“Littoral Marginality”

The word “margin” has many meanings. This article considers geographical, gendered, and occupational marginalities and their intersection in deltaic Bengal, theorizing the idea of “littoral marginalities.” The East India Company extended its influence via trade; hence, with time the ports of Bengal grew important. This article draws support from land revenue maps, oral history, and institutional archives to contextualize the growth of sexual economies around the port of Canning, once situated in the geographical margins of the Sundarbans, India, the world's only mangrove tiger land. Thus, it examines how the history of littoral sexual culture, nourished by far-flung maritime trade routes related to the empire's tendency to generate revenue on its “wasteland” frontiers. But contempt for the sex workers’ trade—their use of their bodies to satisfy the sailors of the empire—has led to them being mostly erased from memory with the passage of time.