Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire
C.A. Bayly
ISBN: 0521250927
Publication date: March 1988
The past twenty years have seen
a proliferation of specialist scholarship on the period
of India's trasition to colonialism. This volume provides
a synthesis of some of the most important themes to emerge
from recent work and seeks in particular to reassess
the role of Indians in the politics and economics of
early colonialism. It discusses new views of the 'decline
of the Moghuls' and the role of the Indian capitalists
in the expansion of the English East Indian Company's
trade and urban settlements. Professor Bayly considers
the reasons for the inability of indigenous states to
withstand the British, but also highlights the relative
failure of the Company to transform India into a quiescent
and profitable colony. Later chapters deal with changes
in India's ecology, social organisation and ideologies
in the nineteenth century, and analyse the nature of
Indian resistance to colonialism, including the rebellion
of 1857.
A New Imperial History: Culture, Identity and Modernity
in Britain and the Empire, 1660-1840
Edited by Kathleen Wilson
ISBN: 0521810272
Publication date: May 2004
This pioneering collection of
essays charts an exciting new field in British studies,
'the new imperial history'. Leading scholars from history,
literature and cultural studies tackle problems of identity,
modernity and difference in eighteenth-century Britain
and the empire. They examine, from interdisciplinary
perspectives, the reciprocal influences of empire and
culture, the movements of peoples, practices and ideas
effected by slavery, diaspora and British dominance,
and ways in which subaltern, non-western and non-elite
people shaped British power and knowledge. The essays
move through Britain, America, India, Africa and the
South Pacific in testament to the networks of people,
commodities and entangled pasts forged by Britain's imperial
adventures. Based on ground-breaking research, these
analyses of the imperial dimensions of British culture
and identities in global contexts will challenge the
notion that empire was something that happened 'out there',
and they demonstrate its long-lasting implications for
British identity and everyday life.
Ideologies of the Raj
Thomas Metcalf
ISBN: 0521589371
Publication date: February 1997
Ideologies of the Raj examines
how the British sought to justify their rule over India.
The author argues that two divergent strategies were
devised to legitimate their authority: the one defined
characteristics which the Indians shared with the British
themselves, while the other emphasised qualities of enduring
'difference'. In the end, however, the differences predominated
in the colonial view of India. Since the British constructed
few explicit ideologies of empire, the author explores
the workings of the Raj through the study of its underlying
assumptions as revealed in policies and writings. Students
of modern India and the British Empire will find Thomas
Metcalf's book relevant and accessible.
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