Of the several problematic legacies of the sub-continent's colonial past, one of the thorniest is that pertaining to the 'North East'. Understanding the subsequent history of this region is only possible if we begin by understanding the region in terms of colonial penetration.
The region with defined boundaries of Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura and Arunachal that we see on the map today was very different prior to the British penetration in this area. Mountainous with thick forest cover, the region on either side of the Brahmaputra valley used to be home for numerous tribes, small kingdoms and chiefdoms with customs, ways and practices of their own. Before the British, the Mughals, barring a few incursions against the Ahom rulers of Assam, largely left these people to their fate. Their autonomy remained more or less undisturbed till the second decade of the nineteenth century when the British tried to push their frontiers to secure their borders against Burmese intrusion, to take part in the trading networks that existed with China and other foreign merchants, and most of all to access the rich mineral and forest resources of this area. All this obviously necessitated military expeditions and large-scale explorative ventures for mapping and locating lucrative resource areas. Alongside, the spreading of administrative network and ensuring flow of revenue required demarcation of boundaries. This posed major difficulty given the fluidity of tribal habitation, territoriality generally not being a key feature of tribal chiefdoms.
Penetrating the interiors of an unknown and often unfriendly terrain was not an easy task. Apart from overcoming the hurdles posed by nature and the warring tribes, the frontier officers had to sort out their differences with the home authorities, which often proved to be a stumbling block. Something of the last is evident from the copious accounts kept by the officers, often as a way of justifying their undertakings.
As the inheritor of the British documents pertaining to the Indian administration, the Directorate of State Archives, West Bengal possesses inter alia a huge mass of evidence regarding British presence in the North East. The selection that has been presented in this volume is far from being representative of the quantity of records that this Archives possesses on this theme. The Archivists have selected only some documents that are indicative of historical processes and contain matters of unusual interest that might nudge scholars looking into this area for further exploration. This compilation does not include any records regarding Tippera (Tripura) and Chittagong (adjoining Burma) as the enormity of the volume of documents related to these two merits a separate publication.
The documents in this volume have been organised into two sections-i. Boundary Formation and Survey Operation, ii. Colonial State and Indigenous Population.
In so far as boundary demarcation is concerned, the main focus in this volume has been on boundary formations between various tribal habitations and primarily between the kingdoms of Manipur and Assam. Although thoughts, talks and actual boundary marking had been going on for a long time and would continue for a longer time, here the documents presented relate to the period between 60s and 70s of the nineteenth century, as this period appears to have been one of most hectic activity. Our archivists have tried to trace the antecedents of the period in their introductory articles preceding each chapter.
With regard to British relations with the population of this region, documents cover a much longer time from roughly 1830s to 1873. The choice of 1830s as one extremity of the time frame has primarily been dictated by the availability of records in our Archives. We end with 1873 as in 1874 the Assam region was separated from Bengal to be placed under a Special Commissioner entrusted with the administration of the region.
The themes that the records deal with are varying, namely, arranging education for the Raja of Manipur, discussion on whether the Raja of Assam should be allowed to mint coins in his name for four days as a token gesture of his authority over his kingdom, introduction of house tax and income tax in the Jayantia hills, listing of common words among the hill languages, taking stock of the nature of weapons used, customs and ceremonies followed by different tribes and so on.
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