Trade and Travel in Northeast India

The article presents a detailed study of trade and travel in pre-colonial and colonial northeast India. Concentrating on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it details how critical items like salt, iron and silk were traded by travellers. It also discusses the slave-trade that was undertaken during this time. The article suggests that to understand the relationship between trade and travel in this context, it is important to note that northeast India had trade and cultural contact with different regions in contemporary China, Myanmar, Bhutan and Bangladesh, as well as Bengal and Bihar. The article concludes by affirming that the comprehensive history of trade and travel in precolonial and colonial northeast India can be written in a wholesome manner only if we move away from thinking of travel as a necessarily individual activity undertaken for purposes of pleasure or acquisition of wisdom.