The Imperial Underbelly

Workers, Contractors, and Entrepreneurs in Colonial India and Scandinavia

Gunnel Cederlöf, Gunnel Cederlöf

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000805017
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Indian & South Asian History
• Index: History

The volume introduces a new analysis of interconnected labour and economic history of colonial India and Scandinavia. From a recently found archive of a railway contractor's private and business papers, the studies revise both Indian labour history and Scandinavian modern history, and ties south Sweden into the British Empire. With deep insights into everyday work practices of Indian and European contractors and manual labourers, the book establishes a bridge across the globe, between two poor regions as sites of extraction and industrial transformation, resulting from global migration and capital flows. Drawing on rich archival sources such as the Joseph Stephens Archive, Maharashtra State Archives, the National Archives of India, and the British Library, the book offers deep insights into everyday business practices of European contractors in India, which were rarely documented and have remained largely inaccessible so far.

A unique look into the labour and entrepreneurship practices under British colonial rule in India, as well as its impact on the most transformative years of modern southern Scandinavia, the book will be of great interest to students, academics, and teachers of history, labour studies, subaltern studies, colonialism, imperialism, economic history, railways, economics, and Scandinavian and South Asian studies.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Contributors
• 1 Circular Migrations, Capital, and Opportunity: A Global History of Scandinavia and India at the Industrial Turn, an Introduction
• 2 The Life of Contract Capitalism and the Building of the Colonial Railway
• 3 Bureaucracy and Ideologies of Control in British India: Social and Professional Networks and the ‘Contract System’ in Railway Building
• 4 Social Capital and Its Limits in Fortune Making: Joseph Stephens’ Enterprises in India and Scandinavia, 1859-69
• 5 Labour Practices and Well-Being: Construction Workers in 1860s Western India
• 6 Circulation of Knowledge, Capital, and Goods: Scandinavia and the British Empire
• 7 Colonial Entrepreneurial Capital in the Industrialization of Southern Sweden: The Huseby Estate under Joseph Stephens
• 8 Doing One's Duty, Making a Future: The Ironmaster's Daughters and the Unceasing Project of Rearing a Family
• Bibliography
• Publications From Research Related to the Huseby Estate and Joseph Stephens Archives
• Index