Notes
1 Griffiths, Percival, The History of the Indian Tea Industry (London 1967); and a more recent work,Tinker, Hugh, A New System of Slavery (London 1974).
2 All data are from the Agricultural Statistics of India series.
3 Chaudhuri, Tushar K., Demographic Trends in Assam (Delhi 1982) 45, Table 23.
6 Other groups include migrants from Nepal, perhaps 300,000 persons in 1971. Many Nepalis have become stock breeders and pastoralists for cattle and buffalo. (Ibidem, 44.)
7 Calculated from Government of India Census data. Population totals have been adjusted to conform to Assam's 1971 boundaries encompassing an area of 78,496 km2.
8 The numbers in this table are based on
Hagen, James R., ‘Indian States of Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura, plus the Union Territories of Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram’ in: Richards, John F. et al., Land-Use and Vegetation Changes in South and Asia, 1700-1980, A Preliminary Report 1.8 (Unpublished report, Durham 1985) 6–8. Data the Preliminary Report are derived from the Agricultural Statistics of India series, settlement reports, gazetteers, census reports, and other published materials. This research has been supported by Subcontract No. 19X-43361C of Duke University with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Environmental Division, Contract No. DE-AC05-840R21400 with the U.S. Department of Energy.
9 Report of the Assam Agricultural Commission. Government of Assam, State Planning Board (1975) 63. Lack of investment and stagnant yields is one of the main issues addressed by the commission.
10 For a discussion of the effects of the jhumming cycle reduced from twenty or thirty years to five or six, see State of India's Environment, 44-45.
11 Richards, John F., Haynes, Edward S. and Hagen, James R., ‘Changes in the Land and Human Productivity in Northern India, 1870-1970’, Agricultural History 59, 4.
12 Calculated from Government of India Census data.
13 State of India's Environment, 44.
15 This detailed description is taken from
Hunter, W. W., A Statistical Account of Assam I (London 1879; repr. New Delhi 1975) 103–168, ‘A Statistical Account of Darrang District’.
20 Ibidem, 104. Hunter also comments at another point that ‘There is a great deal of culturable waste land in the district, but most of it now bears heavy grass jungle, reeds, or forest, very expensive to clear.’ (Ibidem, 146.)
23 Allen, B. C., Assam District Gazetteers, Darrang (Allahabad 1905) 140.
24 Allen's detailed gazetteer account of the district does no t mention any form of immigration from Bengal. The total Muslim population of the district, almost entirely native Assamese, was only one-twentieth of the inhabitants. (Ibidem, 100.)
25 Dutta, N. C., Assam District Gazetteers, Darrang (Gauhati 1978) 105.
26 Calculated from Government of India Census data. All arable figures, except that for 1870, come from the Agricultural Statistics of India series. The 1870 number is Hunter's estimate for 1874-75, Statistical Account I, 128. Since this source does not provide a current fallows measurement, we have estimated this figure by averaging the current fallows for five years, 1890-95. These figures are found in the official agricultural statistics for Darrang. Between 1890 and 1940 official current fallows areas given for all Assam districts were probably inflated. During these years the current fallows areas ‘include[d] generally all lands which are thrown out of cultivation, but remain in the occupation of leaseholders’. In following this formal rather than a working definition of short-term, or less than three years, fallows, officials in Assam seem to have consistently overstated the area for current fallows until World War II. Other sources used in making the estimates shown in the table include: Allen, Assam District Gazetteers; Dutta, Assam District Gazetteers; McSwiney, J., The Settlement Report for the Darrang District, 1905-1909 (Calcutta 1910);Pakyntein, E. H., Darrang District Census Handbook, 1961 (Gauhati 1965);Saikia, A. K., Assam District Census Handbook: Darrang, Census, 1971, Series 3 (Gauhati 1973).
27 Das, A. K., Assam's Agony: A Socio-Economic and Political Analysis (New Delhi 1982) 27.
29 All data are from the Agricultural Statistics of India series.
30 Data for 1900 and 1930 ar e from Agricultural Statistics of India and those for 1970 are from
Dutta, , Assam District Gazetteers, 193. Darrang's trends in livestock population are representative of the state as a whole:
31 Allen, , Assam District Gazetteers, 132.
32 Statistical Handbook, 1971. Government of Assam, Department of Economics and Statistics (Shillongn.d.).
33 Dutta, , Assam District Gazetteers, 198–201.
