Chittagong Hill Tracts: Living in a Borderland

by Willem van Schendel

The Chittagong Hill Living in a Borderland examines the borderland between Burma, India and Bangladesh, inhabited by twelve distinct ethnic groups with strong cultural and linguistic links with South East Asia. The three specialist authors of this unique book assembled more than 400 mostly unpublished photographs, many in colour, from over 50 private collections. The book introduces the reader to the remarkable cultural variety and modern transformations of this virtually unknown region bridging South East Asia and South Asia. At the same time it explores how, from the 1860s to the late twentieth century, photographers have portrayed the Chittagong Hill Tracts and their inhabitants. These photographers were both outsiders (travelers, officials, missionaries, anthropologists, development workers) and local people capturing their own world as they saw it. The 20 carefully documented chapters Creating a Colonial Aristocracy, The Public Display of Power, Images of Nature and Destruction, Religions of the Hills, Bodies and Costumes, Developing the Hills, and Lifestyles. The Chittagong Hill Tracts is the first comprehensive work on this complex region of Asia.

Genres: History

327 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Willem van Schendel works in the fields of anthropology and history of Asia. He was Professor of Comparative History at Erasmus University Rotterdam, from 1990 to 1996, and then became Professor of Modern Asian History at the University of Amsterdam. Simultaneously he was appointed at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. His research interests include borderlands, more-than-human history, labour history, indigo production, indigeneity, and photography. His publications deal with South and Southeast Asia, with a special focus on Bangladesh and the Eastern Himalayas.