The limits of British colonial control in South Asia : spaces of disorder in the Indian Ocean region / edited by Ashwini Tambe and Harald Fischer-Tiné.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents: --
Part I. Subaltern Mobility and the Problem of Control and Containment --
1. Networks of Subordination and Networks of the Subordinated: The Case of South
Asian Maritime Labour under British Imperialism (c. 1890-1947) --
2. Passport, Ticket, and India Rubber-stamp: `The Problem of the Pauper Pilgrim'
in Colonial India (c.1882-1925) --
3. Heshima British War Time Propaganda to East African Troops in Ceylon,
(1943-45)
Part II. Subalternity, Race and the Transgression of Moral Boundaries --
4. Discourses of Exclusion and the? Convict Stain? in the Indian Ocean (c. 1800-1850)
5. Flotsam and Jetsam of the Empire? European Seamen and Spaces of Disease and Disorder in mid-Nineteenth Century Calcutta --
6. Degenerate Whites and their Spaces of Disorder: Disciplining Racial and class
Ambiguities in Colonial Calcutta, (c. 1880 - 1930) --
7. Hierarchies of Subalternity: Managed Stratification in Bombay’s Brothels,
1914 -1930 –
Index.

This book assesses British colonialism in South Asia in a transnational light. with the Indian Ocean region as its ambit, and with a focus on subaltern groups and actors. It breaks new ground by combining new strands of research on colonial history. Thinking about colonialism in dynamic terms, the book focuses on the movement of various underclasses in the context of imperial ventures. Challenging the assumed stability of colonial rule, it considers social spaces that threatened the racial, class and moral order instituted by British colonial states. By elaborating on the colonial state's strategies to control per- ceiled disorder and the modes of resistance and subversion that subaltern subjects used to challenge state control, the book presents a picture of the British Empire as an ultimately precarious, shifting, and unruly formation. which is quite distinct from its self-projected image as an orderly entity. Thoroughly researched and innovative in its approach, this book will be a valuable resource for scholars of Asian, British imperial/colonial, transnational and global history.