Farming and Eating in an Indigenous Asian Borderland: Histories of Botany, Agriculture, and Food in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, East Bengal

ABSTRACT This article examines the botanical, agricultural and food history of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, which lie on the borders of India, east Bengal (now Bangladesh) and Burma (contemporary Myanmar), under British colonialism and postcolonial transnationalism. European administrators were intrigued by jhumming (swidden agriculture) and the botanical biodiversity of the region. The article examines jhum production and food history in the writings of British administrator scholars and colonial geographical surveys from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It then delves into food cosmopolitanisms, particularly the influence of Bengali, Burmese and European dietary and culinary conventions in the royal kitchens of local “tribal” chiefs, the Chakma and Mong Rajas, reflecting how hybrid food traditions during the colonial Raj influenced indigenous forms of cuisine. Finally, it examines the preservation of indigenous cooking traditions by diasporic, immigrant communities, revealing the influence of memory, nostalgia, gender and ideas of home in this hybrid, multiethnic borderland.