The Indian Economy and the British Empire in the Company Period: Some additional reflections around an essay by David Washbrook

2017 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 375-398
Author(s):  
CLAUDE MARKOVITS
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
Economic Activity ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
British India ◽  
Indian Economy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Actual Contribution ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
Indian Blood

AbstractTaking as its point of departure David Washbrook's essay ‘The Indian Economy and the British Empire’, this article takes a more detailed look at some episodes in the history of British India in the era of the Company Raj, with a view to placing them within a broader imperial framework, as advocated by Washbrook. The first part of the article examines, through an array of case studies, the actual contribution made by the Company to ‘global’ British expansion, concluding that it invested a lot of (Indian) blood and money in ventures from which it derived little benefit, as in the case of the expeditions to Manila (1762), Ceylon (1795), and Java (1811). It is shown that the Company's interests were ultimately sacrificed to the necessity of maintaining the European balance of power through consideration of the colonial interests of minor European powers such as Portugal or the Netherlands. While the Company saw its interests thus overlooked in the ‘global’ imperial arena, it could not find compensation in increased economic activity in India itself. Although the compulsions of ‘military-fiscalism’ largely explain such an outcome, we should not lose sight of the role of Indian agency in limiting the Company's options, as is shown by a rapid look at the history of both labour and capital markets, which the Company did not succeed in bending completely to its needs.

The Foreign Policy Mechanism of the Union Of South Africa and the Development of its Diplomatic Relations (1910–1948)

2020 ◽  
pp. 74-86
Author(s):  
Alexandra Arkhangelskaya
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
The Political ◽  
Diplomatic Relations ◽  
Economic Evolution ◽  
Local Elite ◽  
History Of

The history of the formation of South Africa as a single state is closely intertwined with events of international scale, which have accordingly influenced the definition and development of the main characteristics of the foreign policy of the emerging state. The Anglo-Boer wars and a number of other political and economic events led to the creation of the Union of South Africa under the protectorate of the British Empire in 1910. The political and economic evolution of the Union of South Africa has some specific features arising from specific historical conditions. The colonization of South Africa took place primarily due to the relocation of Dutch and English people who were mainly engaged in business activities (trade, mining, agriculture, etc.). Connected by many economic and financial threads with the elite of the countries from which the settlers left, the local elite began to develop production in the region at an accelerated pace. South Africa’s favorable climate and natural resources have made it a hub for foreign and local capital throughout the African continent. The geostrategic position is of particular importance for foreign policy in South Africa, which in many ways predetermined a great interest and was one of the fundamental factors of international involvement in the development of the region. The role of Jan Smuts, who served as Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa from 1919 to 1924 and from 1939 to 1948, was particularly prominent in the implementation of the foreign and domestic policy of the Union of South Africa in the focus period of this study. The main purpose of this article is to study the process of forming the mechanisms of the foreign policy of the Union of South Africa and the development of its diplomatic network in the period from 1910 to 1948.

scholarly journals Montenegro as perceived by a British diplomat: The Hugh Rose's report of 1852.

Balcanica ◽  
2002 ◽  
pp. 211-226
Author(s):  
Cedomir Antic
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Crimean War ◽  
East European ◽  
Short Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
European Periphery

The following article deals with the image of Montenegro, a little country from the south-east European periphery, as perceived by a member of the nineteenth century British political elite. The history of this petty entity, less populated than an average English city, became especially important on the eve of the Holly Places Crises (of Palestine, 1853). A single dispute over the Montenegro-Ottoman border threatened to turn into European war, just a year before the Crimean War commenced. In regard the Montenegrin question, the always sensitive European "balance of power" was upset with the appearance of the unexpected alliance between Russia and Austria. The unique interest of the British Empire then started, for a short period of time, to be tied in with this almost unknown principality. The attitude of British diplomacy to Montenegro, image of the principality reconstructed in the Colonel Hugh Rose's report and its sources, could contribute not only to the advance the history of British foreign relations, but also to the development of the history of Montenegro.

scholarly journals Apuntes para una mecánica política del paisaje (Ilustrados con algunas escenas barcelonesas) | Notes on the politics of landscape (Illustrated with a few scenes of Barcelona)

ZARCH ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Ténez Ybern
Keyword(s):  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Recent History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Group ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Dynamic Relationship ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

Si asumimos que el paisaje es el resultado perceptible de la relación dinámica entre un determinado grupo humano y su medio; esa definición que se cuenta entre las de más consenso entre aquellos que dicen hacer paisajes, suscita de inmediato ciertas preguntas: ¿Cuál es el papel de aquel que pretende crear paisajes, si el paisaje es un proceso que se da por si solo? ¿Hasta qué punto incide cambiar el aspecto de un lugar en esa relación entre la gente y su entorno cotidiano?El texto pretende explorar las consecuencias de esas paradójicas preguntas, a partir de una primera hipótesis: la del carácter intrínsecamente político del proyecto del paisaje. De esta hipótesis parte la intención de mostrar la evolución de la reflexión sobre ese papel político del hacer paisajes, en el que el hacedor de paisajes que está siempre situado entre los equilibrios de poder que se establecen entre las instituciones y la gente. A partir de aquí, se analizan algunos momentos clave de la historia de ese paisaje político, donde el “hacedor de paisajes” intenta encontrar su lugar.En el horizonte del texto, aparecen también imágenes de la historia reciente de mi ciudad, a modo de ilustración de lo dicho. If we accept that landscape is the perceptible result of the dynamic relationship process between a specific human group and an environment, this definition, which enjoys the most acceptance among those people who ‘make landscape’, immediately raises certain questions: What is the role of the person who aims to create landscapes, if landscape is a process that takes place on its own? To what point does this affect the relationship between people and their daily setting?This article initially aims to explore the consequences of that paradox through a first hypothesis: the intrinsically political nature of the landscape project. This hypothesis springs from the intention of describing the evolution of the reflection on this political role of making landscape, in which ‘landscape makers’ constantly find themselves affected by the balance of power established between institutions and people. Subsequently, analysis will be conducted on a series of key periods in the history of the political landscape in which landscape makers endeavour to find their place.Pictures of the recent history of my city appear interspersed within the text, in order to illustrate what has been described.

State, Sovereignty, and the People: A Comparison of the “Rule of Law” in China and India

2009 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan K. Ocko ◽  
David Gilmartin
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Social Order ◽  
The Political ◽  
British India ◽  
Fourth Section ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
China And India ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of

This paper uses the concept of the “rule of law” to compare Qing China and British India. Rather than using the rule of law instrumentally, the paper embeds it in the histories of state power and sovereignty in China and India. Three themes, all framed by the rule of law and the rule of man as oppositional yet paradoxically intertwined notions, organize the paper's comparisons: the role of a discourse of law in simultaneously legitimizing and constraining the political authority of the state; the role of law and legal procedures in shaping and defining society; and the role of law in defining an economic and social order based on contract, property, and rights. A fourth section considers the implications of these findings for the historical trajectories of China and India in the twentieth century. Taking law as an instrument of power and an imagined realm that nonetheless also transcended power and operated outside its ambit, the paper seeks to broaden the history of the “rule of law” beyond Euro-America.

A New Shahrazad

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 372-386
Author(s):  
Andrew Amstutz
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Middle East ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Travel Literature ◽  
British India ◽  
World War ◽  
British Imperialism ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Autobiographical Writing ◽  
History Of

Abstract In 1945, Mahmooda Rizvia, a prominent Urdu author from Sindh, published a travel account of her journey across the Arabian Sea from British India to Iraq during World War II. In her travel account, Rizvia conceptualized the declining British Empire as a dynamic space for Muslim renewal that connected India to the Middle East. Moreover, she fashioned a singular autobiographical persona as an Urdu literary pioneer and woman traveler in the Muslim lands of the British Empire. In her writings, Rizvia focused on her distinctive observations of the ocean, the history of the Ottoman Empire, and her home province of Sindh's location as a historical nexus between South Asia and the Middle East. In contrast to the expectations of modesty and de-emphasis on the self in many Muslim women's autobiographical narratives in the colonial era, Rizvia fashioned a pious, yet unapologetically self-promotional, autobiographical persona. In conversation with recent scholarship on Muslim cosmopolitanism, women's autobiographical writing, and travel literature, this article points to the development of an influential project of Muslim cosmopolitanism in late colonial Sindh that blurred the lines between British imperialism, pan-Islamic ambitions, and nationalism during the closing days of World War II.

The Cambridge History of the British Empire. Volume IV: British India, 1497-1858.

1931 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 116
Author(s):  
Arthur Lyon Cross ◽  
H. H. Dodwell
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
British India ◽  
History Of

Body and law in late Anglo-Saxon England

1998 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 209-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Manuscript Production ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Individual ◽  
And Control ◽  
Point Of Departure

This article explores some textual dimensions of what I argue is a crucial moment in the history of the Anglo-Saxon subject. For purposes of temporal triangulation, I would locate this moment between roughly 970 and 1035, though these dates function merely as crude, if potent, signposts: the years 970×973 mark the adoption of the Regularis concordia, the ecclesiastical agreement on the practice of a reformed (and markedly continental) monasticism, and 1035 marks the death of Cnut, the Danish king of England, whose laws encode a change in the understanding of the individual before the law. These dates bracket a rich and chaotic time in England: the apex of the project of reform, a flourishing monastic culture, efflorescence of both Latin and vernacular literatures, remarkable manuscript production, but also the renewal of the Viking wars that seemed at times to be signs of the apocalypse and that ultimately would put a Dane on the throne of England. These dates point to two powerful and continuing sets of interests in late Anglo-Saxon England, ecclesiastical and secular, monastic and royal, whose relationships were never simple. This exploration of the subject in Anglo-Saxon England as it is illuminated by the law draws on texts associated with each of these interests and argues their interconnection. Its point of departure will be the body – the way it is configured, regarded, regulated and read in late Anglo-Saxon England. It focuses in particular on the use to which the body is put in juridical discourse: both the increasing role of the body in schemes of inquiry and of punishment and the ways in which the body comes to be used to know and control the subject.

scholarly journals Regula cuiusdam ad uirgines - audio files

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albrecht Diem ◽  
Matthieu van der Meer
Keyword(s):  
Critical Edition ◽  
Ideal Point ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Read Aloud ◽  
History Of ◽  
Audio Files ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Eternal Salvation ◽  
Point Of Departure

<div>The seventh-century 'Regula cuiusdam ad uirgines' (Someone’s Rule for Virgins), which was most likely written by Jonas of Bobbio, the hagiographer of the Irish monk Columbanus, forms an ideal point of departure for writing a new history of the emergence of Western monasticism understood as a history of the individual and collective attempt to pursue eternal salvation.<br>The book provides a critical edition and translation of the 'Regula cuiusdam ad uirgines' and a roadmap for such a new history revolving around various aspects of monastic discipline, such as the agency of the community, the role of enclosure, authority and obedience, space and boundaries, confession and penance, sleep and silence, excommunication and expulsion.<br></div><div><br></div><div>Various monastic rules contain provisions on being read aloud to the community or to monks and nuns who were in the process of entering the monastery. In order to give an impression how the 'Regula cuiusdam ad uirgines' may have sounded, Albrecht Diem has provided an audio file (read by Matthieu van der Meer).</div>

Scientific Advice for British India: Imperial Perceptions and Administrative Goals, 1898—1923

1975 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 343-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roy M. MacLeod
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Scientific Activity ◽  
The Political ◽  
British India ◽  
Commercial Exploitation ◽  
Scientific Institutions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Economic

In recent years there has been a continuing effort to place the history of scientific activity in Europe firmly in the political, economic and social contexts in which ideas and institutions have developed. Hitherto, however, comparatively little attention has been paid to the development of scientific institutions in the European colonial empires, or to the role of scientific activity in the commercial exploitation, civil government, or political development of individual countries.

scholarly journals Ancient Armenia: Evidence and Models

Electrum ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 13-20
Author(s):  
Giusto Traina
Keyword(s):  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Methodological Issues ◽  
History Of

The history of the kingdom of Greater Armenia (after 188 BCE–428 CE) has been generally interpreted from two different standpoints, an ‘inner’ and an ‘outer’ one. Greater Armenia as a marginal entity or a sidekick of Rome during the endless war with Iran, and even Iranian scholars neglected or diminished the role of Armenia in the balance of power. This paper discussed some methodological issues.

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