<p>The development history of Bangladesh is marked by fluctuations, turn-abouts and decelerations. To understand these complex dynamics of social and economic change towards finding solutions, we need to dig for historical knowledge. Francis Buchanan's account is the earliest and the most significant source of new information of 18th Century Bengal, Arakan, Tripura, Cachar, Manipur, Mizoram and Burma (Myanmar). It provides unique information on Southeastern Bengal in particular and further regions to the South and East in general and is a good example of how Europeans collected knowledge of the wider world and what views they held. It contains information on rural economy, social life and ethnic relations and above all of the British imperial policy in the region. Although Buchanan's account is presented as a travel diary, it is the diary of a disciplined traveller and is thus seen to represent a genre. His surveys are of far more than antiquarian interest as they provide us with the first detailed information in existence about rural Bangladesh. "He is, first and foremost, an intellectual forbear of all social scientists trying to make sense of social structure and social change in South Asia."</p>

Francis Buchanan in Se

Travel

Willem Van Schendel

Francis Hamilton

Asia

University Press

The Chittagong Hill Tracts: Living in a Borderland examines the borderland between Burma, India and Bangladesh, inhabited by twelve distinct ethnic groups with strong cultural and linguistic links with South East Asia. The three specialist authors of this unique book assembled more than 400 mostly unpublished photographs, many in colour, from over 50 private collections. The book introduces the reader to the remarkable cultural variety and modern transformations of this virtually unknown region bridging South East Asia and South Asia. At the same time it explores how, from the 1860s to the late twentieth century, photographers have portrayed the Chittagong Hill Tracts and their inhabitants. These photographers were both outsiders (travelers, officials, missionaries, anthropologists, development workers) and local people capturing their own world as they saw it. The 20 carefully documented chapters include: Creating a Colonial Aristocracy, The Public Display of Power, Images of Nature and Destruction, Religions of the Hills, Bodies and Costumes, Developing the Hills, and Lifestyles. The Chittagong Hill Tracts is the first comprehensive work on this complex region of Asia.

Chittagong Hill Tracts: Living in a Borderland

University Press Ltd ,Bangladesh

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Books by Willem Van Schendel