The book is the revised version of the L.N. Chakravarty Memorial Lecture that the author delivered at the Institute of Northeast India Studies in Kolkata in January 2016. In a move that will certainly be apparent to its readers, this book marks a radical departure from the easily available, conventional and largely ethnographical accounts of the history of Arunachal Pradesh. Unlike its several such predecessors which are worthy in their own ways, it seeks to establish and maintain a critical balance between its presentation and reproduction of the facts of the ‘pre-colonial lives of the tribes of the state and its analysis of them through various conceptual and theoretical frameworks. While being conscious of the pressures of colonial and anti-colonial nationalist historiography that seek to (mis) represent and appropriate the ‘pre-colonial’ socio-political, technological and economic history of the tribes of Arunachal Pradesh, the author has thus attempted to be as rigorous in his fieldwork and in his references to archival and other sources as to their cogent and coherent scrutiny.
