RBSC FACULTY WORKSHOP
CENTRAL INDIA UNDER COLONIALISM
Entangled Histories of Archeology and Opium in the British Princely States
featuring Tamara Sears
Wednesday, September 10, 2025
5–6:30 PM
AB Seminar Room 6051
Rutgers British Studies Center (RBSC) faculty research-in-progress workshop with Professor Tamara Sears, Art History
This chapter looks at the entanglement of regional and global histories, and more specifically the colonial investment in Gwalior State immediately following the 1842 British victory over China in the first Opium War. I take the drawings of a military engineer named Lieutenant Frederick Charles Mais, as a point of departure to examine the entanglement of archeology and opium, and to look at the ways in which British efforts to control the routes running through the wilderness frontiers of central India engendered significant material changes in the architectural and natural landscapes.
RSVP and access the pre-circulated paper: go.rutgers.edu/RBSCWorkshop2025