Hill station

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Last edited August 24, 2023


File:Shimla Southern Side of Ridge.JPG
Shimla, a city founded as a hill station.

A hill station is a town located at a higher elevation than the nearby plain or valley. The term was used mostly in colonial Asia (particularly in India), but also in Africa (albeit rarely), for towns founded by European colonialists as refuges from the summer heat and, as Dale Kennedy observes about the Indian context, "the hill station ... was seen as an exclusive British preserve: here it was possible to render the Indian into an outsider".[1][2] In India, which has the largest number of hill stations, most are situated at an altitude of approximately Template:Convert.

History

Nandi Hills is a hill station in Karnataka, India which was developed by the Ganga Dynasty in 11th century.[3][4] It was also used by Tipu Sultan (1751 - 1799) as a summer retreat.[5]

Hill stations in British India were established for a variety of reasons. One of the first reasons in the early 1800s, was for the place to act as a sanitorium for the ailing family members of British officials.[6] After the rebellion of 1857, the British "sought further distance from what they saw as a disease-ridden land by [escaping] to the Himalayas in the north". Other factors included anxieties about the dangers of life in India, among them "fear of degeneration brought on by too long residence in a debilitating land". The hill stations were meant to reproduce the home country, illustrated in Lord Lytton's statement about Ootacamund in the 1870s as having "such beautiful English rain, such delicious English mud."[7] Shimla was officially made the "summer capital of India" in the 1860s and hill stations "served as vital centres of political and military power, especially after the 1857 revolt."[8][9]

As noted by Indian historian Vinay Lal, hill stations in India also served "as spaces for the colonial structuring of a segregational and ontological divide between Indians and Europeans, and as institutional sites of imperial power."[10][11][12][13][14][15][16] [17][18] William Dalrymple wrote that "The viceroy was the spider at the heart of Simla's web: From his chambers in Viceregal Lodge, he pulled the strings of an empire that stretched from Rangoon in the east to Aden in the west."[19] Meanwhile Judith T Kenny observed that "the hill station as a landscape type tied to nineteenth-century discourses of imperialism and climate. Both discourses serve as evidence of a belief in racial difference and, thereby, the imperial hill station reflected and reinforced a framework of meaning that influenced European views of the non-western world in general."[20] The historian of Himalayan cultures Shekhar Pathak speaking about the development of Hill Stations like Mussoorie noted that “the needs of this (European) elite created colonies in Dehradun of Indians to cater to them."[21] This "exclusive, clean, and secure social space – known as an enclave – for white Europeans ... evolved to become the seats of government and foci of elite social activity", and created racial distinctions which perpetuated British colonial power and oppression as Nandini Bhattacharya notes.[22][23] Dale Kennedy observed that "the hill station, then, was seen as an exclusive British preserve: here it was possible to render the Indian into an outsider".[1]

Kennedy, following Monika Bührlein, identifies three stages in the evolution of hill stations in India: high refuge, high refuge to hill station, and hill station to town. The first settlements started in the 1820s, primarily as sanitoria. In the 1840s and 1850s, there was a wave of new hill stations, with the main impetus being "places to rest and recuperate from the arduous life on the plains". In the second half of the 19th century, there was a period of consolidation with few new hill stations. In the final phase, "hill stations reached their zenith in the late nineteenth century. The political importance of the official stations was underscored by the inauguration of large and costly public-building projects."[8]Template:Rp

List of hill stations

Template:Expand list Most hill stations, listed by region:

Africa

Madagascar

File:Antsirabe - rue principale02.JPG
Antsirabe, Madagascar

Morocco

File:Ifrane.jpg
Ifrane, Morocco.

Nigeria

Uganda

Americas

Template:ClarifyTemplate:Citation needed

Brazil

Costa Rica

United States

Asia

Bangladesh

File:SajekSight 08.jpg
Sajek Valley, Rangamati Hill District, Bangladesh, the most popular hill station and summer destination in Bangladesh.

Cambodia

File:Mairie du Bokor.jpg
Former residence of King Sisowath Monivong at Phnom Bokor

China

Cyprus

File:Platres.jpg
Platres, Cyprus

Hong Kong

India

Template:For Hundreds of hill stations are located in India. Nandi Hills is a hill station in Karnataka, India which was developed by Ganga Dynasty in 11th century.[24][25] It was also used by Tipu Sultan (1751 - 1799) as a summer retreat.[26] The most popular hill stations in India include:

File:St. Joseph's College, Nainital from Tiffin Top (Dorothy's Seat).jpg
Nainital, Uttarakhand, India
File:Teagardensvalley.jpg
Tea plantations in Darjeeling, West Bengal, India
File:Hill View (Munnar - Kerala).jpg
Hill View (Munnar - Kerala)

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Indonesia

File:Puncak West Java.jpg
Puncak, West Java, Indonesia

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Iraq

File:Amedy.jpg
Amadiya in northern Iraq.

Israel

Japan

File:Street in Karuizawa.jpg
Karuizawa in Nagano, Japan

Jordan

Malaysia

Template:Main

File:Tea plantations 3, Pahang, Malaysia.jpg
Cameron Highlands, Malaysia.

Myanmar

Template:See also

Nepal

File:Namche Bazaar from above, Nepal.jpg
Village of Namche Bazaar in Nepal

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Pakistan

File:Sunset in hills - Holy Trinity Church, Murree.jpg
Murree, a popular hill station in Pakistan

Template:Main Template:Col-float Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 

Punjab

Template:Col-float-break Sindh

Balochistan

Gilgit Baltistan

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Philippines

File:Baguio panorama.jpg
Baguio, Philippines

Sri Lanka

Template:See also

File:Sri Lanka Teeplantage.jpg
Nuwara Eliya, Sri Lanka

Syria

File:Bloudan Jerjanieh.jpg
Bloudan, Syria

Vietnam

File:Xuan Huong Lake 11.jpg
Da Lat, Vietnam

Oceania

Australia

File:Mount Macedon.jpg
Mount Macedon, Victoria
File:Bardon sunrise.jpg
Bardon, Queensland
Victoria
South Australia
Queensland
Western Australia
New South Wales

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Kennedy, Dane. The Magic Mountains: Hill Stations and the British Raj. Berkeley: University of California Press, c1996 1996. | http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft396nb1sf/
  2. ↑ Hill Stations: Pinnacles of the Raj. southasia.ucla.edu.
  3. ↑ Plans include beautification of the entire hill station to attract tourists(26 February 2021).
  4. ↑ Āgama Aura Tripiṭaka, Eka Anuśilana: Language and Literature{{#if:|, {{{last}}}}
  5. ↑ India 2001: Reference Encyclopedia{{#if:Myer|, Myer}. South Asia Publications(1995). ISBN 978-0-945921-42-4
  6. ↑ The Magic Mountains: Hill Stations and the britishBritishRaj{{#if:|, {{{last}}}}. University of California Press(1996). ISBN 978-0-520-20188-0
  7. ↑ A Concise History of India{{#if:|, {{{last}}}}. Cambridge University Press(2002). ISBN 978-0-521-63974-3
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 The Magic Mountains: Hill Stations and the British Raj{{#if:|, {{{last}}}}. University of California Press(1996)
  9. ↑ Shimla Then and Now{{#if:|, {{{last}}}}. Indus Publishing(1996). ISBN 978-81-7387-046-0
  10. ↑ 'But what about the railways ...?' The myth of Britain's gifts to India. the Guardian(March 8, 2017).
  11. ↑ Racism and stereotypes in colonial India's 'Instagram'. BBC News(30 September 2018).
  12. ↑ Segregation and the Social Relations of Place, Bombay, 1890–1910.
  13. ↑ Login.
  14. ↑ India's initial coronavirus response carried echoes of the colonial era, Das, Shinjini. The Conversation.
  15. ↑ The Prophylaxis of Malaria. Br Med J({Template:Date).
  16. ↑ Hill Stations: Pinnacles of the Raj.
  17. ↑ Climates & Constitutions: Health, Race, Environment and British Imperialism in India, 1600-1850{{#if:|, {{{last}}}}. Oxford University Press(1999). ISBN 978-0-19-564657-3
  18. ↑ Login.
  19. ↑ India's Green and Pleasant Land. The Washington Post(1999-09-26).
  20. ↑ Climate, Race, and Imperial Authority: The Symbolic Landscape of the British Hill Station in India | Judith T. Kenny | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-8306.1995.tb01821.x
  21. ↑ How not to develop a hill station.
  22. ↑ Contagion and Enclaves: Tropical Medicine in Colonial India | Nandini Bhattacharya | https://liverpool.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.5949/UPO9781846317835/upso-9781846318290-chapter-2
  23. ↑ Bhattacharya N. (2013). Leisure, economy and colonial urbanism: Darjeeling, 1835-1930. Urban history, 40(3), 442–461. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0963926813000394
  24. ↑ Plans include beautification of the entire hill station to attract tourists(26 February 2021).
  25. ↑ Āgama Aura Tripiṭaka, Eka Anuśilana: Language and Literature{{#if:|, {{{last}}}}
  26. ↑ India 2001: Reference Encyclopedia - Volume 1{{#if:|, {{{last}}}}(1995)
  27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 27.2 27.3 Second Homes and Leisure: New perspectives on a forgotten relationship{{#if:|, {{{last}}}}. Routledge(2 Oct 2017). ISBN 9781317400264

Bibliography

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