City, Frontier and Empire A Spatial History of British Assam, 1826-1947

List of pictures. List of maps. List of tables. Preface. Acknowledgements 1. Frontier as Method: Mobility, Territory and the making of urban in Northeast India 2. Making the frontier legible: Explorations, Cartography and the Spatial preconditions of frontier urbanism 3. Urbanising the Frontier: Resources, Routes, and Colonial Towns in the Brahmaputra Valley 4. Characteristics of Frontier Urban Spaces: Services, Functions and Modes of Governance 5. Frontier Town: A Morphological Analysis of Dibrugarh 6. Conclusion. Appendices. Bibliography. Index.

Biography

Evy Mehzabeen is a human geographer and policy researcher whose work examines rivers, infrastructure, and borderlands in India. She is a Senior Research Associate at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. Her research analyses policy approaches to river governance, water geographies at the interface of rivers and cities, and borderland geographies with a special focus on urbanisation in India’s northeast. She holds a PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

'Beautifully narrated and empirically embedded colonial urban history of the Brahmaputra valley. The book explores the role of the urban in the making of the frontier, and vice-versa, especially in the colonial context of the Brahmaputra spatiality by understanding the importance of the urban processes as resource extraction and administrative functions at the regional and local level. The explicit use of the cartographic tools and data sets in the creation of the dichotomous space in the frontier has been very meticulously captured in the book. As the contemporary North East integrates into the main stream and global economy, the understanding of the urban especially, its history and origin become undeniably important.  There are very limited works on the North East urban question and Evy’s book with rich historical insights and innovative methodology is certainly an important contribution in this direction. All urbanist, policy makers, people of the North East and people interested in the urban North will find the book worthy of attention. Its merit lies in its rigor, as it contributes to understanding and demystifying the colonial urban spatiality of the region. More importantly, her work tells the story of how urban centres came to be in the region – this important past of the region may also provide insights on understanding the contemporary and future urban processes in the North East. Very timely and relevant book!!'

- Shrawan Kumar Acharya, Professor, Centre for the Study of Regional Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi