142240 VO The History of Colonialism in South Asia (2024S)

This lecture introduces students to the economic, social and environmental history of South Asia from 1757 until 1914 and thus covers the rise and fall of the East India Company as a territorial power on the subcontinent and the successive direct rule by the British crown until World War I. The major aim of this lecture is to illustrate the impact British colonialism had on the economy, the societies and the ecology of South Asia.
After giving a chronological overview of this period (weeks 2-4), the lecture proceeds with commodity-centred approaches to history. Influenced by the concept of commodity frontiers, we discuss the exploitation of land and labour that accompanied colonial conquest. We take a closer look at three major cash crops – opium, tea and jute – and through the lens of these commodities we carve out the broader socioeconomic and ecological consequences of colonial exploitation (week 5 and 7).

We devote one session to the production of “knowledgeable experts” that supported the colonial administration in understanding the colonial subjects – quite literally, since in the early days of colonial rule this meant first and foremost learning the languages in which people in South Asia conversed. We sketch the development of colonial scholarship on the people of South Asia with a focus on anthropology, a discipline that was well suited to the colonial attitude of superiority, since in the nineteenth century anthropology was basically the “study of primitive tribes” (week 6).

In week 8 we discuss what happens when environmental hazards come upon colonized societies: disasters. Colonial India was particularly prone to a specific type of disaster, i.e. famines triggered by droughts or floods. Interestingly, neither in pre- nor in post-colonial India these types of disasters were very common. After this session students should have a clear picture of what made the people in South Asia so vulnerable to disasters during British rule.

In week 9 the lecture presents how the transatlantic slave trade and labour in South Asia were connected. After the slow abolition of the slave trade over the nineteenth century a new source of cheap labour was found, most notably in the agricultural workers of South Asia. People of rural South Asia signed contracts as indentured labourers and were then shipped off to plantations all over the globe. Today’s global South Asian diaspora is to a large degree a result of this forced labour migration in the nineteenth century.

In the second half of the nineteenth century large state-led infrastructure projects such as the construction of railways or canals also meant an unprecedented level of intervention into the environment and the lives of local people. The lecture presents the effects of these projects on the forests, the wildlife and the fresh water in South Asia.

We conclude this lecture by discussing a few theoretical approaches to the colonial history of South Asia.