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Book Review: Smritikumar Sarkar, Technology and Rural Change in Eastern India, 1830–1980

The book, intended ‘primarily’ as ‘a social history of technology’, traces the ‘interrelationship between technology and village society’ (p. xi). Induction of new technology significantly increased during colonial rule, since technology was ‘the primary tool of colonialism’ (p. xi). Indeed, ‘colonialism unleashed a process of technology transmission to the colonies’ (p. xi). The process, however, had its limitations. ‘The manner in which technology was introduced...failed to generate a free interplay between London or other core areas and Calcutta as a colonial metropolis...Indigenous enterprise had been stifled and made to play second fiddle to British interests’ (p. xiii).