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This book situates women at the centre of the practices and policies of British imperialism. Rebutting interpretations that have marginalised women in the empire, the book demonstrates that women were crucial to establishing and sustaining the British Raj in India from the 'High Noon' of imperialism in the late nineteenth century through to Indian independence in 1947. Using three separate modes of engagement with imperialism: domesticity, violence and race, it demonstrates the varied ways in which British women, particularly the wives of imperial officials, created a role for themselves. From the late nineteenth century, Anglo-Indians constructed an idea of family and marriage that was, both literally and metaphorically, the foundation for British imperialism in India. Although imperial marriage was very modern in its emphasis on companionship and partnership, it also incorporated more traditional ideas about husbands, wives and families. The politicized imperial home stood in sharp contrast to the ideal of middle-class British domesticity that had developed from the late-eighteenth century onwards in the metropole. Relationships with Indian servants, created and maintained primarily by women, were a complex mixture of intimacy and trust counterbalanced by feelings of fear and suspicion. For Anglo-Indians, the Mutiny served as a constant reminder of the tenuous nature of imperialism in India. The relationship between Anglo-Indian and Indian women was complex coloured by expectations about femininity and women's role in the empire. Indian men may have derided Anglo-Indian women as 'brainless memsahibs', but the British government similarly scorned their contribution to empire.
The book shows how people have come to approach the writing of imperial histories in the early twenty-first century. It explores the social and political contexts that informed the genesis and development of the Studies in Imperialism series, and the conceptual links it has sought to forge between empire and metropolitan culture. The book provides an insightful account of John MacKenzie's 'Orientalism': the problems of 'power' and 'agency'. The 'MacKenziean moment' needs to be read historically, as a product of the 'delayed arrival of decolonising sensibilities', where contemporary popular phenomena and new types of scholarship integrated Britain and its empire. Sexuality made early appearances in the Series through the publication of 'Empire and Sexuality'. MacKenzie's 'Empire of Nature', 'Imperialism and the Natural World', and 'Museums and Empire' convey the impact of his scholarship in the themes of exploration, environment and empire. The historical geographies of British colonialism have enjoyed a prominent place in the Series, and the book explores the ways in which different 'spatial imaginations' have been made possible. Discussions on colonial policing during the depression years, and on immigrant welfare during and after decolonisation, take their cue from MacKenzie's European Empires and the People. The later nineteenth century witnessed the interaction of many diasporas, which in turn produced new modes of communication. By dealing with the idea of the 'Third British Empire' and the role of the Indian press during and after the British Raj, the book repositions British imperial histories within a broader set of global transformations.
community’s leaders redoubled their efforts to organize communal armies, spurred by a desire for revenge. 10 Punjab had played an outsized role in Indian affairs since the nineteenth century, even though it was one of the British raj’s last acquisitions. The British only annexed Punjab in 1849, after overcoming staunch Sikh resistance. Initially, the new territory’s strategic value lay in its geographical
The Scene Changes (1939). According to him, Chatto and Hafiz also conspired with the German Foreign Office and the Italian anarchists to assassinate a number of European kings, presidents and prime ministers in the summer of 1915.4 This was substantiated by reports from the British Department of Criminal Intelligence (DCI) and the Attorney General’s indictment.5 The bomb conspiracy was one of many plans in the so-called Indo-German conspiracy – a series of plots in which Indian nationalists collaborated with the German Foreign Office to overthrow the British Raj
Ireland and India developed over two centuries at many levels. Ireland helped sustain the British Raj in India in a manner out of all proportion to her size. The Anglo-Irish aristocracy was an integral part of the British elite which provided rulers for the Empire; hence, it comes as no surprise to find amongst the viceroys and govemors-general of India, Lord Canning, Lord Mayo, Lord Dufferin and Lord
facilitated British imperialism in India were undertaken by Indians working as soldiers in the army, constables in the police force or servants in the home. Furthermore, not just manual labour, but much of the planning, preparation, and oversight of home and empire were carried out by Indians. Indians were both the brains and the brawn of the British Raj and the Anglo-Indian home. What
moment when women in the metropole were demanding and attaining recognition as citizens is perfectly congruent with Anglo-Indian women’s political position in the empire. In the British Raj, Anglo-Indian women’s political power stemmed not from their citizenship in a democratic polity, but from their status as imperial rulers. As the wives of imperial officials and as members of
speculate on Kendal’s ‘love affair’ ‘with India’. 50 Once again, and in ways that echo the work of the play itself, Indian Ink was touted as a love affair, with its sins of commission and omission cast to the side in favour of ‘sexual scandal’ of the most prurient, and hence marketable, kind. The re-domestication of the end of the British Raj in and around the production of
. Benthall and Sime had quite different styles, but they were both preoccupied with their profits. For the imperial officials in Delhi and London the profitabilty of the Calcutta mills was never an important matter. The commentary from Delhi during the crisis years showed the priorities of the British raj. While the Bengal Government ‘thought it would be impossible for th Government
South African Native National Congress clung to the language of imperial citizenship into the early decades of the twentieth century. 4 It may be easy, in retrospect, to condemn these historical actors as out of touch with the zeitgeist of history, but they did not have the luxury of knowing what was to come. This chapter examines the reception of nineteenth-century royal tours to the Cape Colony and the British Raj by