Place · tea-trade port city · India
Dibrugarh
The upper Assam port city on the Brahmaputra in Dibrugarh district, 450 kilometres from Guwahati — the commercial centre of the upper Assam tea belt. The town's name derives from the Dibru river confluence. Dibrugarh was founded by the British as a tea-trade centre in the 1820s after Robert Bruce discovered Assam tea growing wild on the Patkai hills in 1823; the Assam Company (first commercial tea estate 1839) established its headquarters here. The 1962 and 1988 floods devastated the central city; the current embankment was built after 1988. Modern Dibrugarh anchors the Assam oil and tea industries — the Oil India Limited headquarters, the Assam Medical College (1947, the oldest medical college in Northeast India) and the Dibrugarh University (1965) are the chief institutions. Air connectivity to the rest of India runs through Mohanbari airport.
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 27.470, 94.910
Connections (1)
- Patronage networkAssam tea, Jorhat
Dibrugarh exists because of tea. The town is the head of steam navigation on the Brahmaputra and the point at which the plantations' chests were loaded for Calcutta, and its layout — wharf, rail head, planters' club, hospital — is plantation infrastructure. The indentured recruitment from Chotanagpur that staffed the gardens is why Upper Assam's demography looks as it does.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Dibrugarh”. Archaeological Survey of India and State Archaeology monument records, and the standard regional literature.
Open Dibrugarh in the repository →