a part of a larger entity, Maheshvar pursued its own interests, aiming at building and securing its own territorial administration, maintenance of order and fiscal control. Therefore its policy, especially against the background of uncertainty and fluidity of authority after the 1761 Panipat battle and the British advent, was shaped as power of awareness -- by knowledge of action and moves of other political players which were traced, overheard, spied and reported through daily correspondence treated as 'local', 'from our region', 'from Hindustan', 'from Gujarat' etc. Irrespective of communication facilities provided from Poona and other parts of the Maratha Confederacy, Ahilyabai chose to arrange for her own postal service for practical politics of the principality's interrelations with other states and for ascertaining Maheshvar's full-fledged suzerainty along with her own legitimacy as a ruler. Being correspondence-dependent in her decisions, she personally supervised the quality of postbags, number of postal camels and other details pertaining to circulation of letters and their safety as epistolary samples sent in the early 1780s from and to Maheshvar reveal.

Paper short abstract:

Through the prism of postal standardization in British India, this paper will seek to study the networks of exchange that came to define the imperial state and its administrative structure in nineteenth-century India.

Paper long abstract:

It has been argued that domination of the Indian subcontinent in the early modern period was predicated on the control of networks of social communication, information exchange and intelligence gathering. Imperial conquest was based not only on the import of scientifically developed systems of colonial domination, but also on the appropriation and/ or subordination of local knowledge communities and their networks. I would like to show how one such means of information exchange, the postal system of India, was standardized by the colonial state to serve the interests of a British Empire in the nineteenth and early twentieth century.

The expansion of the British Indian postal network was often the product of piecemeal localized interventions, competing with pre-existing mediums of communication and linking up with modern, often transnational channels of exchange. The significance of this development can be studied in multiple spheres. Geographical conquest was facilitated by expanding postal networks, enabling the development of a new body of knowledge of the unknown interiors of the Indian subcontinent. This knowledge in turn would assist in military expansion and civil administration of the conquered regions. Tensions between the military and administrative spheres of the imperial state in India led to the standardization of bureaucratic structures within the subcontinent, which in turn set precedents in governing transnational exchange.

The proposed paper attempts to contextualize some of these developments against the background of geo-political, socio-economic, physiographical, scientific as well as ideological factors at work in this period.

Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses the nexus of information and state building in nineteenth-century India through the lenses of colonial regulations which governed the access of the public to official intelligence.

Paper long abstract:

Information gathering and distribution have been linked to processes of modern state formation in various parts of the world. Channels of communication between the state and its subjects have been particularly important in enabling the smooth functioning of administrative structures, as well as the consolidation and perpetuation of political power. In nineteenth-century India, much official intelligence reached its intended audiences through publication in official gazettes and the newspaper press and was transmitted with the help of new technologies of communication like electric telegraphs, steamers and railways. The present paper focuses on the nineteenth century, a period of expansion and consolidation of British colonial rule in India, and discusses the nexus of information and state building through the lenses of colonial regulations which governed the public's access to official intelligence. The paper traces the evolution of contemporary debates regarding the right of the public to access official intelligence and discusses them in the context of various attempts by the colonial state to systematize and centralize the distribution of official information to the public, in the form of official gazettes, Editors' Rooms and the institution of the Press Commissioner. The paper also highlights the challenges posed by electric telegraphy in monitoring the flow of information and examines the imperatives which motivated the colonial state to seek control of the distribution of intelligence to the public in India and 'at Home'.

Paper short abstract:

A history of how the waterways in and around nineteenth century Calcutta were constructed through the efforts of both Government and private investors. The stages of planning, construction and maintenance are considered with an emphasis on the evolution of the waterways as a circulatory system.

Paper long abstract:

The making of the waterways as a circulatory system in Calcutta was a century long process. This paper covers some of the crucial issues in the development of the city and the region through this primary means of travel. The processes of the construction and maintenance of embankments, canals, bridges and ancillary roads seem to be systematic. But the conflicts that ensued due to particular land acquisition policies & planning problems, involved residents, landowners, as well as rivaling bodies of the Government, and led to haphazard and delayed progress. For example, the rivalry between the Port Trust and the East Indian Railway Company in the 1870s over a number of issues related to ferry charges and the bridging of the river, brought home the fact of the slow but steady decline of the waterways. Geological concerns like silting also contributed to this decline.

Considering these aspects of the emergence and decline of the waterways in Calcutta, the paper evaluates the nature of the city via its circulatory systems of transportation. The archival data referred to points to the fact that while a number of circulatory systems co-exist in and around the space of a city, they also tend to compete and replace one another over time. The waterways in Calcutta sufficiently elucidate this fact.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how railway re-development in colonial Delhi gave rise to a politics of planning between state agencies.It shows how the boundaries between ‘railway space’ and ‘city space’ were constantly shifting, as were those between the local authorities and central government.

Paper long abstract:

This paper looks at how the development of railway infrastructure in Delhi fuelled a politics of planning in which the city was envisaged as a space of movement. Focusing on the construction of railway lines and the re-development of Delhi railway station at the very end of the nineteenth century, I explore the ways in which urban planning became a site for competing visions of urban circulation and political jurisdiction. A central part of the 1899 plan for the city railway station drawn up by the Delhi Municipality was the division of railway traffic into goods and passengers. This was premised on particular notions of 'good' and 'bad' circulation - terms defined largely in terms of the city's commercial interests. However, as I show, the Municipality's attempt to regulate the railway sometimes led them into conflict with the Government of India, representing regional railway companies who saw circulation in terms that stretched at a spatial scale far beyond Delhi. Such conflicts highlighted the somewhat uncertain boundaries of 'Delhi space' and 'railway space' on the one hand and state authorities like the Municipality and central government authority on the other.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines Anglo-Afghan connections between 1881 and 1900, made possible by the improvement of communication and travel infrastructures. It argues that British colonial knowledge about Afghan tribes and ethnicity was able to travel into Afghanistan and indirectly influence state-building.

Paper long abstract:

After the second Anglo-Afghan war (1878-1881) British India did not hold back any military or political representative in Afghanistan. Despite this apparent closure in Anglo-Afghan relations, the two countries entertained close linkages until the end of the century. 'Official channels' were the dense correspondence between the court in Kabul and the government of India, the political missions sent into Afghanistan - particularly in occasion of the 1885 and 1893 boundary commissions - and the visit of the Amir to India. 'Unofficial channels' were cross-regional trade routes and Afghan intellectuals travelling between British India and Afghanistan, as well as the groups of Europeans privately employed by the Amir in the capital.

The decisive improvements in the communication and transport infrastructure that connected British India with Afghanistan made these increased exchanges possible. The construction of new railway lines, roads and the establishment of telegraphic communication on the NWF decidedly shortened cross-regional distances that had hindered steady communication in previous decades.

This paper shows that the ideas and people travelling through these networks were crucial for the process of internal institution-building in Afghanistan. It argues that colonial knowledge influenced state-building during the reign of the Amir Abdur Rahman Khan (1881-1900), the British-appointed ruler. Notably concepts of Afghan tribes and ethnicity, which had developed in colonial writing since the 1850s, were able to travel into Afghanistan, where they were incorporated by the political elites and actively employed in state policies, thus setting the basis for long-term differential treatment of groups and social hierarchies.

Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on road building in the process of colonial expansion in northeast India — how the State made roads and how it remade states and their subjects, how the colonial state organized capital and labour needed for public works, and how roads circulated goods and humans.

Paper long abstract:

Road construction served not only as a base for territorial expansion, but also as a vehicle for commerce in Northeast India. In the aftermath of the Anglo-Burmese war (1824-26), the British East India Company (EIC) felt a strategic need for a road from Bengal through inland Burma. Road construction came to be folded into the politics of access. Therefore, this paper focuses on the politics of road building and the historical importance of road construction. A route from Sylhet settlement in British Bengal connected Upper Burma via Cachar and Manipur. The EIC reinstalled the Rajas of Cachar and Manipur with an understanding that these states would reciprocate the favour by providing labour to the Company. Being a protectorate state, Cachar and Manipur Raja agreed to remain as caretakers of the newly constructed road. Whereas, the direct link between Sylhet and Assam was via the Khasi Hills. The Khasi chiefs, however, readily perceived that a road constructed through the heart of their country would facilitate all sorts of interventions by lowlanders; it would signal and aid colonial conquest of their hills. In 1829, the Khasi chiefs objected to this action of the Company Government and released convicts exploited for road construction. Conceived as a joint stock company, the EIC embodied characteristics of a trade agent, a mercenary force and a tributary overlord in Bengal. The construction and maintenance of public works (including roads) transformed this Company into an imperial state, aptly known as the 'Raj.'

Paper short abstract:

This paper studies the interrelation between increase in motorisation and processes of state formation in interwar India. It highlights conflicting and conflictual tendencies in the political sphere due to modified state transport policies and devolution to subordinate levels during the period of diarchy.

Paper long abstract:

Interwar India witnessed a considerable expansion of motor vehicle use for military purposes, in commercial operations and private commuting. Besides microcosmic implications for a large set of actors and social groups, the new transport mode, in conjunction with earlier and contemporary factors, also affected the political economy at the local, regional and countrywide level in several ways. Among others, motor transport contributed to on-going changes in the spatial relation between city and countryside and transformations in agriculture and agro-based industries. However, there were also substantial constraints to its further onslaught after the mid-1920s. Policy makers not only massively favoured railways in their overall considerations, but eventually implemented reforms, couched as rail-road coordination, that seriously impeded the motor transport sector. This paper takes these earlier research results as a given and looks further afield into whether and how specifically the increase in motorisation interrelated to state formation in the interwar years. It does so by examining provincial legislatures, district and municipal boards - who gained authority over many public works such as roads with the Government of India Act of 1919 - with attention to their 1) role in developing a network of metalled roads and performing attendant fiscal-legal tasks to meet present-day needs, and 2) political composition, functioning and transformation. A first survey of evidence from the provinces of Bombay and Punjab, to which the paper reverts, suggests a number of conflicting and conflictual tendencies for India's polity and politics of the time.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will situate the role of roads in the prevalent frameworks of study of colonial state-formation in South Asia. While doing this, it will highlight the ways in which structures of communication played a crucial role in consolidating state power.

Paper long abstract:

The early colonial rule in India, unlike the Utilitarian claims of the 1820s and onwards, and also the nationalist allegations, paid diligent attention to constructing and maintaining roads. The concern for good roads, as was evident in a variety of interrelated aspects of trade, military movements, political clashes and negotiations, and not least, in surveys and mapping of the territory, testify to the fact that the colonial state regarded good roads and safe passage as a matter of significant importance.

This paper will focus on two major thoroughfares, the New Military Road (built in 1781) and the Grand Trunk Road (started building in phases from the early nineteenth-century) to discuss some of the issues related to the role of material infrastructure of transport and its role in state-formation. The paper will also focus on some of the early initiatives, such as the establishment of a Road Fund in Bihar in the late eighteenth-century, to suggest that local initiatives were no less important than the more centralized efforts.

While describing some of these early efforts, the paper will situate the road amidst the social and political forces of contestations (such as the state vs. the zamindars) to suggest that roads or broadly speaking the means of communication were not just physical tracks; they indeed were central to the practices of the consolidation and resistance to governance.