Abstract
Increasingly, in the twilight years of Empire, Bengal’s rivers were declared to be an indisputable ‘water problem’.1 For the official colonial imagination, the delta’s fluvial arms were too temperamental and snaked their way across the capacious flood plains only to wastefully empty ‘millions of tons’ of their watery burden into the Bay of Bengal. Usually a swollen rage during the monsoon and an irrelevant trickle by the winter, such hydrographic quirks, it was authoritatively held, regularly depressed and enfeebled the Bengal peasant.
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Notes
Rohan D’Souza (2006), Drowned and Dammed: Colonial Capitalism and Flood Control in Eastern India, Delhi: Oxford University Press.
See A. Escobar (1995), Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
According to David Gilmartin, the colonial productive regime refers to the attempted admixture of irrigation science, routines of land revenue and the intended colonial control of society and nature. D. Gilmartin (2003), ‘Water and Waste: Nature, Productivity and Colonialism in the Indus Basin’, Economic and Political Weekly, 38(48): 5057–65.
This is now a large and voluminous debate. For a flavour of the different sides and shades of how the question of the constitution of imperial/ colonial science has been framed see D. Kumar (1995), Science and the Raj, Delhi: Oxford University Press;
R. Grove (1995), Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600–1860, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press;
R. Drayton (2000), Nature’s Government: Science, Imperial Britain, and the ‘Improvement’ of the World, New Haven: Yale University Press;
K. Raj (2006), Relocating Modern Science: Circulation and the Construction of Scientific Knowledge in South Asia and Europe, Delhi: Permanent Black; and
M. Harrison (2005), ‘Science and the British Empire’, Isis, 96: 56–63.
A. G. Hopkins (ed.) (2002), Globalization in World History, Sydney: Pimlico, pp. 1–10 & 11–46.
A. Lester (2006) ‘Imperial Circuits and Networks: Geographies of the British Empire’, History Compass, 4(1): 124–41.
P. J. Stern (2007), ‘Politics and Ideology in the Early East India Company-State: the Case of St Helena, 1673–1709,’ Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 35: 1–23.
Philip J. Stern (2011), Company State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India. New York: Oxford University Press.
P. P. Jansen, L. van Bendegom, J. van den Berg, M. de Vries and A. Zanen (1979), Principles of River Engineering: The Non-Tidal Alluvial River, London: Pitman. See also
C. V. J. Varma, K. R. Saxena and M. K. Rao (eds.) (1989), River Behaviour, Management and Training, Delhi: Central Board of Irrigation and Power, Publ. No. 204, Vol. I.
R. D’Souza (2004), ‘Rigidity and the Affliction of Capitalist Property: Colonial Land Revenue and the Recasting of Nature’, Studies in History, 20(2): 237–72.
H. L. Harrison, Collector Midnapore, to the Officiating Commissioner of the Burdwan Division, 3rd December 1877, Cossye and Seyle Floods, May 1860 to September 1893, vol. I (Calcutta, 1928), p. 331.
The Company administration in a bid to maximize its income and enforce its new proprietary laws initiated the sale of any estate whose owner had defaulted on the revenue instalments. In both Orissa and Bengal an innumerable number of such defaulting zamindaris were sold in the first two decades of colonial rule. See B. B. Chaudhuri (1982), ‘Agrarian Relations: Eastern India’, in Dharma Kumar (ed.), Cambridge Economic History of India 1757–1970, vol. II, Delhi: Cambridge University Press, pp. 91–8.
Government of Bengal (1907), Report of the Drainage Committee, Bengal (Presidency Division), Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, pp. 20–21.
See J. Deloche (1993/1994), Transport and Communication in India: Prior to Steam Locomotion, vols. I & II, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
W. A. Inglis (1911), A Review of the Legislation in Bengal, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, p. 69.
C. Addams-Williams, Executive Engineers, Public Works Department (1913), Drainage Problems in the Ganges Delta: A Series of Six Letures Delivered At the Sibpur Engineering College, March 1913, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Book Depot, p. 6.
Some of the debates around the issue of drainage are illustrated by the following sources: W. A. Inglis (1909), The Canals and Flood Banks of Bengal, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, pp. 465–561; Papers from 16th March 1901 to 14th April 1914 Relating to the Magra Hate Drainage Scheme in the 24 Parganna District, Selections from the Records of the Bengal Government, Calcutta; Bengal Secretariat Press, 1915; G. C. Machnonchy, Superintending Engineer, Public Works Department, Problems Regarding Flood Drainage, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Book Depot, 1905;
C. Addams-Williams, Executive Engineers, Public Works Department, Bengal (1919), History of the Rivers in the Gangetic Delta 1750–1918, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press.
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D’Souza, R. (2015). Mischievous Rivers and Evil Shoals: The English East India Company and the Colonial Resource Regime. In: Damodaran, V., Winterbottom, A., Lester, A. (eds) The East India Company and the Natural World. Palgrave Studies in World Environmental History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137427274_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137427274_7
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