The British Historical Context and Petitioning in Colonial India

The British Historical Context and Petitioning in Colonial India
Author: Siddiqi Majid (Prof.)
Publisher: Aakar Books
Total Pages: 44
Release: 2005
Genre: History
ISBN: 9788187879503

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Majid Siddiqi Is Professor Of Modern Indian History In The Centre For Historical Studies, School Of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

Petitions in Social History

Petitions in Social History
Author: Lex Heerma van Voss
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2002-01-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521013222

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This book looks at petitions over the last five centuries to reconstruct the lives and opinions of 'humble' petitioners. Since Pharaonic times, governments have allowed their subjects to voice opinions in the form of petitions, which have demanded a favour or the redressment of an injustice. To be effective, a petition had to mention the request, usually a motivation and always the name or names of the petitioners. As a result, grievances of ordinary people which were not written down anywhere else are now stored safely in the archives of the authorities to which the petitions were addressed. The petitions considered in this book, which come from all over the globe, offer rich and valuable sources for social historians.

Ideology and Empire in Eighteenth-Century India

Ideology and Empire in Eighteenth-Century India
Author: Robert Travers
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 16
Release: 2007-04-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 1139464167

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Robert Travers' analysis of British conquests in late eighteenth-century India shows how new ideas were formulated about the construction of empire. After the British East India Company conquered the vast province of Bengal, Britons confronted the apparent anomaly of a European trading company acting as an Indian ruler. Responding to a prolonged crisis of imperial legitimacy, British officials in Bengal tried to build their authority on the basis of an 'ancient constitution', supposedly discovered among the remnants of the declining Mughal Empire. In the search for an indigenous constitution, British political concepts were redeployed and redefined on the Indian frontier of empire, while stereotypes about 'oriental despotism' were challenged by the encounter with sophisticated Indian state forms. This highly original book uncovers a forgotten style of imperial state-building based on constitutional restoration, and in the process opens up new points of connection between British, imperial and South Asian history.

Contentious Traditions

Contentious Traditions
Author: Lata Mani
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2023-09-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0520921151

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Contentious Traditions analyzes the debate on sati, or widow burning, in colonial India. Though the prohibition of widow burning in 1829 was heralded as a key step forward for women's emancipation in modern India, Lata Mani argues that the women who were burned were marginal to the debate and that the controversy was over definitions of Hindu tradition, the place of ritual in religious worship, the civilizing missions of colonialism and evangelism, and the proper role of the colonial state. Mani radically revises colonialist as well as nationalist historiography on the social reform of women's status in the colonial period and clarifies the complex and contradictory character of missionary writings on India. The history of widow burning is one of paradox. While the chief players in the debate argued over the religious basis of sati and the fine points of scriptural interpretation, the testimonials of women at the funeral pyres consistently addressed the material hardships and societal expectations attached to widowhood. And although historiography has traditionally emphasized the colonial horror of sati, a fascinated ambivalence toward the practice suffused official discussions. The debate normalized the violence of sati and supported the misconception that it was a voluntary act of wifely devotion. Mani brilliantly illustrates how situated feminism and discourse analysis compel a rewriting of history, thus destabilizing the ways we are accustomed to look at women and men, at "tradition," custom, and modernity.

From Hierarchy to Ethnicity

From Hierarchy to Ethnicity
Author: Alexander Lee
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2020-02-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108489907

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From Hierarchy to Ethnicity discusses the origins of politicized caste identities in twentieth-century India, and how they evolved over time.

The British in India

The British in India
Author: David Gilmour
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 641
Release: 2018-11-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 0374116857

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An immersive portrait of the lives of the British in India, from the seventeenth century to Independence Who of the British went to India, and why? We know about Kipling and Forster, Orwell and Scott, but what of the youthful forestry official, the enterprising boxwallah, the fervid missionary? What motivated them to travel halfway around the globe, what lives did they lead when they got there, and what did they think about it all? Full of spirited, illuminating anecdotes drawn from long-forgotten memoirs, correspondence, and government documents, The British in India weaves a rich tapestry of the everyday experiences of the Britons who found themselves in “the jewel in the crown” of the British Empire. David Gilmour captures the substance and texture of their work, home, and social lives, and illustrates how these transformed across the several centuries of British presence and rule in the subcontinent, from the East India Company’s first trading station in 1615 to the twilight of the Raj and Partition and Independence in 1947. He takes us through remote hill stations, bustling coastal ports, opulent palaces, regimented cantonments, and dense jungles, revealing the country as seen through British eyes, and wittily reveling in all the particular concerns and contradictions that were a consequence of that limited perspective. The British in India is a breathtaking accomplishment, a vivid and balanced history written with brio, elegance, and erudition.

Empire of Guns

Empire of Guns
Author: Priya Satia
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 569
Release: 2018-04-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 0735221871

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NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2018 BY THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE AND SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE By a prize-winning young historian, an authoritative work that reframes the Industrial Revolution, the expansion of British empire, and emergence of industrial capitalism by presenting them as inextricable from the gun trade "A fascinating and important glimpse into how violence fueled the industrial revolution, Priya Satia's book stuns with deep scholarship and sparkling prose."--Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies We have long understood the Industrial Revolution as a triumphant story of innovation and technology. Empire of Guns, a rich and ambitious new book by award-winning historian Priya Satia, upends this conventional wisdom by placing war and Britain's prosperous gun trade at the heart of the Industrial Revolution and the state's imperial expansion. Satia brings to life this bustling industrial society with the story of a scandal: Samuel Galton of Birmingham, one of Britain's most prominent gunmakers, has been condemned by his fellow Quakers, who argue that his profession violates the society's pacifist principles. In his fervent self-defense, Galton argues that the state's heavy reliance on industry for all of its war needs means that every member of the British industrial economy is implicated in Britain's near-constant state of war. Empire of Guns uses the story of Galton and the gun trade, from Birmingham to the outermost edges of the British empire, to illuminate the nation's emergence as a global superpower, the roots of the state's role in economic development, and the origins of our era's debates about gun control and the "military-industrial complex" -- that thorny partnership of government, the economy, and the military. Through Satia's eyes, we acquire a radically new understanding of this critical historical moment and all that followed from it. Sweeping in its scope and entirely original in its approach, Empire of Guns is a masterful new work of history -- a rigorous historical argument with a human story at its heart.

Ironies of Colonial Governance

Ironies of Colonial Governance
Author: James Jaffe
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 632
Release: 2015-05-21
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1316300080

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The Indian village council, or panchayat, has long held an iconic place in India. Ironies of Colonial Governance traces the history of that ideal and the attempts to adapt it to colonial governance. Beginning with an in-depth analysis of British attempts to introduce a system of panchayat governance during the early nineteenth century, it analyses the legacies of these actions within the structures of later colonial administrations as well as the early nationalist movement. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which the ideologies of panchayat governance evolved during this period and to the transnational exchange and circulation of panchayat ideologies.

Gentlemanly Terrorists

Gentlemanly Terrorists
Author: Durba Ghosh
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2017-07-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107186668

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Durba Ghosh uncovers the critical place of revolutionary terrorism in the colonial and postcolonial history of modern India.

Ironies of Colonial Governance

Ironies of Colonial Governance
Author: James Jaffe
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 335
Release: 2015-05-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107087929

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An in-depth study of the international circulation of ideas and practices of law and governance in colonial India.