I am interested in how commodity extraction and state violence have been managed juridically across the British imperial and post-imperial worlds, delimiting and defining the fields of political action against (and for) the state. In other words, how have liberal empires and democracies deferred political entropy? To answer such a question, I have sought to understand the political economies of states of exception and emergencies. In this form, my work aims to identify pathways that connect the routines of economic extraction (imperial and post-colonial) to juridical architectures of exception and emergency. I bring together the archives of everyday practices of extraction under capitalism and the exceptional legal apparatus of emergency governance—the tear in the fabric and fable of Rule of Law—in a single analytical field.

My ongoing primary research project explores histories of extraction in a resource frontier of British India—the northeastern frontier—carried out under the sign of exceptional rule during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I situate these histories of extraction at the historiographical intersection of commodity economies (tea and rubber), colonial state violence (punitive military expeditions), and labour of populations anthropologically and administratively designated as ‘primitive’.

My second research project, currently at a preparatory stage, investigates the connected and competing histories of right-wing ideologies, financial capital, and legal architectures of political decolonisation.

I am also keen on conversations around the challenges, possibilities, and practices of teaching global history from Global South locations.

Research Interests and Areas of Supervision:

British Empire in the 19th and 20th century, South Asia and Southern Africa

States of Exception & Emergency, Indemnity and Martial Laws 

Political Economy of Frontiers 

Right Wing Politics

Finance, Law and Political Decolonisation 

Select Publications:

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

  1. Insurgent Law: Bengal Regulation III of 1818 and the Chin-Lushai Expeditions, 1872-1898 in Modern Asian Studies 2022 https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X21000366
  2. Early Years of East India Company rule in Chittagong: Violence, waste and settlement c.1760-1790 in The Indian Economic and Social History Review 2018 https://doi.org/10.1177/0019464618760449

Book Chapters

  1. Captive Transactions: Measures of Violence in the Northeastern Frontier of British India (1872–1919) in Saurabh Dube and Ishita Banerjee, edited The Routledge Handbook of Subalterns across History, Routledge 2025   https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003441434-20/captive-transactions-anandaroop-sen?context=ubx&refId=914b18ce-937d-4d44-894f-ab9858bb25a9
  2. The Law of Emptiness: Episodes from Lushai and Chin Hills (1890-98) in Neeladri Bhattacharya and Joy L K Pachau edited Landscape, Culture and Belonging: Writing the History of Northeast India, Cambridge University Press 2019 https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/landscape-culture-and-belonging/law-of-emptiness-episodes-from-lushai-and-chin-hills-189098/18FDFF4CCAE002E6435AA0482F72A2D8

Review Essays

  1. J Sai Deepak’s India that is Bharat: Coloniality, Civilisation, Constitution. Bloomsbury 2021 in Social Dynamics: A Journal of African Studies 2023 https://doi.org/10.1080/02533952.2023.2236899; republished with a brief introduction in George Hull edited Intellectual Decolonisation: Critical Perspectives Routledge 2024 https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003517849-13/decoloniality-right-wing-nationalism-india-case-sai-deepak-anandaroop-sen
  2. Genealogies of Exception: Writing Histories of Northeast India in History Compass 2022 https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12710

Book Reviews

  • Thomas Simpson, The Frontier in British India: Space, Science, and Power in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021, 298 pp. The Indian Economic & Social History Review 2023 https://doi.org/10.1177/00194646231170459

Media