<i>Homo in Nubibus</i>: Altitude, Colonisation and Political Order in the Khasi Hills of Northeast India

Abstract

India's tribal northeast continues to be a footnote in national and international historiography. Influenced by James C. Scott's recent characterisation of the non-state hill peoples of Zomia and their deliberate evasion of subject status, this article reappraises the 1826 treaty between the British political agent and Khasi leader U Tirot Sing, and the subsequent Nongkhlaw massacre. It further explores a set of British expectations of the hills as a potential site for missionisation and white colonisation. In this way, it asserts the purchase of Scott's theories, but argues for the further potential of micro-history and the colonial archive to render indigenous histories more visible.