ABSTRACT
The East India Company’s early interests and conquests in the political economy of western Assam and its surroundings frame the chapter. The Company’s involvement in the local political terrain demonstrated a clarity of purpose, establishing its authority and power through a protracted process ultimately dependent on military strength. Masked by an apparent inchoate Company rule and negotiations over private and commercial trading rights, the foundations were being laid of firm land revenue settlements and for access to and regulation of other land resources. Emphasising the irrevocability of colonialism, the chapter makes connections between early modern western Assam, northern Bengal, Bhutan, Tibet and Bangladesh and underlines the difficulties of conceptualising the relations between authority, politico-administrative boundary making and trade in this region. The histories of hills and valleys are read together while sovereignty in the pre-modern is understood as constituting an ‘economic’ control and symbolic expanse that often far extended the territorial limits of administrative power.
