The Geological Survey of India (GSI) was a government institution that was created to map the geography and mineral resources of colonial India. British geologists Thomas Oldham and Valentine Ball used the GSI in order to affect policy changes regarding museum ownership, environmental conservation, and railroad construction. All of these policies were intended to impose order on the landscape and streamline the resource extraction process. Their goal was to enrich the British Empire. An Indian geologist named Pramatha Nath Bose, who also worked for the GSI for a time, also worked to enact policy changes regarding education and production. But instead of trying to make the British Empire stronger, he wanted to push it out of India. He left the GSI since he found it too restrictive, and, together with other Indians, restructured geological education at the university level and set up a successful steel manufacturing mill. Both the British geologists and Bose helped lay the economic foundation of India's independence. The GSI gave geologists power in some situations, but in others it restricted the advancement of the field.

Thesis advisor: Prasannan Parthasarathi / This dissertation is a study of state power, technological change, and class conflict at the port of colonial Calcutta. It explores the period between 1860 and 1910 in order to recast historical understandings of the relationship between the colonial state, science and technology, and labor. The dissertation explores a period of great change, resulting from massive increases in public investment. These investments transformed the port's infrastructure, making the loading and unloading of cargo ships significantly easier. They were also designed to secure the supply of cheap labor, and better supervise the port's labor force. The investments involved the deployment of new technologies and scientific knowledge. This included various new kinds of machinery, such as cranes and railroads that were designed to speed up the pace of work or occasionally to automate the loading and unloading of cargoes, as well as, the use of new medical knowledge to prevent the spread of disease. International trade benefited greatly from these investments, but their effects on labor were more complex. The new machinery made the work of loading and unloading easier, but also more dangerous. Moreover, many workers resented the enhanced supervision that they were subject to. In a bid to secure the supply of labor, the government authorities managing the port attempted to alter the existing casual hiring practices of the port with new hiring systems wherein laborers were locked into long term contracts with their employers. Many workers fought back through acts of everyday resistance and well organized strikes. They were most successful towards the turn of the century when a plague epidemic disrupted the supply of labor in Calcutta. While some workers fled the city, others fought for, and won higher wages. The state was also forced to invest in expensive automation and labor welfare projects in order to secure their workforce. The dissertation highlights the critical role of technology in the reshaping of labor relations in the British Raj. It also underscores the central importance of trade for the colonial state. Finally, the dissertation underscores the dialectic that characterized the relationship between labor and colonial capital. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History.

The British Indian Army, formed from the old presidency armies of the East India Company in 1895, was one of the pillars upon which Britain’s world empire rested. While much has been written on the colonial and global campaigns fought by the Indian Army as a tool of imperial power, comparatively little has been written about the transition of the army from British to Indian control after the end of the Second World War. While independence meant the transition of the force from imperial rule to that of civilian oversight by India’s new national leadership, the Dominion of India inherited thousands of former colonial soldiers, including two generations of British and Indian officers indoctrinated in military and cultural practices developed in the United Kingdom, in colonial India and across the British Empire. The goal of this paper is to examine the legacy of the British Empire on the narrative, ethos, culture, tactics and strategies employed by the Indian Army after 1945, when the army began to transition from British to Indian rule, up to 1973 when the government of India reinstituted the imperial rank of Field Marshal. While other former imperial officers would continue to serve in the army up to the end of the 20th century, the first thirty years after independence were a formative period in the history of the Indian Army, that saw it fight four major wars and see the final departure of white British officers from its ranks. While it became during this time a truly national army, the years after independence were one in which its legacy as an arm of imperial power was debated, and eventually transformed into a key component of military identity in the post-colonial era.

This thesis is structured around the analysis of a model that describes the Cantonment, the Civil Lines, the Sadr Bazar and part of the Native City of the Western Indian settlement of Poona in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

This thesis is structured around the analysis of a model that describes the Cantonment, the Civil Lines, the Sadr Bazar and part of the Native City of the Western Indian settlement of Poona in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

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