This book is the outcome of a workshop held at the Department of History, University of Calcutta, in January 1996. The main aim of the workshop was to bring together different perspectives on industrial labour. The organisers, therefore, attempted to draw in both younger and more established scholars working in the field. The focus was on the jute industry Eastern India's largest industry in the colonial period.
The workshop was made possible by the organisational work of many members of the faculty and staff of the Department of History, Calcutta University, and the financial assistance of its Special Assistance Programme. We thank, especially, Bhaskar Chakrabarty for his continuing support in the long process of putting this volume together. Erasmus University, Rotterdam, the International Institute of Asian Studies in Leiden, and the British Overseas Development Administration (now Department for International Development) contributed generously towards the funding of the workshop and the preparation of the manuscript. Their support is very gratefully acknowledged.
To Gijsbert Oonk, who handled all the organisational work on the Rotterdam end, we owe a special debt. Students of the Department of History-Ritu Banka, Baijayanti Ray, Swati Banerjee, Debraj Bhattacharya, Dhiman Chattopadhyay and Srimoy Roy Chaudhuri-provided much appreciated help during the work-slop. We thank Joyanti Sen for undertaking a lot of the typing and word processing, both for the workshop and later for the manuscript. We must thank her also for her generous and patient hospitality during the process of editing.
We are grateful to all the contributors to this volume for their enthusasm and co-operation in the project and to all the other participants of the workshop for their stimulating interventions during the various sessions. We thank, in particular, Sabyasachi Bhattacharya who delivered the introductory address, and the commentators on the various papers, Nirmala Banerjee, Mukul Mukherjee, Jayasree Raychaudhuri, Raj Chandavarkar, Sanat Bose, Suranjan Das, Gijsbert Oonk and Annapurna Shaw.
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