Landscapes and the Law is situated at the crossroads of environmental, colonial, and legal history. It examines the role of law in consolidating early colonial rule from the perspective of people's access to nature in forests and hill tracts. The book is focused equally on the multitude of colliding claims for access to land and resources, and the complex ways in which customary rights are redefined and codified for the purpose of securing and legitimizing colonial sovereign rule.
Gunnel Cederlöf is Professor of History at the Linnaeus University, Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, Sweden. Her research spans modern Indian and British imperial history, and environmental and legal history. She was Professor of History at Uppsala University and has taught at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. Among her publications are Founding an Empire on India's North-Eastern Frontiers, 1790-1840: Climate, Commerce, Polity (2014), Bonds lost : Subordination, Conflict and Mobilisation in Rural South India c. 1900-1970 (1997), At Nature's Edge: The Global Present and Long-Term History (2018 with M. Rangarajan), Subjects, Citizens and Law: Colonial and independent India (2017 with S. Das Gupta), and Ecological Nationalisms: Nature, Livelihoods, and Identities in South Asia (2006, 2012 with K. Sivaramakrishnan).
Show moreLandscapes and the Law is situated at the crossroads of environmental, colonial, and legal history. It examines the role of law in consolidating early colonial rule from the perspective of people's access to nature in forests and hill tracts. The book is focused equally on the multitude of colliding claims for access to land and resources, and the complex ways in which customary rights are redefined and codified for the purpose of securing and legitimizing colonial sovereign rule.
Gunnel Cederlöf is Professor of History at the Linnaeus University, Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, Sweden. Her research spans modern Indian and British imperial history, and environmental and legal history. She was Professor of History at Uppsala University and has taught at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. Among her publications are Founding an Empire on India's North-Eastern Frontiers, 1790-1840: Climate, Commerce, Polity (2014), Bonds lost : Subordination, Conflict and Mobilisation in Rural South India c. 1900-1970 (1997), At Nature's Edge: The Global Present and Long-Term History (2018 with M. Rangarajan), Subjects, Citizens and Law: Colonial and independent India (2017 with S. Das Gupta), and Ecological Nationalisms: Nature, Livelihoods, and Identities in South Asia (2006, 2012 with K. Sivaramakrishnan).
Show moreIllustrations and Maps
Glossary
Preface to Second Edition
Preface to First Edition
1 Histories of Rights in Nature: An Introduction
2 A Narrative on the Toda and Its Problems
3 Negotiating Law
4 Perceptions of Land and People
5 Local Politics and Regional Confrontations
6 Towards an Environmental History of Law
Bibliography
Index
About the Author
Gunnel Cederlöf is Professor of History at the Linnaeus University,
Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies,
Sweden. Her research spans modern Indian and British imperial
history, and environmental and legal history. She was Professor of
History at Uppsala University and has taught at KTH Royal Institute
of Technology. Among her publications are Founding an Empire on
India's North-Eastern Frontiers, 1790-1840: Climate, Commerce,
Polity (2014), Bonds lost : Subordination, Conflict and
Mobilisation in Rural South India c. 1900-1970 (1997), At Nature's
Edge: The Global Present and Long-Term History (2018 with M.
Rangarajan), Subjects, Citizens
and Law: Colonial and independent India (2017 with S. Das Gupta),
and Ecological Nationalisms: Nature, Livelihoods, and Identities in
South Asia (2006, 2012 with K. Sivaramakrishnan).
"Landscapes and the Law is a significant contribution by offering a
fresh and inno vative paradigm for understanding the colonial
project in south Asia. The black box on the early modern colonial
period is now flipped open to reveal power and agency as a
kaleidoscope of possibilities rather than a static picture set in
sepia tainted monochrome."--Rohan D'Souza, Economic & Political
Weekly
"Cederlöf's Landscapes and the Law is a landmark study that not
only remaps,
but reconstitutes the fields of environmental, legal, and colonial
history. At
its heart lies an effort to historicize the construction of
sovereignty through
the social process of making legal rights in nature. ... Cederlöf
challenges conventional understandings of how colonial
sovereignty was secured and legitimized in forest and hill "inner
frontier"
tracts like the Nilgiris. She shifts historians' attention from a
preoccupation
with the implementation of law to the social process of making law,
reminding
us that we cannot understand how law works if we simply assume that
the
end result--in this case British territorial sovereignty--was the
inevitable
outcome."--Lauren Minsky, Environmental History
'Cederlöf allows us a long overdue introduction to work we need to
explore further if we are to develop stronger analyses of our own
local and regional environmental histories.'
- HEATHER GOODALL, Emeritus Professor, University of Technology
Sydney
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