Podcast of public lecture by Sanjay Subrahmanyam at the Fowler Museum at UCLA as part of the Steeped in History: The Art of Tea exhibit.

Sanjay Subrahmanyam, UCLA professor of history and director of the Center for India and South Asia, focuses on the transformation of the Nilgiri Hills over the course of the 19th and early-20th centuries as they became a significant producer of tea under the colonial plantation system. First 'discovered' by the British in the late 1810s, this area (literally the 'Blue Mountains') emerged first as a resort and an area for elephant-hunting, before eventually becoming one of the favored centers of colonial tea production together with Assam, North Bengal and Sri Lanka. The changes that the plantation system wrought had significant effects both on the indigenous populations of the area, and on the relationship with the animal world.

The UCLA Asia Institute is pleased to sponsor the Fowler OutSpoken Lecture Series in conjunction with the exhibition Steeped in History: The Art of Tea, on view at the Fowler Museum at UCLA, August 16 through November 29, 2009.

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Duration: 1:03:49