Forestry as Foreign Policy: Anglo-Siamese Relations and the Origins of Britain's Informal Empire in the Teak Forests of Northern Siam, 1883–1925

Itinerario ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 65-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory A. Barton ◽  
Brett M. Bennett
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Tectona Grandis ◽  
British India ◽  
Finite Amount ◽  
Informal Empire ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Vital Component ◽  
The Creation

Nineteenth-century Europeans visiting Southeast and South Asia eulogised teak trees (Tectona grandis) for their value and beauty. Diplomatic diaries, travel memoirs, literary descriptions and geography books for children described the teak as a universal sovereign of the sylvan world, the regal “lord” of the forests. With dwindling supplies of oak in Britain, British elites saw teak as a vital component of the country's global naval supremacy in the nineteenth century. The fear of a dwindling supply of teak during the late eighteenth to the mid nineteenth centuries encouraged the creation of forestry departments and laws in British India that attempted to preserve the finite amount of teak in the sub-continent. Yet the finite ecologies of India and Burma could not supply all the teak required to fuel expanding demand. Britain would have to look beyond its formal empire in Asia to find more teak.

The Center Holds

2020 ◽  
pp. 90-123
Author(s):  
Aaron Sheehan-Dean
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Central Authority ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The U.S

Over the course of the mid-nineteenth-century wars, the dominant powers (Britain, the U.S., Russia, and Qing China) came to espouse a surprisingly similar orientation toward legitimate statehood. While the liberation wars of the late-eighteenth century witnessed the creation of many new republics, by midcentury those republics and the empires that had survived pursued greater central authority. Although sometimes at odds with liberal rhetoric of the age (especially among reforming Republicans in the U.S.), these actors recognized the importance of coercion of violence to maintaining their states. The victory of centralized authority, whether it took the form of empires or republics, reinforced the power of established states and of organized, aggressive defense of that order.

James Mill's ‘The History of British India’ and Utilitarianism as a Rhetoric of Reform

1990 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Majeed
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Cultural Identities ◽  
Jeremy Bentham ◽  
British India ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
History Of ◽  
The French Revolution

This paper is about the emergence of new political idioms in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in Britain, and how this was closely involved with the complexities of British imperial experience in India. In particular, I shall concentrate on the radical rhetoric of Utilitarianism expressed by Jeremy Bentham, and especially by James Mill. This rhetoric was an attack on the revitalized conservatism of the early nineteenth century, which had emerged in response to the threat of the French revolution; but the arena for the struggle between this conservatism and Utilitarianism increasingly became defined in relation to a set of conflicting attitudes towards British involvement in India. These new political languages also involved the formulation of aesthetic attitudes, which were an important component of British views on India. I shall try to show how these attitudes, or what we might call the politics of the imagination, had a lot to do with the defining of cultural identities, with which both political languages were preoccupied.

scholarly journals Colonial Representations of British India: A Description and Analysis of the First Twenty-Four Issues of The Indian Amateur’s Photographic Album

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Macmillan
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Visual Culture ◽  
Literature Survey ◽  
Extensive Literature ◽  
British India ◽  
Current State ◽  
The Creation ◽  
State Of Research ◽  
Colonial Representations

This thesis provides a description and analysis of the first twenty four issues of the Indian Amateur's Photographic Album (IAPA), serially published between 1856 and 1858, in the collection of George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film (GEH). The thesis traces the origins of the publication to the creation of the Bombay Photographic Society, and considers its relationship with European photographic societies and a similar publication in Europe. It contains an extensive literature survey summarizing the current state of research on the IAPA within the framework of colonialist photography in British India: a detailed description of the publication and an analysis of the photographic and written components of the IAPA; and a consideration of the IAPA's contributions to and its role in the visual culture of nineteenth century India. Three appendices accompany the thesis, including an annotated and fully illustrated catalogue of the seventy-two photographs in GEH album.

scholarly journals BRITISH REPRESENTATIVES AND THE SURVEILLANCE OF ITALIAN AFFAIRS, 1860–70*

2008 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 669-687 ◽  
Author(s):  
O. J. WRIGHT
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
British Foreign Policy ◽  
The Creation ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Italian Unification ◽  
Widespread View ◽  
Made In

ABSTRACTDuring the nineteenth century the British consular service was often dismissed as an organization with purely commercial responsibilities. A succession of governments and diplomats insisted upon this notion, despite the fact that at certain times both relied very much on consular officials for information on foreign affairs. This dependence was especially evident in Italy during the decade after 1860, when British leaders had lent their moral and diplomatic support to the creation of the modern Italian state against considerable international opposition. During this period their desire not to see the achievement undone led them to maintain a close watch on Italian affairs. The contribution made in this area by the consular service, and the manner in which it was reorganized in response to Italian unification, show how such a role could take priority over its other functions. Although this state of affairs was no doubt exceptional on account of the remarkable level of British interest in the Unification of Italy, it nonetheless provides a clear demonstration of how the organization could be used under certain circumstances. The extent to which British consuls were used to monitor affairs in post-unification Italy also encourages reflection upon the widespread view that British foreign policy rejected interventionism in favour of isolation from European affairs during the 1860s.

scholarly journals Ethnology and colonial administration in nineteenth-century British India: the question of native crime and criminality

2003 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARK BROWN
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Colonial Administration ◽  
Scientific Theories ◽  
British India ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth

This paper examines the central role of ethnology, the science of race, in the administration of colonial India. This occurred on two levels. First, from the late eighteenth century onwards, proto-scientists and administrators in India engaged with metropolitan theorists through the provision of data on native society and habits. Second, these same agents were continually and reciprocally influenced in the collection and use of such data by the political doctrines and scientific theories that developed over the course of this period. Among the central interests of ethnographer-administrators was the native criminal and this paper uses knowledge developed about native crime and criminality to illustrate the way science became integral to administration in the colonial domain.

scholarly journals Colonial Representations of British India: A Description and Analysis of the First Twenty-Four Issues of The Indian Amateur’s Photographic Album

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Macmillan
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Visual Culture ◽  
Literature Survey ◽  
Extensive Literature ◽  
British India ◽  
Current State ◽  
The Creation ◽  
State Of Research ◽  
Colonial Representations

This thesis provides a description and analysis of the first twenty four issues of the Indian Amateur's Photographic Album (IAPA), serially published between 1856 and 1858, in the collection of George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film (GEH). The thesis traces the origins of the publication to the creation of the Bombay Photographic Society, and considers its relationship with European photographic societies and a similar publication in Europe. It contains an extensive literature survey summarizing the current state of research on the IAPA within the framework of colonialist photography in British India: a detailed description of the publication and an analysis of the photographic and written components of the IAPA; and a consideration of the IAPA's contributions to and its role in the visual culture of nineteenth century India. Three appendices accompany the thesis, including an annotated and fully illustrated catalogue of the seventy-two photographs in GEH album.

Translating the Scribe: Lithographic Print and Vernacularization in Colonial India, 1857–1915

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 281-300
Author(s):  
Amanda Lanzillo
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
North India ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Book Production ◽  
Manuscript Culture ◽  
Arabic Script ◽  
Literary Cultures ◽  
Late Nineteenth

Focusing on the lithographic print revolution in North India, this article analyses the role played by scribes working in Perso-Arabic script in the consolidation of late nineteenth-century vernacular literary cultures. In South Asia, the rise of lithographic printing for Perso-Arabic script languages and the slow shift from classical Persian to vernacular Urdu as a literary register took place roughly contemporaneously. This article interrogates the positionality of scribes within these transitions. Because print in North India relied on lithography, not movable type, scribes remained an important part of book production on the Indian subcontinent through the early twentieth century. It analyses the education and models of employment of late nineteenth-century scribes. New scribal classes emerged during the transition to print and vernacular literary culture, in part due to the intervention of lithographic publishers into scribal education. The patronage of Urdu-language scribal manuals by lithographic printers reveals that scribal education in Urdu was directly informed by the demands of the print economy. Ultimately, using an analysis of scribal manuals, the article contributes to our knowledge of the social positioning of book producers in South Asia and demonstrates the vitality of certain practices associated with manuscript culture in the era of print.

Prerequisites for the reforms of the Russian Empire in the 1860s: a historical analysis

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (10-2) ◽  
pp. 176-184
Author(s):  
Dmitry Nechevin ◽  
Leonard Kolodkin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
The Sixties ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
Political Economic

The article is devoted to the prerequisites of the reforms of the Russian Empire of the sixties of the nineteenth century, their features, contradictions: the imperial status of foreign policy and the lagging behind the countries of Western Europe in special political, economic relations. The authors studied the activities of reformers and the nobility on the peasant question, as well as legitimate conservatism.

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