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Changing River Courses in North India

Calamities, Bounties, Strategies—Sixteenth to Early Nineteenth Centuries

Meena Bhargava is in Department of History, Indraprastha College, University of Delhi. E-mail: meenabhargava{at}vsnl.com, meena.bhargava{at}gmail.com.

Disaster is a multidimensional social phenomenon. Scholars, cutting across different disciplines, have yet to reach a common understanding or a consensus on the definition of disaster. To understand natural disaster and catastrophe, this article will study the nature of changing river courses and their impact on the environment and on human-environment relations. It will focus on the corrosive power of rivers, the destructive as well as beneficent effects of their impetuous trajectories and the social implications of this process. Our analysis is based on a case study of one of the major river systems in South Asia, i.e. river Ganga (Ganges) and its tributaries in north India.

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The Medieval History Journal, Vol. 10, No. 1-2, 183-208 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/097194580701000207


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This Article Abstract Free Full Text (Free PDF) Free Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in Web of Science Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Bhargava, M. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?