Tour diaries and itinerant governance in the eastern Himalayas, 1909-1962

TY - JOUR

T1 - Tour diaries and itinerant governance in the eastern Himalayas, 1909-1962

AU - Guyot-Réchard, Bérénice

PY - 2017/12

Y1 - 2017/12

N2 - Between the early twentieth century and the 1960s, the Indian state began toincorporate the easternmost Himalayas. This article illuminates this state-makingprocess by examining its material and communicative culture in the region, embodiedin tour diaries. These diaries were not private reflections written during one’s sparetime but the compulsory output of administrative tours. Often assorted with morereflective notes, their perceived insights were used to determine local or general policychanges. Drawing on a literature that sees paperwork as constitutive of bureaucracy,this article argues that tour diaries exemplified and buttressed a certain form offrontier governance, marked by itinerancy and personalization well into independence.In their historical development, their language and materiality, their administrativeusage, tour diaries embodied more than anything else the contingent, spatially unevenand fractured nature of Indian state-making in the Himalayas, revealing theimportance of process geographies anchored in paperwork circulation for itssustenance. Transmitted whole or extracted into policy files, diaries tied wanderingofficers together in a distinctive community of practice, policies, and ideas—preserving the fiction of the frontier state as a coherent whole in uncertain circumstances. Asmuch as through maps, regulations, and routes, the frontier was made through writing.

AB - Between the early twentieth century and the 1960s, the Indian state began toincorporate the easternmost Himalayas. This article illuminates this state-makingprocess by examining its material and communicative culture in the region, embodiedin tour diaries. These diaries were not private reflections written during one’s sparetime but the compulsory output of administrative tours. Often assorted with morereflective notes, their perceived insights were used to determine local or general policychanges. Drawing on a literature that sees paperwork as constitutive of bureaucracy,this article argues that tour diaries exemplified and buttressed a certain form offrontier governance, marked by itinerancy and personalization well into independence.In their historical development, their language and materiality, their administrativeusage, tour diaries embodied more than anything else the contingent, spatially unevenand fractured nature of Indian state-making in the Himalayas, revealing theimportance of process geographies anchored in paperwork circulation for itssustenance. Transmitted whole or extracted into policy files, diaries tied wanderingofficers together in a distinctive community of practice, policies, and ideas—preserving the fiction of the frontier state as a coherent whole in uncertain circumstances. Asmuch as through maps, regulations, and routes, the frontier was made through writing.

KW - South Asia

KW - Himalayas

KW - frontiers

KW - borderlands

KW - state-building

KW - bureaucracy

KW - touring

KW - diaries

KW - writing

U2 - 10.1017/S0018246X17000073

DO - 10.1017/S0018246X17000073

M3 - Article

SN - 0018-246X

VL - 60

SP - 1023

EP - 1046

JO - HISTORICAL JOURNAL

JF - HISTORICAL JOURNAL

IS - 4

ER -