Hybrid Book Talk | SSEALS
An Encroaching Sea: Nature, Sovereignty and Development at the Edge of British India 1860-1950
- Date
- Thursday 27 November 2025
- Time
- Serie
- Research Colloquium: SSEALS (2025)
- Address
-
Lipsius
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden - Room
- 1.23
Ecological instability has time and again emerged as a catalyst for risky development projects along India's south-west coastline. In this integrative environmental, legal and political history, Devika Shankar examines the rise in port development during periods of crisis, using the example of Cochin to explore the nature of colonial and princely sovereignty.
This book talk is an SSEALS-IIAS joint event. The Q&A is moderated by Sanjukta Poddar (LIAS).
The Book
This book probes why ecological instability has time and again emerged as a catalyst for risky development projects along India's south-west coastline. It will do so by examining the genealogy of a political and ecological crisis confronting the colonial state around the port of Cochin in the first quarter of the 20th century, and the legacy of the measures taken in response. While the ecological crisis was triggered by fears surrounding an "encroaching" sea, the political crisis was precipitated by a neighbouring princely state's unprecedented attempt to extend its sovereignty over the British port. By examining just why the colonial state chose to respond to this twin crisis with a risky development scheme, this book contributes to scholarship on environmental transformations and development in modern South Asia and on the uneven nature of colonial sovereignty.
The Speaker
Dr Devika Shankar is an assistant professor of History at the University of Hong Kong. Her research interests primarily lie in environmental history, legal history and science and technology studies. She is the author of An Encroaching Sea: Nature, Sovereignty and Development at the edge of British India 1860-1950 (Cambridge University Press, 2024). Her work has also been published in several journals including Past & Present, Comparative Studies in Society and History and Indian Economic and Social History Review.
Q&A Moderator
Dr Sanjukta Poddar, Leiden Institute for Area Studies (LIAS).
Organisation
This book talk is an SSEALS-IIAS joint event. SSEALS (South and Southeast Asia Leiden Series is a colloquium initiative of the Leiden Institute for Area Studies (LIAS), stitching together three core concerns that animate scholars and researchers in the humanities and social sciences: space/detours; time/absence; and people/encounters.
Registration
This book talk is open for anyone to attend. Attendance is possible online or in person.
Register for this event