AN ENDANGERED HISTORY: INDIGENEITY, RELIGION, AND POLITICS ON THE BORDERS OF INDIA, BURMA, AND BANGLADESH

An endangered history examines the transcultural, colonial history of the Chittagong Hill tracts, C. 1798–1947. This little-studied borderland region lies on the crossroads of Bangladesh, India and Burma and is inhabited by several indigenous peoples. They observe a diversity of religions, including Buddhism, Hinduism, animism and Christianity; speak tibeto-burmese dialects intermixed with Persian and Bengali idioms; and practice jhum or slash-and-burn Agriculture. This book investigates how British administrators from the eighteenth to mid-twentieth centuries used European systems of knowledge, such as Botany, natural history, gender, enumerative statistics and anthropology, to construct these indigenous communities and their landscapes.