Nomadic capital and speculative tribes: A culture of contracts in the Northeastern Frontier of British India

Bodhisattva Kar
Additional contact information
Bodhisattva Kar: University of Cape Town

The Indian Economic & Social History Review, 2016, vol. 53, issue 1, 41-67

Abstract: The least-garrisoned, least-mapped and formally least-administered ‘tribal frontier’ in the northeast was also the most capitalised one in the British Indian empire. In trying to make sense of this seeming paradox, this article examines the complex, and largely neglected, culture of contracts involving several communities, joint-stock companies and the frontier administration. Through a connected history of the contractual and the customary in the region, it points at the critical and inconstant conjunctions between the styles of political control, the logics of capital accumulation and the discursive infrastructure of identity and difference.

Keywords: Northeast India; tribes; joint-stock companies; posa; customary; indifference; adivasi (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0019464615619533 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:indeco:v:53:y:2016:i:1:p:41-67

DOI: 10.1177/0019464615619533

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The Indian Economic & Social History Review
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().