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The works presented in this collection take environmental scholarship in South Asia into novel territory by exploring how questions of national identity become entangled with environmental concerns in Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and India. The essays provide insight into the motivations of colonial and national governments in controlling or managing nature, and bring into fresh perspective the different kinds of regional political conflicts that invoke nationalist sentiment through claims on nature. In doing all this, the volume also offers new ways to think about nationalism and, more specifically, nationalism in South Asia from the vantage point of interdisciplinary environmental studies. The contributors to this innovative volume show that manifestations of nationalism have long and complex histories in South Asia. Terrestrial entities, imagined in terms of dense ecological networks of relationships, have often been the space or reference point for national aspirations, as shared memories of Mother Nature or appropriated economic, political, and religious geographies. In recent times, different groups in South Asia have claimed and appropriated ancient landscapes and territories for the purpose of locating and justifying a specific and utopian version of nation by linking its origin to their nature-mediated attachments to these landscapes. The topics covered include forests, agriculture, marine fisheries, parks, sacred landscapes, property rights, trade, and economic development. Gunnel Cederlof is associate professor of history, Uppsala University, Sweden. K. Sivaramakrishnan is professor of anthropology and international studies and director of the South Asia Center, Jackson School of International Studies, at the University of Washington. The other contributors are Nina Bhatt, Vinita Damodaran, Claude A. Garcia, Urs Geiser, Goetz Hoeppe, Bengt G. Karlsson, Antje Linkenbach, Wolfgang Mey, Kathleen D. Morrison, J. P. Pascal, and Sarah Southwold-Llewellyn.

This study is a richly detailed historical work of the unsettled half-century from the 1790s to the 1830s when the British East India Company strove to establish control of the colonial north-eastern frontiers spanning the River Brahmaputra to the Burmese border. It offers a much-needed reframing of regional histories of South Asia away from the subcontinental Indian mainland to the varied social ecologies of Sylhet, Cachar, Manipur, Jaintia, and Khasi hills.As a mercantile corporation, the EIC aimed at getting in command of the millennium-old over-land commercial routes connecting India and China. The study specifically engages with the early nineteenth century explorations of trade across Burma. Simultaneously, the Mughal diwani grant compelled the EIC to govern territory. Drawing on extensive research, the study demonstrates the incompatibility of bureaucratic power, the complex socio-economic networks of authority, and the ever-changing landscapes of the region. In a monsoon climate, where rivers moved and land was inundated for months, any attempt to form a uniform administration tended to clash with hybrid landscapes and waterscapes. This work explores how daily administrative and military practice shaped colonial polities and subject formation.Located at the intersection of colonial, legal, and environmental history, the study is of particular interest for scholars and students in history, political ecology, and anthropology.

• Reframes the regional history of South Asia away from the subcontinental Indian mainland
• Located at the intersection of colonial, environmental, and legal history
• Integrates climate history with socio-political history
• Brings present-day north-east India into a wider historical and regional analysis
• Addresses the gap in research on formative years of the British rule
• Studies lesser-known areas like Cachar, Manipur, Tripura, and Jaintia