Military Mobility, Authority and Negotiation in Early Colonial India*

2020 ◽  
Vol 249 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-84
Author(s):  
Christina Welsch
Keyword(s):  
Military Service ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Dynamic Relationship ◽  
Persian Language ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
British East India Company ◽  
Insight Into

Abstract This article focuses on the career of Muhammad Yusuf Khan, an officer in the British East India Company who sought to turn his military service into political and diplomatic authority, only to be executed as a rebel in 1764. His rise and fall occurred early in the so-called colonial transition, a period characterized in recent scholarship as one of relative fluidity in contrast to later, more rigid instantiations of colonial rule. Institutionally, the Company’s armies seem to contradict that pattern: their rapid growth in the eighteenth century produced new exclusions and restrictions, including some of the earliest formal articulations of a racial binary between Indian and European actors. Yusuf Khan, however, gained political capital by mobilizing elements of those intended restrictions in new contexts, imbuing the Company’s military hierarchies with alternate meanings outside of its formal infrastructure. His innovative reinterpretation of military prestige becomes clear when the Company’s records are read alongside Persian-language material from the Indian courts against which he fashioned his political identity. His career offers insight into how the inequitable, but dynamic relationship between the Company and its soldiers shaped the former’s approach to and understanding of India s political landscape

Imprimatur as Adversary: Press freedom and colonial governance in India, 1780–1823

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-36
Author(s):  
RITIKA PRASAD
Keyword(s):  
Theory And Practice ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Press Freedom ◽  
Legal Authority ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Crime And Punishment ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
Sovereign Authority ◽  
Public Scrutiny ◽  
Public Critique

Abstract Examining cases of libel between 1780 and 1823, this article analyses how the theory and practice of press regulation and governmentality was initially articulated in colonial India, embodied in everyday transactions between the newly invented East India Company state and an emerging newspaper press. While Company officials recognized that scrutiny by a free press was central to establishing their fairly new claims to just governance and public legitimacy, they feared that public critique would destabilize the very sovereign authority that they sought to establish. Concerned with appearing arbitrary, officials developed strategies through which they could demand obedience without necessarily predicating it on censorship. Journalists derived much of their negotiating power from the early colonial state's vulnerability to public scrutiny, but they also knew that the state possessed extensive control over their livelihood. Cognizant of the power and constraints of colonial governmentality at this juncture, they produced their own mechanisms of permissible intransigence. This uneasy equilibrium generated the questions explored in this article: What rights of comment and critique practically accrued to newspapers? What was the legal authority of executive regulations censoring newspapers and how far were these enforceable? Why, in practice, did punishments remain strikingly similar across periods with and without formal censorship? The cases between 1780 and 1823 not only reveal the historical negotiations that structured this foundational—though somewhat marginalized—period of India's press history, but also explain the strategic shifts that followed as, in 1823, the fulcrum of crime and punishment turned away from press censorship and towards press licensing.

scholarly journals Empires of Opportunity: German naturalists in British India and the frictions of transnational science

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-46
Author(s):  
MORITZ VON BRESCIUS
Keyword(s):  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
East India Company ◽  
German Unification ◽  
British India ◽  
German Empire ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Rich Picture ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
British East India Company ◽  
Professional Mobility

Abstract This article examines the little-known but exceptionally well-documented German Schlagintweit brothers’ expedition to India and Central Asia in 1854–58, under the auspices of the British East India Company and the king of Prussia. The brothers’ careers present an instructive study of the opportunities and conflicts inherent within transnational science and the imperial labour market in colonial India in the course of the nineteenth century. Until now, historians have largely emphasized the ways in which European East India companies provided scientific practitioners with professional mobility from the seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries. In these accounts, German scientific practitioners are represented as especially mobile, moving more or less freely within foreign empires, because at the time no ‘German’ empire existed that might compete for allegiances and make them appear suspect. My article, in contrast, offers a revisionist account of this globalizing picture in two senses. First, a close look at the local everyday practices of the Schlagintweit brothers’ expedition highlights the considerable tensions and frictions that accompanied imperial recruitment to South Asia—even for German scientific practitioners. What emerges instead is a rich picture of the contradictory interpretations of supposedly cooperative projects among contemporaries, and the instrumentalization of scientific activities for political ends in the Indian subcontinent, for both established and aspiring colonial powers. Second, the ways in which the Schlagintweits’ scientific expedition was represented and remembered in subsequent decades shows how the politics around transnational science projects only intensified with German unification.

Warriors and States: Military labour in southern India, circa 1750–1800

2018 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 313-338
Author(s):  
MESROB VARTAVARIAN
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
Southern India ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
British East India Company ◽  
Hostile Attitude

AbstractThe consolidation of numerous regional polities in the aftermath of Mughal imperial decline presented favourable socioeconomic opportunities for South Asian service communities. Protracted armed conflicts in southern India allowed a variety of mercenaries, soldiers, and war bands to accumulate resources in exchange for mobilizing manpower on behalf of states with weak standing armies. This article focuses on British imperial efforts to obtain sufficient quantities of military labour during its struggle with the Mysore sultanate. As the sultanate assumed an increasingly hostile attitude towards independent warrior power, local strongmen sought more amenable arrangements with alternate entities. The British East India Company received crucial support from autonomous warrior groups during its southern wars of conquest. Warriors in turn utilized British resources to consolidate local sovereignties. Thus, the initial British intrusion into peninsular Indian society further fragmented the political landscape by patronizing petty military entrepreneurs.

Colonial Deindustrialisation of India

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-53
Author(s):  
Brijesh K. Mishra ◽  
Siddhartha Rastogi
Keyword(s):  
Economic Impact ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Economic Resources ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
British Raj ◽  
Unequal Exchange ◽  
British Rule ◽  
British East India Company

While it is quite well accepted that the British rule imposed a heavy cost on India in terms of financial and industrial losses, the economic impact of the Company rule is still far from settled. Rule of the British East India Company (BEIC), and later the crown, has the scholars divided on whether the colonial India suffered a systematic draw down of its economic resources—the so-called drain theory. While the British version underplays or denies such a drain, the nationalists suggest it was a major long-term damage. This article reviews and critiques the economic policies of the British Raj in detail to know whether there was at all a drain of resources out of India and, if yes, to what extent. It was found that while the nationalists exaggerated effects of the drain, their arguments hold significant value. Finally, drain theory is assessed in the backdrop of the theory of unequal exchange.

scholarly journals Poor Man's Crop: Evading opium monopoly

2018 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 633-659 ◽  
Author(s):  
GUNNEL CEDERLÖF
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Conditions ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
British East India Company ◽  
Severe Flood ◽  
Historical Trajectory ◽  
Regional Histories ◽  
North Bengal

AbstractResearch on opium in colonial India has so far mainly focused on the competing Malwa and Bengal opium currents under the control of the Sindia and Holkar families and of the British East India Company, respectively. The historical trajectory has tended to emphasize the implementation of a draconian and all-encompassing British monopoly. This study joins the emerging efforts to search the regional histories on the margins of the strongest players’ actions on the global scene. It aims at nuancing the narratives by focusing on a region away from such centres. The study investigates the local cultivation and usage of opium in Rangpore district—a region in north Bengal that had recently been badly affected by a severe flood. Here, the drug was extensively used and the lucrative trade with neighbouring states gave small-scale cultivators an income also under hard environmental conditions. The fact that production and trade were small-scale, fragmented, and made use of markets in Cooch Bihar, Assam, and Bhutan impeded British attempts at getting in control of production and trade.

“In that One the Ālif is Missing”: Eunuchs and the Politics of Masculinity in Early Colonial North India

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 73-116
Author(s):  
Nicholas Abbott
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
South Asia ◽  
East India Company ◽  
North India ◽  
Self Perception ◽  
Successor State ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
British East India Company ◽  
Sovereign Authority ◽  
Bodily Difference

AbstractAlthough ostensibly gendered as men and frequently maintaining independent, patriarchal households, enslaved eunuchs (khwājasarās) in pre- and early colonial regimes in South Asia were often mocked for their supposed effeminacy, bodily difference, and pretensions to normative masculinity. In the Mughal successor state of Awadh (1722-1856), such mockery grew more pronounced in the wake of growing financial demands from the British East India Company and attempts by eunuchs to alienate property with wills and testamentary bequests. Through examples of verbal derision directed at eunuchs, this essay shows that not only did ideas of normative masculinity serve as a vehicle for Awadh’s rulers to defend their sovereign authority from colonial encroachment, but that notions of normative manhood continued to inform eunuchs’ own self-perception into the nineteenth century.

A famine in Surat in 1631 and Dodos on Mauritius: a long lost manuscript rediscovered

2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 134-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Winters ◽  
J. P. Hume ◽  
M. Leenstra
Keyword(s):  
English Translation ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Secondary Source ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
The Status ◽  
Insight Into

In 1887 Dutch archivist A. J. Servaas van Rooijen published a transcript of a hand-written copy of an anonymous missive or letter, dated 1631, about a horrific famine and epidemic in Surat, India, and also an important description of the fauna of Mauritius. The missive may have been written by a lawyer acting on behalf of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). It not only gives details about the famine, but also provides a unique insight into the status of endemic and introduced Mauritius species, at a time when the island was mostly uninhabited and used only as a replenishment station by visiting ships. Reports from this period are very rare. Unfortunately, Servaas van Rooijen failed to mention the location of the missive, so its whereabouts remained unknown; as a result, it has only been available as a secondary source. Our recent rediscovery of the original hand-written copy provides details about the events that took place in Surat and Mauritius in 1631–1632. A full English translation of the missive is appended.

The national question, identity and the crisis in South Sudan

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dylan Yanano Mangani ◽  
Richard Rachidi Molapo
Keyword(s):  
Political Identity ◽  
South Sudan ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Political Control ◽  
Social Patterns ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Liberation Movement ◽  
Nation States ◽  
National Question ◽  
The Government

The crisis in South Sudan that broke out on the 15th of December 2013 has been the gravest political debacle in the five years of the country’s independence. This crisis typifies the general political and social patterns of post-independence politics of nation-states that are borne out of armed struggles in Africa. Not only does the crisis expose a reluctance by the nationalist leaders to continue with nation-building initiatives, the situation suggests the struggle for political control at the echelons of power within the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Movement.  This struggle has been marred by the manufacturing of political identity and political demonization that seem to illuminate the current political landscape in South Sudan. Be that as it may, the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) hurriedly intervened to find a lasting solution however supportive of the government of President Salva Kirr and this has suggested interest based motives on the part of the regional body and has since exacerbated an already fragile situation. As such, this article uses the Fanonian discourse of post-independence politics in Africa to expose the fact that the SPLM has degenerated into lethargy and this is at the heart of the crisis.

Women and Agency in Bankim’s Rajmohan’s Wife and Tagore’s The Home and The World

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Manju Dhariwal ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Self ◽  
Indian English ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
English Novel ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Status Of Women

Written almost half a century apart, Rajmohan’s Wife (1864) and The Home and the World (1916) can be read as women centric texts written in colonial India. The plot of both the texts is set in Bengal, the cultural and political centre of colonial India. Rajmohan’s Wife, arguably the first Indian English novel, is one of the first novels to realistically represent ‘Woman’ in the nineteenth century. Set in a newly emerging society of India, it provides an insight into the status of women, their susceptibility and dependence on men. The Home and the World, written at the height of Swadeshi movement in Bengal, presents its woman protagonist in a much progressive space. The paper closely examines these two texts and argues that women enact their agency in relational spaces which leads to the process of their ‘becoming’. The paper analyses this journey of the progress of the self, which starts with Matangini and culminates in Bimala. The paper concludes that women’s journey to emancipation is symbolic of the journey of the nation to independence.

Shooting a Tiger

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vijaya Ramadas Mandala
Keyword(s):  
Critical Role ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
British Raj ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Forest Legislation ◽  
Imperial Governance ◽  
North And South

The main contention of Shooting a Tiger is that hunting during the colonial period was not merely a recreational activity, but a practice intimately connected with imperial governance. The book positions shikar or hunting at the heart of colonial rule by demonstrating that, for the British in India, it served as a political, practical, and symbolic apparatus in the consolidation of power and rule during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The book analyses early colonial hunting during the Company period, and then surveys different aspects of hunting during the high imperial decades in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The book draws upon an impressive array of archival material and uses a wide range of evidence to support its contentions. It examines hunting at a variety of social and ethnic levels—military, administrative, elite, princely India, Indian professional hunters, and in terms of Indian auxiliaries and (sometimes) resisters. It also deals with different geographical contexts—the plains, the mountains, north and south India. The exclusive privilege of hunting exercised by the ruling classes, following colonial forest legislation, continued to be extended to the Indian princes who played a critical role in sustaining the lavish hunts that became the hallmark of the late nineteenth-century British Raj. Hunting was also a way of life in colonial India, undertaken by officials and soldiers alike alongside their everyday duties, necessary for their mental sustenance and vital for the smooth operation of the colonial administration. There are also two final chapters on conservation, particularly the last chapter focusing on two British hunter-turned-conservationists, Jim Corbett and Colonel Richard Burton.

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