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

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.

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.

Partition, Pakistan, and South Asian History: In Search of a Narrative

1998 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 1068-1095 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Gilmartin
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
British India ◽  
South Asian History ◽  
Indian Nationalism ◽  
Historical Reconstructions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Asian History

Few events have been more important to the history of modern South Asia than the partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan in 1947. The coming of partition has cast a powerful shadow on historical reconstructions of the decades before 1947, while the ramifications of partition have continued to leave their mark on subcontinental politics fifty years after the event.Yet, neither scholars of British India nor scholars of Indian nationalism have been able to find a compelling place for partition within their larger historical narratives (Pandey 1994, 204–5). For many British empire historians, partition has been treated as an illustration of the failure of the “modernizing” impact of colonial rule, an unpleasant blip on the transition from the colonial to the postcolonial worlds. For many nationalist Indian historians, it resulted from the distorting impact of colonialism itself on the transition to nationalism and modernity, “the unfortunate outcome of sectarian and separatist politics,” and “a tragic accompaniment to the exhilaration and promise of a freedom fought for with courage and valour” (Menon and Bhasin 1998, 3).

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.

Empires of Antiquities

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Billie Melman
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
World War ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
Mandate System ◽  
First World

Empires of Antiquities is a history of the rediscovery of the imperial civilizations of the ancient Near East in a modern imperial order that evolved between the outbreak of the First World War and the decolonization of the British Empire in the 1950s. It explores the ways in which near eastern antiquity was redefined and experienced, becoming the subject of imperial regulation, modes of enquiry, and international and national politics. A series of globally publicized spectacular archaeological discoveries in Iraq, Egypt, and Palestine, which the book follows, made antiquity material visible and accessible as never before. The book demonstrates that the new definition and uses of antiquity and their relations to modernity were inseparable from the emergence of the post-war international imperial order, transnational collaboration and crises, the aspirations of national groups, and collisions between them and the British mandatories. It uniquely combines a history of the internationalization of archaeology and the rise of a new “regime of antiquities” under the oversight of the League of Nations and its institutions, a history of British attitudes to, and passion for, near eastern antiquity and on-the-ground colonial policies and mechanisms, as well as nationalist claims on the past. It points to the centrality of the new mandate system, particularly mandates classified A in Mesopotamia/Iraq, Palestine, and Transjordan, formerly governed by the Ottoman Empire, and of Egypt, in the new archaeological regime. Drawing on an unusually wide range of materials collected in archives in six countries, as well as on material and visual evidence, the book weaves together imperial, international, and national histories, and the history of archaeological discovery which it connects to imperial modernity.

Diversities and Minorities

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yulia Egorova
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
British India ◽  
History Of

The chapter provides an outline of the history of Jews and Muslims in South Asia focusing on the multiplicity of definitions of both groups. While highlighting the diversity of Indian Jews and Indian Muslims, it discusses how in the British period the colonial authorities constructed and sedimented the boundaries both around and within the two groups, depicting them simultaneously as foreign to the subcontinent in ways that would minoritize them in British India and, subsequently, in independent India, and as indigenous, in ways that proved to be detrimental to their position vis-à-vis the Hindu majority in the case of Indian Muslims and vis-à-vis overseas Jewish organizations in the case of Indian Jews.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document