political condition of assam on the eve of British rule?
Answers
Answer: Assam, a province in north-east India, evokes two images: lush green tea estates and unending ethnic warfare.
Explanation:
The annexation of Assam in 1826, followed by the discovery of tea growing in Assam (1831), portrayed it in imperial imagination as a place of unending wealth. However, these financial goals were couched in a moral language of development and the transformation of Assam from nature's jungle to empire's garden. This promise of progress originally piqued natives' interest, but it quickly faded, and a regressive tea plantation economy emerged under the European monopoly. The European planters only hired locals for hard labour, which the latter disliked for its dullness and discipline. Frustrated by the natives' apathy toward plantation work, the British sought labour from beyond Assam, specifically the Chotanagpur district. By 1901, this immigrant labour group, often known as tea coolies or baghniya, formed 645, 000 of Assam's population.
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