Presentation by Debjani Bhattacharyya
Friday, November 16

 Here is the reading for the Friday colloquium. This is Chapter 1 from Bhattacharya’s book, “Empire and Ecology in the Bengal Delta: The Making of Calcutta“

In 1865 British colonial officials set up a department called the “Wrecks in Indian Waters” to record shipwrecks in the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal. The purpose of recording shipwrecks was threefold: assessing the nature of disaster at sea, their causes and develop precise predictions. The audience for these annual reports were multiple. While they were initially produced under the military auspices these reports were migrated into the Trade and Commerce department within a decade, and was widely read and referred to by colonial meteorologists and tidal scientist. At the same time the narrative of the reports of the Indian Wrecks Department was produced as a documentation to be used in marine insurance settlement cases. An analysis of the reports reveal how narrative causality was used to reconstruct the moment of wreck and the knowledge production about human error vis-à-vis natural disaster on a sliding scale. By analyzing how colonial meteorologists and tidal scientists mined these reports produced for insurance settlement claims, this paper asks what continuities might we trace between a legal narrative structure of arranging events, producing evidence, validating claims and similar concerns in the writings of colonial meteorological scientists. 

4:00-6:45 p.m. in 701 KJCC
7E, Seventh Floor
(53 Washington Square South)
with wine and cheese!

Looking ahead:

Week 11. 30-Nov. Paul A. Kramer (History, Vanderbilt University), Marilyn Young Memorial                                         Lecture and Reception, Glucksman Ireland House, 4:00-6:30      

Week 12. 7-Dec. Tatiana Linkhoeva (History) and Fred Cooper (History)  

Week 13. 14-Dec. Heather Lee (History, NYUSH) and Jerome Whitington (Anthropology)

COME ONE AND COME ALL !!!