Not a Partnership in Pepper, Coffee, Calico, or Tobacco

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Onur Ulas Ince
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
Economic Aspects ◽  
Commercial Society ◽  
Liberal Conception ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Anglo Indian

This chapter examines Edmund Burke’s arguments on the Anglo-Indian trade and the British rule in Bengal. In contrast to the culturalist interpretations of Burke’s position on the British Empire, the chapter brings Burke’s political economic writings to bear on his efforts to maintain the empire in India while expunging its illiberal economic aspects. Behind Burke’s attempt to reform the Indian administration and impeach Warren Hastings, it is argued, was the East India Company’s systematic violation of the liberal economic principles that defined the British character as a commercial society. Burke openly castigated the illiberal extractive policies being used in India and sequestered them from the essentially liberal conception of British commercial society. His condemnation of Company policies in India can therefore be understood as an attempt to shore up the increasingly blurred distinctions between civilized commerce and unabashed pillage, between enlightened self-interest and unbridled rapacity, and between “imperial commerce” and “imperious commerce.”

scholarly journals Socio-Religious and Political Changes in Punjab during the Second Half of Nineteenth Century

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Karanbir Singh
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Instability ◽  
The State ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Best Interests ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Precautionary Measures ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Anglo Indian

<div><p><em>After the death of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the East India Company defeated the Khalsa Army of Lahore Darbar in two Anglo-Sikh Wars. Being astute political masters, the British felt the lurking fear of simmering discontent among the Punjabis against their rule. For safeguarding the logistics of administration, efficacious precautionary measures were undertaken by them to satisfy the grievances of certain sections of the society so that British rule would face lesser political instability and enmity of the natives. After 1857, the British conducted a thorough study of ethnographic, fiscal, geographical, political, social and religious conditions of Punjab and oriented their administrative policies to suit the best interests of the Empire.  Far-reaching political, economic and social changes were introduced by the British to strengthen their hold over all branches of administration. A new administrative hierarchy, composed of Anglo-Indian elements was firmly established and it embraced every activity of the state.  </em></p></div>

Each is to count for one and none for more than one: Predictors of support for economic redistribution

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chien-An Lin ◽  
Timothy Charles Bates
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Treat All ◽  
Political Economic

While theory predicts fairness motivates support for redistribution, tests have yielded near-zero effects. Here we propose the relevant evolved fairness motive operates within the community sharing relation, experienced as a unity motive to treat “all as one and none as more than one”. Study 1 (N = 403) supported this model, with a moderate (𝛽 = .15 CI[.06, .23]) significant effect of a communal fairness measure on support for redistribution, incremental to effects of compassion, envy, and self-interest. Study 2 (N=402) replicated with larger effect (𝛽 = .25 CI[.17, .33]). As distribution involves means as well as ends, we tested support for redistribution by coercive means. In both study 1 and 2, support for coercion was predicted by “ends justify the means” intuitions (instrumental harm: 𝛽 = .21 CI[.12, .31)] and .16 CI[.08, .25]). Communal fairness also predicted willingness to coerce (𝛽 = .15 CI[.05 .24] and .32 CI[.23 .41]). These five psychological motives accounted for 45% of support for redistribution, suggesting considerable value for political, economic, evolutionary, and ethical theory.

The Boy-King, the Rebel Queen and the British Empire

2020 ◽  
pp. 171-206
Author(s):  
Priya Atwal
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
Active Power ◽  
Power Struggles ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Imperial Politics ◽  
The Impact

This chapter focuses on the discursive and active power struggles at the heart of the Sikh Empire in the precarious years between the First Anglo-Sikh Wars and the final subjection of Punjabi independence to British rule in March 1849. Building on the previous chapter, it brings to light the gendered tensions at the centre of both British and Punjabi challenges posed to the leadership of Maharani Jind Kaur, mother and regent for the infant Maharajah Duleep Singh. It unravels the ramifications of direct colonial interference into the Lahore government imposed by the Resident, Henry Montgomery Lawrence; the impact of which compounded and exacerbated internal problems that had already weakened the ruling dynasty’s grip on power following the succession struggle between Maharani Chand Kaur and Prince Sher Singh. It provides a new series of arguments about the cultural and imperial politics that contributed to the destabilization of the ruling dynasty’s power and the eventual fall of the kingdom.

An Inheritance of Loss: The king's debt, women's wills, and public charity in princely Mysore

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-39
Author(s):  
JANAKI NAIR
Keyword(s):  
Customary Law ◽  
Domestic Sphere ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Legal Regimes ◽  
The Status ◽  
Princely State ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Anglo Indian

Abstract In 1845, the banker Damodar Dass of Srirangapatna loaned a large sum of money to Maharaja Krishnaraja Wodeyar III of Mysore. For the next seven decades, until the unpaid debt was turned into public charity, the multiple claims of Damodar Dass's heirs to this inheritance led the colonial state and the Mysore government (especially after 1881) to form a substantial archive. Occupying the foreground of this archive were the legal dilemmas posed by the transition from direct to indirect British rule in Mysore, involving the fate of kingship, debt, reciprocality, and masculine honour. Other legal dilemmas concerned the relationship between scriptural and customary law and, in particular, the portability of customary law between regions that were unevenly exposed to Anglo-Indian legal regimes. The claims also reveal the important ways in which a new moral order was being shaped as the relationship between the colonial regime and the princely state (or later its bureaucracy) was defined and the status of four female heirs was called into question. Additionally, the archive has the potential to disturb the univocality of this statist discourse. A third narrative may be uncovered that involves the ‘small voices of history’. What hopes did this era of profound transformation hold for women of the non-domestic sphere? What, moreover, can the women in these archives be heard to say about the truth of their times?

Humane Markets

2019 ◽  
pp. 293-315
Author(s):  
James R. Otteson
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Institutions ◽  
Moral Concern ◽  
Commercial Society ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Political Economic

Markets are often criticized for being amoral, if not immoral. The core of the “political economy” that arose in the eighteenth century, however, envisioned the exchanges that take place in commercial society as neither amoral nor immoral but indeed deeply humane. The claim of the early political economists was that transactions in markets fulfilled two separate but related moral mandates: they lead to increasing prosperity, which addressed their primary “economic” concern of raising the estates of the poor; and they model proper relations among people, which addressed their primary “moral” concern of granting a respect to all, including the least among us. They attempted to capture a vision of human dignity within political-economic institutions that enabled people to improve their stations. Their arguments thus did not bracket out judgments of value: they integrated judgments of value into their foundations and built their political economy on that basis.

IRELAND, COLONIAL SCIENCE, AND THE GEOGRAPHICAL CONSTRUCTION OF BRITISH RULE IN INDIA, c. 1820–1870

2009 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 963-987 ◽  
Author(s):  
BARRY CROSBIE
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Scientific Practice ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Irish People ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Global Exchange ◽  
Geological Research ◽  
Colonial Science

ABSTRACTThis article examines the role that Ireland and Irish people played in the geographical construction of British colonial rule in India during the nineteenth century. It argues that as an important sub-imperial centre, Ireland not only supplied the empire with key personnel, but also functioned as an important reference point for scientific practice, new legislation, and systems of government. Occupying integral roles within the information systems of the colonial state, Irish people provided much of the intellectual capital around which British rule in India was constructed. These individuals were part of nineteenth-century Irish professional personnel networks that viewed the empire as a legitimate sphere for work and as an arena in which they could prosper. Through involvement and deployment of expertise in areas such as surveying and geological research in India, Irishmen and Irish institutions were able to act decisively in the development of colonial knowledge. The relationships mapped in this article centre the Irish within the imperial web of connections and global exchange of ideas, technologies, and practices during the long nineteenth century, thereby making a contribution towards uncovering Ireland's multi-directional involvement in the British empire and reassessing the challenges that this presents to existing British, Irish, and imperial historiography.

A British Empire for the twentieth century: the inauguration of New Delhi, 1931

Urban History ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 462-484 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID A. JOHNSON
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Political Reform ◽  
New Delhi ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Political Reforms ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Imperial Power

ABSTRACTThe inauguration of New Delhi in 1931 represented a complex vision of the late colonial state where liberal political reforms intended to pacify Indians simultaneously bound them more closely to the British Empire. These conciliatory reforms focused Indian attention on provincial local self-government while the centre remained firmly in British hands. New Delhi, as the pre-eminent symbol of this imperial centre, crucially disseminated this double narrative of promised liberation and continued colonial dependency. The new capital may have projected imperial power and permanence, as many scholars have noted, but it also symbolized the underlying strands that connected British political reform with the reinforcement and reaffirmation of continued British rule.

A Victorian Lady in the Land of the Rising Sun: the Image of Japan in Isabella Bird’s «Unbeaten Tracks in Japan»

2020 ◽  
pp. 167-182
Author(s):  
Svetlana Malchikova
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
The Real ◽  
Geographical Society ◽  
Foreign Culture ◽  
Xix Century ◽  
Political Economic

The article is devoted to the image of Japan and the Japanese in the book «Unbeaten Tracks in Japan» by Isabella Bird, a famous British traveler, a member of the Royal Geographical Society, an author of a number of works written during her many travels. In April, 1878 the Victorian woman arrived in the Land of the Rising Sun. In the search for the «real» Japan, she made her way through the countryside, in places where no European had ever set foot. The traveler, accompanied by a guide, visited many places untouched by foreigners, including Yozo (Hokkaido). The writer reflected the results of her impressions, observations and research in letters to her sister. They became the basis of her work «Unbeaten Tracks in Japan», which was created later. Throughout the XIX century, the British Empire expanded its borders, seized new territories and sought to strengthen its influence in other countries. For Japan, it was a period of political, economic and cultural upheavals. It was the time of an active clash with a foreign culture and rapid development. The Land of the Rising Sun entered the arena of international relations that, of course, attracted the Europeans’ attention. This article primarily examines Miss Bird’s perception of Japan, her assessment of culture, politics, art, the Japanese’s life, their characters. An important factor is the comparison of the image of «fabulous» Japan, which was created outside Japan, and the real Japan, where the writer traveled.

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