Confessions of the Unfriendly Spleen

2018 ◽  
pp. 71-100
Author(s):  
Sudipta Sen
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Tropical Medicine ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Law ◽  
Law Courts ◽  
Physical Weakness

This essay traces the genealogy of humors and diseases of the spleen that originated in England and became a common subject of study in imperial and tropical medicine, reinforcing deep-seated notions about the physical weakness of Indians and the unusual pathology of native bodies and organs. It explores how forensic notions of a weaker and vulnerable Indian body emerged in colonial India through theories of miasma and the practice of dissection, and how such ideas contributed to the notorious 'spleen theory' defense in the law courts of the late nineteenth-century Raj, where Europeans charged with assault and murder of Indian servants were frequently acquitted on the grounds of their distended spleens being ruptured during routine acts of physical correction.

The law of Hobson-Jobson

English Today ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Purcell
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Law ◽  
Anglo Indian

ABSTRACTYule and Burnell's 1886 Anglo-Indian dictionary still fascinates and informs today. It is not the finest of Salman Rushdie's writings, but this is the first paragraph of his essay Hobson-Jobson (italics in original):“The British Empire, many pundits now agree, descended like a juggernaut upon the barbicans of the East, in search of loot. The moguls of the raj went in palanquins, smoking cheroots, to sup toddy or sherbet on the verandahs of the gymkhana club, while the memsahibs fretted about the thugs in bandannas and dungarees who roamed the night like pariahs, plotting ghoulish deeds.” (Rushdie, 1992:81)Rushdie points out that the italicised words all appear in the celebrated dictionary Hobson-Jobson: a glossary of colloquial Anglo-Indian words and phrases, and of kindred terms, etymological, historical, geographical and discursive by Henry Yule & A.C. Burnell, first published in 1886.This gem of a dictionary gives definitions and origins of words in common use by the British in colonial India in the late nineteenth century. Some of the entries won't be a surprise to readers – we all know that raj, mogul and memsahib are Indian words. But there are many words with their origins in Hindustani, Bengali, Sanskrit or other Indian or Eastern languages, whose origin is perhaps not quite so well known.

Lost Voices: Chinese Muslim Modernists and the Issue of Polygamy in the Republican Era

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-117
Author(s):  
Bin Chen
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Scholarly Work ◽  
Polygamous Marriage ◽  
Modern Chinese ◽  
Republican Era ◽  
Vital Component ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Law

AbstractThis study brings the voices of Chinese Muslim modernists back into discussions on polygamy in the Republican era. Starting from the late nineteenth century, abolishing the practice of polygamous marriage became a vital component of Chinese modernizing elites’ vision of modern Chinese society, as they saw polygamy as an obstacle to modernization. Chinese Muslim modernists actively engaged in China's struggle with polygamy. Their dynamic discussions on polygamy were not insignificant and peripheral. On the contrary, when the Republican law promoting monogamy was hard to implement, some Chinese Muslim modernists pushed their fellow Muslims to set examples for other Chinese to obey the law. The Chinese translations of Arabic scholarly work even helped some Chinese Muslim modernists take a different approach to the issue of polygamy by arguing that polygamy, if properly regulated, could be beneficial to modern societies.

Hermann Cohen and the Jewish Neo-Kantians

2011 ◽  
pp. 213-224
Author(s):  
David Novak
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
German Society ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Kantian Ethics ◽  
Moral Law ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Law ◽  
Hermann Cohen ◽  
Secular State

This chapter reviews Hermann Cohen's presentation of the Noahide laws. Cohen desired to show that Jews in late nineteenth-century European (and especially German) society could be and were in fact good citizens, and that their Judaism was an aid to citizenship. Judaism was not an insular religion, and Jews supported the secular state, Cohen affirmed. For instance, he maintained that the aim of the law of adjudication was “objective lawfulness,” a signal starting-point for any society, secular or religious. Cohen's view of moral law was shaped by Kantian ethics. He argues that Noahide law confirms the humanity of gentiles, and that this rabbinic construction was the first of its kind. Recognizing the humanity of others is the beginning of autonomous ethics. For Cohen, the human ethical future is best presented through Jewish universalism, leading to universal ethical monotheism in the messianic age. This last point has been central to liberal Jewish theology since Cohen's time.

Torts

2019 ◽  
pp. 443-462 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence M. Friedman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
English Language ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Tort Law ◽  
Growth Spurt ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Law ◽  
Private Wrongs

This chapter discusses the development of tort law in the second half of the nineteenth century. Tort law experienced its biggest growth spurt in the late nineteenth century. The legal world began to sit up and pay attention. The very first English-language treatise on torts appeared in 1859: Francis Hilliard’s book, The Law of Torts, Or Private Wrongs. Then came Charles G. Addison, Wrongs and Their Remedies in 1860, in England. By 1900, there was an immense literature on the law of torts; Joel Bishop and Thomas M. Cooley had written imposing treatises on the subject; the case law had swollen to heroic proportions. Tort law was a product of the industrial revolution; England here had a head start; problems emerged there first, and so did their tentative legal solutions.

scholarly journals Tropical medicine in nineteenth-century India

1992 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 299-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Tropical Medicine ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
European Perspective ◽  
Germ Theory ◽  
Body Of Knowledge ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Tropics

It is customary to regard ‘tropical medicine’ as a product of the late nineteenth century, ‘its instrument the microscope, its epistemology the germ theory of disease’. The accepted interpretation is that tropical medicine was a European concept: originating in Britain and France and exported to the colonies by pioneering medical scientists. This interpretation is useful inasmuch as ‘tropical medicine’ as a discipline with its own journals, institutions, qualifications, and an exclusive discourse did not emerge until the last decade of the nineteenth century, and partly in response to metropolitan imperatives. But the European perspective of existing histories of ‘tropical medicine’ has obscured important developments in the understanding of diseases in the tropics which took place prior to 1890; most of which occurred in the colonies themselves – and especially in India. In order to distinguish this body of knowledge from its later, institutional incarnation, it will be referred to here as ‘tropical hygiene’: the term most commonly used by medical men in India until the 1890s.

Hunting as ‘Sport’ in Colonial India

2018 ◽  
pp. 161-219
Author(s):  
Vijaya Ramadas Mandala
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Technological Change ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Horse Riding ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Indigenous Hunting ◽  
The Way

This chapter is concerned with the development of hunting as ‘sport’, whereby colonial hunters from the late nineteenth century began to carefully shape the idiom of the hunt, gradually distancing themselves from indigenous hunting methods. By systematically showcasing their skill and sportsmanship, British hunters portrayed their methods and practices as more sophisticated than the older native traditions. This study also elaborates on how different terrains and environments determined the planning and organization of hunts by the British hunters across the presidencies. Rank, authority, and privilege not only operated between the colonizers and colonized, but also within the world of British hunting communities. In contrast to the Company period, hunting became a microcosm of imperial society in late nineteenth-century India, and different sorts of hunts and clubs were open to people of various ranks. In addition, the making of hunting into a ‘sport’ was heavily linked to a discourse of class and race, drawing upon ideas of chivalry and with only the most acceptable hunting practices encoded into sportsmanship. The development of a class-based regime of hunting is evident in the way pig-sticking came to be regarded as the most superior kind of hunt, because it required great skill in horse-riding and horsemanship, presented added danger and utilized the spear rather than the gun. The chapter also explains how technological change in firearms took place and the way in which such changes were related to the transformation of hunting mores in nineteenth-century India.

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