The Frontier in British India

Space, Science, and Power in the Nineteenth Century

The Frontier in British India
Thomas Simpson
RRP:
NZ$ 169.95
Our Price:
NZ$ 152.95
Hardback
h229 x 152mm - 350pg
7 Jan 2021 UK
International import eta 7-19 days
9781108840194
Out Of Stock
Currently no stock in-store, stock is sourced to your order
Thomas Simpson provides an innovative account of how distinctive forms of colonial power and knowledge developed at the territorial fringes of colonial India during the nineteenth century. Through critical interventions in a wide range of theoretical and historiographical fields, he speaks to historians of empire and science, anthropologists, and geographers alike. The Frontier in British India provides the first connected and comparative analysis of frontiers in northwest and northeast India and draws on visual and written materials from an array of archives across the subcontinent and the UK. Colonial interventions in frontier spaces and populations were, it shows, enormously destructive but also prone to confusion and failure on their own terms. British frontier administrators did not merely suffer ' turbulent' frontiers, but actively worked to generate and uphold these regions as spaces of governmental and scientific exception. Accordingly, India' s frontiers became crucial spaces of imperial practice and imagination throughout the nineteenth century.
' The Frontier in British India is an engaging, insightful and lucid exploration of British India' s Northwest and Northeast frontier regions. Drawing on a remarkable range of sources, Thomas Simpson illuminates the inconsistencies, anxieties and internal debates that characterised British colonial approaches to the frontiers of India. Going beyond conventional approaches that have emphasised the progressive systematisation of colonial attempts to govern, classify and subdue frontier territories, Simpson emphasises the significance of ' the man on the spot' , the forms of personal power, authority and violence such characters exercised, and the debates they stimulated in imperial metropoles. ' Magnus Marsden, University of Sussex ' Maintenance of frontiers has long been decisive in national and imperial histories. This cleverly-argued and brilliantly-illustrated study challenges such assumptions. In fascinating cases of conflict and encounter, this book demonstrates that in the highland borderlands of nineteenth-century south Asia absence of control and fluidity of command generated opportunities for trade, improvisation and negotiation. This timely history of British India' s borderlands will help change images of empire and colony, and of indigenous agency and culture. ' Simon Schaffer, University of Cambridge
Thomas Simpson is a Research Fellow at Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge.
Status: Active
ISBN-13: 9781108840194
Published: 7 Jan 2021
Published In: United Kingdom
Imprint: Cambridge University Press
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Format: Hardback
Height: 229mm
Width: 152mm
Spine: 19mm
Weight: 592g
Pages: 350

In stock - for items in stock we aim to dispatch the next business day. For delivery in NZ allow 2-5 business days, with rural taking a wee bit longer.

Locally sourced in NZ - stock comes from a NZ supplier with an approximate delivery of 7-15 business days.

International Imports - stock is imported into NZ, depending on air or sea shipping option from the international supplier stock can take 10-30 working days to arrive into NZ. 

Pre-order Titles - delivery will vary depending on where the title is published, if local stock is available in NZ then 5-7 business days, for international imports it can be 10-30 business days. In all cases we will access the quickest supply option.

Delivery Packaging - we ship all items in cardboard sleeves or by box with either packing paper or corn starch chips. (We avoid using plastics bubble bags)

Tracking - Orders are delivered by track and trace courier and are fully insured, tracking information will be sent by email once dispatched.

View our full Order & Delivery information