Fluvial landscape and the colonial state

The latest Environment and History has an article by Nitin Sinha, "Fluvial Landscape and the State: Property and the Gangetic Diaras in Colonial India, 1790s-1890s". The abstract:

from William Stanhope Sherwill,

General Remark on the District of Monghyr (Calcutta, 1848)

(from the article)

Looking at the interplay of law and revenue as a means of understanding colonial practices and policies towards diaras, this paper addresses a relatively neglected field in the agrarian-ecological history of South Asia. The constant formation and disappearance of lands due to river shifts raised several issues. Among the most important from the viewpoint of the colonial state were secure revenue extraction and the fixation of proprietorial rights. Using a number of case-studies, the paper argues that, although maximisation of revenue did not necessarily mean the dilution of the idea of the Permanent Settlement, the state throughout the nineteenth century failed to arrive at a standardised set of practices because of its own structural (bureaucratic) incoherency, ideological underpinnings and the ecological settings.