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⁴ See Carlos A. Martínez-Vela, ‘World Systems Theory’, http://web.mit.edu/esd.83/www/notebook/WorldSystem.pdf [accessed 29 March 2011].

⁵ An exemplar is Frank, Andre Gunder, ReORIENT: Global Economy in the Asian Age. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998Google Scholar.

⁶ Appadurai, Arjun, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996Google Scholar.

⁷ Upadhya, Sanjay, The Raj Lives: India in Nepal, New Delhi: Vitasta Publishing, 2008Google Scholar; Roy, Arundhati, An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire, Boston: South End Books, 2004Google Scholar.

⁸ This is part of a vast region which Willem van Schendel and James C. Scott have christened ‘zomia’. See Scott, James C.. The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009Google ScholarPubMed.

⁹ Area Studies programmes enforce national templates for knowledge production. See David Ludden, ‘Area Studies in the Age of Globalization’, FRONTIERS: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, Winter 2000, 1–22; and ‘Why Area Studies?’, in Localizing Knowledge in a Globalizing World: Recasting the Area Studies Debate, Ali Mirsepassi, Amrita Basu, and Frederick Weaver (eds), Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2003, pp. 131–137. A useful early contribution to the historical geography of national integration is Regions and regionalism in South Asian studies: an exploratory study, Robert I. Crane (ed.), Durham: Duke University, 1967. A master work in this field is Schwartzberg, Joseph E., A Historical Atlas of South Asia, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978Google Scholar, reprinted Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1991. Available at: http://dsal.uchicago.edu/reference/schwartzberg [accessed 29 March 2011].

¹⁰ Reading Subaltern Studies: Critical Histories, Contested Meanings, and the Globalisation of South Asia, David Ludden (ed.), New Delhi: Permanent Black Publishers and London: Anthem Press, 2002.

¹¹ Sahlins, Peter provided a model with Boundaries: the making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989Google Scholar. Thongchai Winichakul led the way in Asia with Siam mapped: a history of the geo-body of a nation, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994. Victor Lieberman has organized comparative studies with Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, circa 800–1830, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003; and with Beyond binary histories: re-imagining Eurasia to circa 1830, Victor Lieberman, Ann Arbor (eds): University of Michigan Press, 1999. Important work on South Asia includes Eaton, Richard, The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204–1760, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994Google Scholar; Edney, Matthew H., Mapping an Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765–1843, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Guha, Sumit, Environment and Ethnicity in India, 1200–1999, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goswami, Manu, Producing India: From Colonial Economy to National Space, University of Chicago Press, 2004CrossRefGoogle Scholar; van Schendel, Willem, The Bengal borderland: beyond state and nation in South Asia, London: Anthem, 2005Google Scholar; and Zamindar, Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali, The Long Partition and the Making of Modern South Asia: Refugees, Boundaries, Histories, New York: Columbia University Press, 2007Google Scholar. See also Robb, Peter, ‘The Colonial State and Constructions of Indian identity: An example on the north-east frontier in the 1880s’, Modern Asian Studies, 1997, 31:2, 245–283CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Illicit flows and criminal things: states, borders, and the other side of globalization, Willem van Schendel and Itty Abraham (eds), Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005.

¹² Ludden, David, India and South Asia: A Short History, Oxford: Oneworld Publishers, 2004Google Scholar.

¹³ See Magee, Gary B. and Thompson, Andrew S.. Empire and Globalisation: Networks of People, Goods and Capital in the British World, circa 1850–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bagchi, Amiya Kumar, Perilous Passage: Mankind and the Global Ascendancy of Capital, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005Google Scholar; Cain, P. J. and Hopkins, A. G., British Imperialism, 1688–2000, New York: Longman, 2002Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Goswami, Producing India.

¹⁵ See Kelly, John D. and Kaplan, Martha, Represented communities: Fiji and world decolonization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001Google Scholar.

¹⁶ In 1971, Robert Heilbroner argued that economic models based on trade among nations were unrealistic because multinationals were internationalizing the production process (‘The Multinational Corporation and the Nation-State’, New York Review of Books, 11 February, pp. 20–25.) In 1972, a special issue of International Studies Quarterly on ‘Multinational Corporations and World Order’ (16, 14, December 1972), announced ‘the globalization of the market’, p. 513.

¹⁷ Ludden, David, ‘India's Spatial History in the Brahmaputra-Meghna River Basin’, in Re-Writing the Northeast, Bhattacharya, Neeladri and Pachuau, Joy (eds), Delhi: Oxford University Press (forthcoming)Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Baruah, Sanjib, India against itself: Assam and the politics of nationality. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999Google Scholar; and Durable Disorder: Essays on the Politics of Northeast India. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005; Franke, Marcus, War and Nationalism in South Asia: The Indian state and the Nagas. London: Routledge, 2009Google Scholar.

¹⁹ For a synopsis, see http://www.ploughshares.ca/libraries/ACRText/ACR-IndiaNE.html, where the summary statement on 26 October 2010 was this: ‘2009. . .can be viewed as one of relative improvement. The total number of fatalities fell significantly, from roughly 1,130 in 2008 to 843 in 2009. Fatalities increased in the state of Assam, but significant gains were reported in counter-insurgency activities, resulting in the surrender of at least 732 members of various terrorist groups’.

²⁰ See Agricultural Production and South Asian History, David Ludden (ed.), Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005. For analogous trends in Latin America, see Luis Bértola, Cecilia Castelnovo, Javier Rodríguez, and Henry Willebald, ‘Income distribution in the Latin American Southern Cone during the first globalization boom, circa 1870–1920’, paper presented at the Midterm Conference of the International Sociological Association's Research Committee on Economy and Society, June 26–28 2008, University of Neuchâtel. http://e-archivo.uc3m.es/bitstream/10016/2500/1/wp_08–05.pdf [accessed 29 March 2011].

²¹ On increasing returns, see Chakravorty, Sanjoy, Fragments of Inequality: Social, Spatial, and Evolutionary Analyses of Income Distribution. New York: Routledge, 2006, pp. 167–203Google Scholar.

²² Chandra, Bipan, The Rise and Growth of Economic Nationalism in India: Economic Policies of Indian National Leadership. New Delhi: People's Publishing House, 1966Google Scholar.

²³ See Johnson, Gordon, ‘Agitation and Congress: Bengal 1904 to 1908’, Modern Asian Studies, 1973, 7:3, 533–588CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For documents, see The Partition of Bengal (1905–1911). Selected Documents, Vinod Kumar Saxena (ed.), Delhi: Kanishka Publishing House, 1987; and Mamoon, Muntasir, Bengal Partition: 1905 and East Bengal, translated from Bangla by Razzaque, Rana, Dhaka: International Centre for Bengal Studies, 2008Google Scholar. (Dina Siddiqi gave me this book and Willem van Schendel stressed its importance).

²⁴ George, Rosemary, ‘(Extra)Ordinary Violence: National literatures, Diasporic Aesthetics, and the Politics of Gender in South Asian Partition Fiction’, SIGNS: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 33:1, Autumn 2007, 135–158CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sarkar, Bhaskar, Mourning the Nation: Indian Cinema in the Wake of Partition, Durham: Duke University Press, 2009CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Guha, Ramachandra, India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy, London: Macmillan, 2007, pp. 3–35Google Scholar.

²⁵ Mamoon, Bengal Partition, p. 35, ff.

²⁶ Desai, Meghnad underlines this in India and China: An Essay in Comparative Political Economy (reprinted from a 2003 International Monetary Fund conference paper) New Delhi: Critical Quest, 2008Google Scholar.

²⁷ On territorial attachments, see Ludden, ‘Maps in the Mind’.

²⁸ Krishnan, Sankaran, ‘Cartographic Anxiety: Mapping the Body Politic in India’, Challenging Boundaries: Global Flows, Territorial Identities, Shapiro, Michael J. and Alker, Wayward R. (eds), Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. pp. 193–214Google Scholar.

²⁹ Mayaram, Shail, Against History, Against State: Counter Perspectives from the Margins. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003Google Scholar.

³⁰ Goswami, Producing India; and Robb, ‘Colonial State and Constructions of Indian identity’.

³¹ The only effort at river history in the region focuses on the Ganges: Mukerjee, Radhakamal, The Changing Face of Bengal: A Study in Riverine Economy, with Introduction by Arun Bandopadhyay, Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 2009Google Scholar (first published 1938).

³² Lahiri, R. M., The Annexation of Assam. Calcutta: Firma KLM, 1954Google Scholar.

³³ Mackenzie, Alexander, History of the Relations of the Government with the Hill Tribes of the North-East Frontier of Bengal, Calcutta: Government of India, 1884Google Scholar, reprinted as The Northeast Frontier of India, Delhi: Mittal Publications, 1979. Schwartzberg, Historical Atlas, Plate VII.A.3, p. 56, and Plate VIII.A.1 p. 63.

³⁴ McLane, J. R., ‘The Decision to Partition Bengal in 1905’. Indian Economic and Social History Review, 2:3, 1966, 221–237CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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³⁶ Sarkar, Sumit, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal 1903–1908, Delhi: Peoples Publishing House 1973Google Scholar, is by far the most influential book on ‘1905’ today. See also Broomfield, John R., Elite conflict in a plural society: twentieth-century Bengal. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968Google Scholar; and Nair, V. Sankaran, Swadeshi movement: the beginnings of student unrest in South India, Delhi: Mittal, 1985Google Scholar.

³⁷ See Mamoon, Bengal Partition. M. K. U. Molla, The New Province of Eastern Bengal and Assam 1905–1911, Rajshahi: Institute of Bangladesh Studies, 1981; Ahmed, Rafiuddin, The Bengal Muslims, 1871–1906: a quest for identity. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1981Google Scholar; and Ahmed, Sufia, Muslim community in Bengal, 1884–1912 Oxford University Press, 1974Google Scholar (Second Edition, Dhaka: University Press Limited, 2002).

³⁸ Ramanujan, A. K., The Interior Landscape: Love Poems from a Classical Tamil Anthology, Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1966Google Scholar.

³⁹ The major archival sources for this paper are as follows: British Library, India Office Select Materials, Curzon Private papers India Office Records (IOR) Eur Mss.Vol. F111.247a (the key text is a memo from W. C. Macpherson to Home Dept, 6 April 1904), and Volume F111.247b (especially Home Department, Public-A. Proceedings, February 1905, Nos. 155–167, ‘Reconstruction of the Province of Bengal and constitution of a new Province to be called the Northeastern Provinces’, pp. 171–186, Babu Sita Nath Roy, and pp. 193–212, Ananda Chandra Roy). The Risley papers (Mss Eur E295, K532–36, and J 734–35) provide additional detail on related territorial changes.

⁴⁰ See Mamoon, Bengal Partition, pp. 22, 188, 244.

⁴¹ IOR Eur Mss.Vol. F111.247b, pp. 171–186.

⁴² For later activities, reported in Dhaka newspapers, see Mamoon, Bengal Partition, pp. 28, 31, 145–146.

⁴³ IOR Eur Mss.Vol. F111.247b, pp. 193–212.

⁴⁴ Quote is from a letter from W. C. Macpherson (for Lt. Gov. Fraser) to Home Dept 6 April 1904.

⁴⁵ On inequality as a basic constituent of imperial order, see de Schweinitz, Karl, The Rise and Fall of British India: Imperialism as Inequality, London: Methuen, 1983Google Scholar; and David Ludden, ‘History and the Inequality Predicament in South Asia’, 2006 Wertheim Lecture, University of Amsterdam, available online at http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~dludden/Amsterdam.htm [accessed 29 March 2011].

⁴⁶ On the distinction between classificatory, social, and personal identities, see Ludden, India and South Asia, pp. 235–272.

⁴⁷ Bipin Chandra Pal and other anti-partition swadeshi activists also elaborated this theme. See Jones, Reece, ‘Whose Homeland? Territoriality and Religious Nationalism in Pre-Partition Bengal’, South Asia Research, 2006, 26:2, 115–131CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁴⁹ Niyogi, Puspa, Brahman Settlements in Different Subdivisions of Ancient Bengal, Calcutta: RK Maitra, 1967, p. 42Google Scholar, quoted in Eaton, The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, p. 258.

⁵⁰ See Ludden, David, ‘The First Boundary of Bangladesh on Sylhet's Northern Frontiers’, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, 48:1, June 2003, 1–54Google Scholar; and ‘Investing in nature around Sylhet: An Excursion into Geographical History’, in Contested Grounds: Essays on Nature, Culture and Power, Amita Baviskar (ed.). Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. 77–105.

⁵¹ Henry Walters, ‘Census of the city of Dacca’, Asiatic Researches, 1832, 535–538.

⁵² Ludden, ‘First Boundary’.

⁵³ Reid, Sir Robert, History of the frontier areas bordering on Assam: from 1883–1941, Delhi: Eastern Publishing House, 1983Google Scholar; Guha, Amalendu, Medieval and Early Colonial Assam: Society, Policy, Economy, Calcutta: KP Bagchi, 1991Google Scholar; and Planter Raj to Swaraj: Freedom Movement and Electoral Politics in Assam, 1826–1947, New Delhi: KP Bagchi, 1977.

⁵⁴ Schwartzberg, Historical Atlas, pp. 65–66, 76–89.

⁵⁵ Habib, Irfan, An Atlas of Mughal Empire. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982Google Scholar.

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⁵⁷ A. K. Bagchi, Perilous Passage; Cain, P. J. and Hopkins, A. G., British Imperialism, 1688–2000, New York: Longman, 2002Google Scholar.

⁵⁸ See Davis, Mike, Late-Victorian Holocausts: El Nino famines and the making of the Third World, London: Verso, 2001Google Scholar.

⁵⁹ See Report of the Royal Commission upon decentralization in India. London: H.M. Stationery Office, 1908–1909; Washbrook, David A., The Emergence of Provincial Politics: The Madras Presidency, 1870–1920, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dharma Kumar, ‘The Fiscal System’, in The Cambridge Economic History of India, Volume 2: circa 1750–circa 1970, Dharma Kumar with Meghnad Desai (eds), New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 1983, pp. 905–944. Relevant statistics are available online at http://dsal.uchicago.edu/statistics/index.html [accessed 29 March 2011].

⁶⁰ A Tryst With Destiny: A study of economic policy resolutions of the Indian National Congress passed during the last 100 years, A. Moin Zaidi (ed.), New Delhi: Indian Institute of Applied Political Research, 1985.

⁶¹ See Ludden, David, ‘India's Development Regime’, in Colonialism and Culture, Dirks, Nicholas, Arbor, Ann (eds): University of Michigan Press, 1992, pp. 247–287Google Scholar. On related social statistics, see Ludden, David, ‘Orientalist Empiricism and Transformations of Colonial Knowledge’, in Orientalism and The Post—Colonial Predicament, Breckenridge, C. A. and Van der Veer, Peter (eds), University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993, pp. 250–278Google Scholar.

⁶² Histories of railway projects, Simla: Government Press, 1899–1906. (British Library IOR/V/25/722).

⁶³ B. Chandra, Rise and Growth of Economic Nationalism.

⁶⁴ van Schendel, Willem, ‘Economy of Working Classes’, in History of Bangladesh, 1704–1971, Islam, Sirajul (ed.), Dhaka: Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, 1997, Volume Two, pp. 520–525Google Scholar. See also Bose, Sugata, Agrarian Bengal: Economy, social structure, and politics, 1919–1947, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986Google Scholar.

⁶⁵ Moreland, William H., Notes on the Agricultural Conditions and Problems of the United Provinces, Revised up to 1911, Allahabad: Government Press, 1913Google Scholar.

⁶⁶ Zaidi, A Tryst With Destiny.

⁶⁷ This occurred in 1936. See Schwartzberg, Historical Atlas p. 66.

⁶⁸ Sunil Kumar Munshi, ‘Transportation and Communication’, in History of Bangladesh, II, p. 509.

⁶⁹ W. C. Macpherson (for L. G. Fraser) to Home Dept., 6 April 1904.

⁷⁰ Mamoon, Bengal Partition, pp. 27–30.

⁷¹ The formalization of this expansion scheme came in a confidential memo from H. H. Risley in Simla, 13 September 1904 (F111.247b, pp. 431–433). It shows a composition of Assam, Eastern Bengal (Dacca Division, Chittagong Division, including Hill Tipperah) and Northern Bengal (Rajshahi including Dinajpur, Jalpaiguri, Cooch Bihar excluding Darjeeling), and the District of Malda.

⁷² Guha, Planter Raj to Swaraj, pp. 70–71.

⁷³ See Ludden, ‘First Boundary’. Report on the Trade Carried by Rail and River in the Province of Assam During the Year 1903, Shillong: Assam Government Press, 1904. Report on the Trade Carried by Rail and River in the Province of Eastern Bengal and Assam. During the year 1910–1911. Shillong: East Bengal and Assam Government Press, 1911. [Annual for 1905/6–1910/1911].

⁷⁴ A Survey of the Industries and Resources of Eastern Bengal and Assam for 1907–1908, Shillong: Eastern Bengal and Assam Secretariat Press 1908, pp. 85–88.

⁷⁵ See newspaper accounts in Mamoon, Bengal Partition, pp. 139–326.

⁷⁶ For relevant spatial economics, see Fujita, Masahisa, Krugman, Paul, and Venables, Anthony, The Spatial Economy: cities, regions, and international trade, Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Press, 1999Google Scholar, especially the introduction available online at http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/fkvintro.html [accessed 29 March 2011]. Also Chakravorty, Fragments of Inequality.

⁷⁷ Bose, Sugata, Peasant Labour and Colonial Capital: Rural Bengal Since 1770, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷⁸ Ahmed, Sharifuddin, Dacca: a study in urban history and development, London: Curzon, 1986Google Scholar.

⁷⁹ On the decline of Dhaka and Murshidabad during the rise of Calcutta, see S. Bhattacharya, ‘Eastern India’, in Cambridge Economic History, pp. 278–279.

⁸⁰ See Muslim League Documents, 1900–1947, Sharif al-Mujahid (ed.), Karachi: Quaid-i-Azam Academy, 1990.

⁸¹ Mamoon, Bengal Partition, p. 36; Ahmed, Muslim Community in Bengal, pp. 248–250.

⁸² In 1900, China (402,680,000), British Empire (385,280,140), Russian Empire (128,932,173), United States and Colonies (87,000,000), France and Colonies (63,166,967) and German Empire (52,279,901) were bigger. Bengal was more populous than the Austro-Hungarian Empire (41,827,700), Japan (41,089,940), the Ottoman Empire (33,559,787), and The Netherlands and Colonies (33,042,238), including Indonesia. Data from http://www.sporcle.com/games/countrypopulations_1900.php [accessed 29 March 2011].

⁸³ Relevant statistics are available for downloading at http://dsal.uchicago.edu/statistics/1903_excel/index.html. The specific file used here is No.5. 1903.005.XLS: MAIN STATISTICS FOR CITIES (including Cantonments). Digital South Asia Library. Originally accessed at: http://dsal.chicago.edu/statistics/1903_excel/1903.005.XLS.

⁸⁴ See Statistics for British India 1906/7, Calcutta: Government Press, 1908, Part One, pp. 12–13, Part Two pp. 62, 64, 72, Part Three, pp. 34–36, 48–53, 62A. In 1906–1907, registered factory employment increased faster in the new province than in India as a whole. The number of factories increased only 111 per cent (India = 112 per cent) but total employment increased 136 per cent and adult male employment 139 per cent (India = 109 per cent for both). Post office statistics indicate a rapid increase in employment, total expenditure, letters and parcels received and sent, and money orders bought and paid. For more on such trends, see Ahmed, Muslim Community, pp. 223–230.

⁸⁵ Ahmed, Sharifuddin, Dacca: a study in urban history and development, London: Curzon. 1986Google Scholar.

⁸⁶ Relevant statistics are available at http://dsal.uchicago.edu/statistics/index.html [accessed 29 March 2011].

⁸⁷ Ahmed, Muslim Community.

⁸⁸ Bandyophadhyay, Sekhar, ‘The Namasudra Movement’, Critical Quest, New Delhi, 2005Google Scholar, reprinted from Dissent and Consensus: Protest in Pre-Industrial Societies, Chattopadhyaya, Basu Deb, et al. (eds), Calcutta: KP Bagchi, 1989Google Scholar. Namasudras in Bakarganj wrote a petition in 1906, saying, ‘Namasudras and Mohamedans are the predominating communities of Eastern Bengal, and the latter unlike the Hindus possess a good deal of sympathy for the Namasudras’. Ahmed, Muslim Community, p. 201.

⁸⁹ Anindita Dasgupta, ‘Emergence of a Community: The Muslims of East Bengal Origin in Assam in Colonial and Post-Colonial Periods’. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of History, University of Guwahati, 2000.

⁹⁰ Guha, Planter Raj, p. 198–199.

⁹¹ Mamoon, Bengal Partition, p. 37.

⁹² Our Indian Railway: Themes in India's Railway History, Roopa Srinivasan, Manish Tiwari, and Sandeep Silas (eds), Delhi: Foundation Books (Ministry of Railways), 2006; Amiya Kumar Bagchi, ‘The Other Side of Foreign Investment by Imperial Powers: Transfer of Surplus from Colonies’, Economic and Political Weekly, 8 June 2002, p. 2231.

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¹⁰² David Ludden, ‘Who First Declared the Independence of Bangladesh?’, Holiday (Dhaka) 11 July; published as ‘Forgotten Heroes’, in Frontline, 20:15, 19 July–1 August 2003. Available online at http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~dludden/LuddenFrontlineHeroes.htm [accessed 29 March 2011].

¹⁰³ Pandit, Lalita, ‘Caste, Race, and Nation: History and Dialectic in Rabindranath Tagore's Gora’, in Literary India: comparative studies in aesthetics, colonialism, and culture, Hogan, Patrick Colm and Pandit, Lalita (eds), Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995; pp. 207–243Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁴ Malini Bhattacharya, ‘The Home and The World’, Economic and Political Weekly, 33:26, June 1998, 1620 (a review of Selected Letters of Rabindranath Tagore, Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson (eds), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

¹⁰⁵ See Gupta, Kalyan Sen, The Philosophy of Rabrindranath Tagore, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005Google Scholar; Nandy, Ashis, The Illegitimacy of Nationalism: Rabindranath Tagore and the Politics of Self, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁶ This paper has been discussed in that context. Some critics hear it as a critique of narrowly self-interested Calcutta politicians, echoing British imperialistic ideas about Congress opposition. My appreciation of the imperial capitalist functional logic behind the formation of the new province has led some readers to interpret this paper as a paean to Lord Curzon.

¹⁰⁷ See Fraser, Lovat, India Under Curzon and After, London: Heineman, 1911Google Scholar. ‘Of all the territories of India, none was less known or less cared for until recently than the present province of Eastern Bengal. Assam was comparatively familiar to the world without; it had its own Chief Commissioner, and the tea interest, at any rate, was audible enough. But eastern Bengal, although its chief city, Dacca, was only 250 miles from Calcutta, was ground less trodden by Englishmen than the Khyber. It lay beyond wide brimming rivers. To reach it was a muddled business of casual trains. . .and uncertain steamers. In the rainy season it was one vast swamp. No wandering traveller sailed upon its waterways. The very landlords were absentees, squandering upon the delights of Calcutta the substance which their agents wrung from the peasantry. To the officials of the Bengal Government, it was a place of banishment. . . . Good administration stopped short at the Ganges’ pp. 367–369.

¹⁰⁸ The League eventually declared the province was ‘beneficial to the Muhammadan community which constitutes the vast majority of the population’, Ahmed, Muslim Community, p. 22.

¹⁰⁹ Chatterji, ‘The Bengali Muslim’.

¹¹⁰ Franke, War and Nationalism.

¹¹¹ Chase-Dunn, Christopher, Kawano, Yukio and Brewer, Benjamin D., ‘Trade Globalization since 1795’, American Sociological Review, 65:1, 2000, 77–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Maddison, Angus, Monitoring the World Economy, 1820–1992, Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 1995Google Scholar.

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¹¹³ United States Department of Commerce, Special Consular Reports, No. 72, British India, with notes on Ceylon, Afghanistan, and Tibet, Washington: Government Printing Office, 1915, p. 9.

¹¹⁴ Morris D. Morris, ‘The Growth of Large-Scale Industry to 1947’, in The Cambridge Economic History of India, II, pp. 569, 576, 609.

¹¹⁵ Annual Statement of the Sea-Borne Trade of British India with the British Empire and Foreign Countries for the fiscal year ending 31 March, 1926, Calcutta: Government of India, 1926, Table 10.

¹¹⁶ Schwartzberg, Historical Atlas of South Asia, p. 115.

¹¹⁷ See India and the World Economy, 1850–1950, G. Balachandran (ed) Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003; Peers, Douglas M., Between Mars and Mammon: Colonial Armies and the Garrison State in India, 1819–1836, London: Taurus Publishers, 1995Google Scholar; Washbrook, David, ‘Agriculture and Industrialization in India’, in Mathias, P. and Davis, A. (eds), Agriculture and Industrialization: from the eighteenth century to the present day, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1996Google Scholar; David Washbrook, ‘Changing Perspectives on the Economic History of India’, unpublished keynote paper for the Japanese Association of Asian Studies, October 2005, presented to the Economic History Workshop, University of Pennsylvania, 23 April 2006; and Washbrook, David, ‘The Indian Economy and the British Empire’, in Gooptu, Nandini and Peers, Douglas M., Oxford History of the British Empire: India, Oxford: Clarendon Press (forthcoming)Google Scholar.

¹¹⁸ Moreland, Notes on the Agricultural Conditions.

¹¹⁹ Stokes, Eric, ‘Dynamism and Enervation in North Indian agriculture: the historical dimension’, in Stokes, Eric, The Peasant and the Raj: Studies in Agrarian Society and Peasant Rebellion in Colonial India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978, pp. 228–242CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted in Ludden, Agricultural Production and South Asian History, pp. 36–53.

¹²⁰ Carter, Michael, ‘Identification of the Inverse Relationship Between Farm Size and Productivity: An Empirical Analysis of Peasant Agricultural Production’, Oxford Economic Papers, 1984, 36, 131–145CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹²¹ Abhijit Banerjee and Lakshmi Iyer, ‘History, Institutions and Economic Performance: The Legacy of Colonial Land Tenure Systems in India’, October 2004. Paper available at http://econ-www.mit.edu/files/511, accessed 13 April 2011 via the Abhijit Banerjee's department website: http://econ-www.mit.edu/faculty/banerjee/papers. I thank Yuthika Sharma for this reference. Lakshmi Iyer's website at http://www.people.hbs.edu/liyer/ [accessed 29 March 2011] has a number of relevant papers.

¹²² Schwartzberg, Historical Atlas, pp. 254–261.

¹²³ Amiya Bagchi impressed me with this line of argument. See his Perilous Passage, p. 310 ff.

¹²⁴ de Haan, Arjan, Unsettled settlers: migrant workers and industrial capitalism in Calcutta. Hilversum: Verloren, 1994, p. 92Google Scholar.

¹²⁵ Ludden, ‘The Formation of Modern Agrarian Economies’, in The History of Indian Science, Philosophy and Culture, Volume VII, Economic History of India, 18th–20th Centuries, Binay Bhushan Chaudhuri (ed.), Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2004, pp. 1–40.

¹²⁶ See Bagchi, Amiya Kumar: Private investment in India, Cambridge: University Press, 1972Google Scholar; The Political Economy of Underdevelopment, Cambridge: University Press, 1982; and The Evolution of the State Bank of India, Oxford: Oxford University Press, Calcutta, 1987.

¹²⁷ Pritchett, Lant, Divergence, Big Time. Washington DC: World Bank. 1995Google Scholar. Policy Research Working Paper 1522. Background Paper for the World Development Report, 1995.

¹²⁸ On Africa and ‘the fourth world’, see Castells, Manuel, The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture, Volume III. End of Millennium, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1998, pp. 70–165Google Scholar.

¹²⁹ Gregory Clark and Susan Wolcott, ‘One Polity, Many Countries: Economic Growth in India, 1873–2000’, available at http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/210a/readings/One%20Polity.pdf [accessed 13 April 2011].

¹³⁰ Ludden, David, ‘Development Regimes in South Asia: History and the Development Conundrum’, Economic and Political Weekly, 40:37, 10 September 2005, 4042–4051Google Scholar; and ‘A useable past for a post-national present: Governance and development in South Asia’, in Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, Golden Jubilee Volume (1956–2006), 50:1–2, 259–292.

¹³¹ Milanovic, Branco, ‘Half a World: Regional Inequality in Five Great Federations’. Journal of Asia Pacific Economy, volume 10, No. 4, November 2005, pages 408–445CrossRefGoogle Scholar, available online at http://econ.worldbank.org/external/default/main?pagePK=64165259&theSitePK=469372&piPK=64165421&menuPK=64166093&entityID=000016406_20050830161631 [accessed 13 April 2011].

¹³² Francois Bourguignon and Christian Morrisson, ‘Inequality Among World Citizens, 1820–1992’, The American Economic Review, September 2002, pp. 727–744.

¹³³ Clark, and Wolcott, ‘One Polity, Many Countries’.

¹³⁴ The Economist, ‘More or Less Equal?’ 11 March 2004, originally viewed at http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=2498851 [accessed 29 March 2011].

¹³⁵ Roy, Tirthankar, ‘Economic History and Modern India: Redefining the Link’, The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 16:3, 2002, 109–130CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹³⁶ Majumdar, Madhavi, ‘Regional Disparities in India: 1950–51 to 1967–68’, Urban Studies, 15, 1978, 343–349CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹³⁷ Kishore, Adarsh, ‘Towards and Indian Approach’, in Globalisation, Living Standards, and Inequality: Recent Progress and Continuing Challenges, Gruen, David and O'Brien, Terry (eds), Reserve Bank of Australia, 2002, p. 126Google Scholar. http://www.rba.gov.au/publications/confs/2002/conf-vol-2002.pdf [accessed 13 April 2011].

¹³⁸ Bhattacharya, B. B. and Sakthivel, S., ‘Regional Growth and Disparity in India: Comparison of Pre- and Post-Reform Decades’, Economic and Political Weekly, 39:10, 6 March 2004, 1071–1077Google Scholar; Also Kurian, N. J., ‘Widening Regional Disparities in India: Some Indicators’, Economic and Political Weekly, 35:7, 12–18 February 2000, 538–550Google Scholar.

¹³⁹ See Parthapratim Pal and Jayati Ghosh, ‘Inequality in India: A survey of recent trends’, DESA Working Paper No. 45, ST/ESA/2007/DWP/45. http://www.un.org/esa/desa/papers/2007/wp45_2007.pdf [accessed 29 March 2011].

¹⁴⁰ Zheng, Yongnian, Globalization and State Transformation in China, Cambridge University Press, 2004Google Scholar.

¹⁴¹ Farhad Noorbakkhsh, ‘Human Development and Regional Disparities in India’, University of Glasgow, 2003, http://www.cvso.co.uk/media/media_22245_en.pdf [accessed 29 March 2011].

¹⁴² Banerjee and Iyer, ‘History, Institutions and Economic Performance’.

¹⁴³ Fernandes, Leela, India's New Middle Class: Democratic Politics in an Era of Economic Reform, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006Google Scholar; Sridharan, E., ‘The Growth and Sectoral Composition of India's Middle Class: Its Impact on the Politics of Economic Liberalization’, India Review, 3:4, October 2004, 405–428CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁴⁴ Making India Hindu: Community, Conflict, and the Politics of Democracy, David Ludden (ed.), New Delhi: Oxford University Press, Second Edition, 2005.

¹⁴⁵ Milanovic, ‘Half a World’.

¹⁴⁶ See Angus Deaton and Jean Dreze, ‘Poverty and Inequality in India: A Reexamination’, Centre for Development Economics, Working Paper No. 107; Jayati Ghosh, ‘Income Inequality in India’, http://pd.cpim.org/2004/0215/02152004_eco.htm [accessed 29 March 2011]; and The Great Indian Poverty Debate, Angus Deaton and Valerie Kozel (eds), Delhi: MacMillan, 2005.

¹⁴⁷ Datt, Gaurav and Ravallion, Martin, ‘Is India's Economic Growth Leaving the Poor Behind?’, The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 16:3, 2002, 103–106Google Scholar; Ravallion, Martin and Dutt, Gaurav, ‘Why has economic growth been more pro-poor in some states of India than others?’, World Bank Economic Review, 8:1, 2002, 1–25Google Scholar.

¹⁴⁸ Assayag, Jackie, The making of democratic inequality: caste, class, lobbies and politics in contemporary India, 1880–1995, Pondichery: Institute Français du Pondichery, 1995Google Scholar.

¹⁴⁹ For China, a large proportion of inter-regional inequality can be explained by urban-rural disparities. Bhalla, Ajit S., Yao, Shujie, and Zhang, Zongyi, ‘Causes of inequalities in China’, Journal of International Development, 15, 2003, 133–152Google Scholar; Kanbur, Ravi and Zhang, Xiaobo, ‘Fifty years of regional inequality in China: A journey through central planning, reform, and openness’, Review of Development Economics, 9:1, 2005, 87–106CrossRefGoogle Scholar, also available at http://www.wider.unu.edu/publications/working-papers/research-papers/2004/en_GB/rp2004–050/ [accessed 13 April 2011].

Cited in Milanovic, ‘Half a World’.

¹⁵⁰ Deaton and Dreze, ‘Poverty and Inequality’. Gaurav Datt and Martin Ravallion, ‘Is India's Economic Growth Leaving the Poor Behind?’ notes that the two richest states in the 1980s (Punjab and Haryana) hit a low-growth trend in the 1990s, but that by leaving these two states out, ‘there is a strong positive relationship between level of GDP in the mid-1980s and growth rate in the 1990s; that is, there is divergence between per capita GDP among all but the richest states in India’, p. 97.

¹⁵¹ Dutt and Ravallion, ‘Is India's economic growth leaving the poor behind,’ pp. 97–98.

¹⁵² Kishore, ‘Towards an Indian approach’.

¹⁵³ These regions embrace tropical mountains and valley homelands of tribal and minority groups living on peripheries of national state control who, James C. Scott argues, engage in a constant struggle for autonomy, keeping themselves intentionally at a distance from global circuits of capital accumulation. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed. For a comparative view of economies on the margins and in borderlands of territorial order, see Illicit Flows and Criminal Things: States, Borders, and the other side of Globalization, Willem van Schendel and Itty Abraham (eds), Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004.

¹⁵⁴ Adarsh Kishore, ‘Towards an Indian approach to globalization’, p. 130.

¹⁵⁵ Adnan, Shapan, Migration, Land Alienation, and Ethnic Conflict: Causes of Poverty in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh. Dhaka: Research and Advisory Services, 2004Google Scholar.

¹⁵⁶ ‘Assam: Reorienting Fiscal Strategies Towards Economic Development’, http://planningcommission.gov.in/plans/stateplan/sdr_assam/sdr_assch3.pdf [accessed 29 March 2011].

¹⁵⁷ S. Murshed, Mansoob and Gates, Scott, ‘Spatial horizontal inequality and the Maoist insurgency in Nepal’, in Kanbur, Ravi, Venables, Anthony J. and Wan, Guanghua, (eds), Spatial disparities in human development: perspectives from Asia, Tokyo, New York: United Nations University Press, 2006, pp. 188–206Google Scholar.

¹⁵⁸ C. Rao, H. Hanumantha, Regional Disparities, Smaller States, and Statehood for Telangana, New Delhi: Academic Foundation, 2010Google Scholar.

¹⁵⁹ Padel, Felix and Das, Samarendra, Out of This Earth: East India Adivasis and the Aluminum Cartel, Hyderabad: Orient Black Swan, 2010Google Scholar.