Early years of East India Company rule in Chittagong: Violence,waste and settlement c. 1760–1790

Abstract

This article probes the production of the uplands of Chittagong in the early years of British East India Company (EIC)rule in Bengal and its eastern frontiers. The South Asian debates around the nature of agrarian property relations have largely skipped places like Chittagong uplands, consequently, the uplands appear in academic and popular discussions as an already constituted outside to this agrarian historiography. The history of the uplands then become easily separated and consumed as part of frontier studies. The article seeks to address the constitution of this outside.

Narrating a story where the protagonists range from influential Bengali middlemen in EIC retinue, Company officers responsible for Chittagong administration to mobile Arakanese men called ‘Magh zamindars’, brought together in a swirl of forged documents and contending claims to ‘wastelands’, the article glimpses into the complex interlocking between upland and lowland networks of Chittagong. It frames this narrative by unpacking the revenue categories of sair and kapas mahal; the two categories used for Chittagong uplands during this period. Disaggregating them allows one to see how the uplands were created in the image of the commodity cotton: the people who produced it, the way it was exchanged and the violence that marked the process.