Provincializing the Periphery: Amalendu Guha's Assam as a Micro-Critique of Wallerstein's World-System – A Theoretical and Empirical Refinement

This paper studies the Nested Dependency Model to Amalendu Guha's archived document of Assam colonial revenue and production. It makes Assam one of the main examples, which can be used to reconsider the concept of the periphery presented by Wallerstein, in the Indian context. While WST explains global inequality through the hierarchical relationship between the Core, Semi-Periphery, and Periphery, it tends to obscure the complex mechanisms of exploitation operating within postcolonial nation-states. Guha's study of Assam as a "subordinated internal colony" provides an empirical counterpoint, revealing how colonial and national elites reproduced the very logic of dependency that WST attributes to the global level. Drawing on historical evidence such as revenue remittance, trade monopolies, price manipulation, and racialized labour segmentation, the paper argues that Assam exemplifies a "core-within-the-periphery" structure where the national core (Calcutta/Delhi) assumes the role of a secondary extractor. Integrating these perspectives, the paper formulates the Nested Dependency Model, which explains regional underdevelopment as a result of double dependency: as indirect subordination to the global core through world-market demands, and direct subordination to the national core through internal administrative and merchant controls. This framework reveals that semi- peripheral states like India sustain their intermediate global position by replicating patterns of extraction internally. The study further highlights how economic dependency intertwines with ethnic and cultural hierarchies, producing a coloniality of power that continues to shape identity politics and insurgent movements in the Northeast. By provincializing Wallerstein through Guha's micro-history, the paper offers a refined understanding of uneven development that situates regional exploitation as a systemic and necessary feature of both global and national capitalism. It is demonstrated in the paper that the work on Assam by Guha demonstrates how subnational areas internalise global dependency processes, provincializing the periphery itself