The Bengal Delta Ecology, State and Social Change, 1840-1943

This book demonstrates how the dynamics of agrarian prosperity or decline, communal conflicts, poverty and famine could be understood more satisfactorily from an environmental perspective as well as discussions of states coercion and popular resistance, market forces and dependency, or contested cultures and consciousness.

IFTEKHAR IQBAL  is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. He received a PhD from the University Cambridge. He was a British Academy-ESRC visiting fellow at Kings College London and a research fellow at the Aga Khan University, London. He works on environmental and intellectual history of modern South Asia.

Maps and Illustrations
Glossary
Introduction
Ecology, Power and Agrarian Relations in the Nineteenth Century.
Economy and Society: the Myth and Reality of Sonar Bangla.
The Faraizi Movement between Revolution and Passive Resistance: Political Ecology of the Peasant?
Return of the Bhadralok: Agrarian Environment and the Nation
The Railways and the Water Regime.
Fighting with a Weed: Water Hyacinth, State and the Public Sphere.
Between Food Availability Decline and Entitlement Exchange Failure: An Ecological Prehistory of the Great Bengal Famine of 1943
Conclusion
Appendices
Index