brotherhoods, the bhaiachara, that came to dominate Punjab’s tenurial landscape. The book culminates with the canal colonies, the colonial state’s “grandest project of social engineering” (p. 385). From the 1880s, the colonial state began to irrigate millions of acres of western Punjab’s pastures, resettling cultivators from central Punjab with farm allotments. The resultant canal colonies did not correspond to colonial fantasies of planned villages and rectangular fields. More significantly, initial productivity gains slowed down, as perennial canal irrigation ran into its ecological limits. In 1907, the colonial state attempted to impose a new disciplinary regime on canal colonists, a system of fines and confiscations for not living up to colonial ideals. The canal colonists rose up in revolt. Against narratives of British beneficence of irrigation, they crafted their own narratives of heroic labour in reclaiming scrublands, which was met with British perfidy and treachery, in changing the settlement terms. Notably, they found support from the growing nationalist movement. The importance of Bhattacharya’s book is difficult to overstate. It is a field-defining book for agrarian histories of colonised societies during the 19 century, when vast new regions and peoples were incorporated into a global capitalist system. This incorporation, as Bhattacharya convincingly demonstrates, entailed the imposition of the “universal agrarian” of bounded villages, demarcated fields, and settled agriculturalists upon diverse landscapes and communities. Even more importantly, Bhattacharya demonstrates that this imposition cannot be seen as the straightforward imposition of colonial fantasies upon rural realities by an all-powerful imperial state. The great agrarian conquest was worked out through “contradictory dialectic” between two forces: “one that transformed society from below, and the other that sought to impose a structure from above” (p. 436). The agrarian conquest of the Punjab is bookended by two imperialists riding on horseback. The book opens with the fictional Bellasis, published in 1846 on the eve of conquest, and chronicling the adventures of an Englishman besting, dazzling and wooing various “natives”. The book concludes with the Punjab’s most famous colonial official, Malcolm Darling’s ride through the Punjab in 1946, on the eve of partition and independence. Unlike Bellasis, Darling’s ride is suffused with the pathos of loss. Instead of a population in awe of British masculinity, Darling is confronted by people eagerly anticipating freedom and impatient for the old imperialists to depart. As Bhattacharya brilliantly demonstrates, Darling’s interlocutors had played a significant part in the agrarian conquest that the British imagined to be their parting gift.

中文翻译：

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全球资本的地方史：孟加拉三角洲的黄麻和农民生活

兄弟会 bhaiachara 开始主宰旁遮普的土地。这本书的高潮是运河殖民地，这是殖民地国家“最伟大的社会工程项目”（第 385 页）。从 1880 年代开始，这个殖民国家开始灌溉旁遮普西部数百万英亩的牧场，用农场分配重新安置旁遮普中部的耕种者。由此产生的运河殖民地与规划村庄和矩形田地的殖民幻想不符。更重要的是，最初的生产力增长放缓，因为常年运河灌溉遇到了生态极限。1907 年，殖民地国家试图对运河殖民者实行新的纪律制度，即对不符合殖民理想的罚款和没收制度。运河殖民者起义反抗。与英国善意灌溉的叙述相反，他们精心制作了自己的英雄式劳动叙述，讲述了开垦灌木丛的英勇劳动，这在改变定居条件方面遭到了英国的背信弃义和背信弃义。值得注意的是，他们得到了日益壮大的民族主义运动的支持。Bhattacharya 的书的重要性再怎么强调也不为过。它是 19 世纪殖民社会农业历史的领域定义书，当时广阔的新地区和人民被纳入全球资本主义体系。正如 Bhattacharya 令人信服地证明的那样，这种合并需要将有界村庄、划定田地和定居农业者的“普遍农业”强加于不同的景观和社区。更重要的是，巴塔查里亚表明，这种强加不能被视为一个全能的帝国国家将殖民幻想直接强加于农村现实。伟大的土地征服是通过两种力量之间的“矛盾辩证法”完成的：“一种从下而上改变社会，另一种试图从上而下强加结构”（第 436 页）。两个帝国主义者骑马结束了对旁遮普邦的农业征服。这本书以虚构的贝拉西斯 (Bellasis) 开篇，该小说于 1846 年征服前夕出版，记录了一位英国人击败、炫耀和追求各种“土著”的冒险经历。本书以旁遮普最著名的殖民官员马尔科姆·达林 (Malcolm Darling) 于 1946 年在分治和独立前夕穿越旁遮普的经历结束。与贝拉西不同的是，达林的旅程充满了失落的悲哀。Darling 面对的不是一群敬畏英国男子气概的人，而是热切期待自由和不耐烦旧帝国主义者离开的人们。正如 Bhattacharya 精彩地展示的那样，达令的对话者在英国人认为是他们离别礼物的土地征服中发挥了重要作用。