Through the mill: Margaret Harkness on conjectural history and utilitarian philosophy

2019 ◽  
pp. 201-217
Author(s):  
Lisa C. Robertson
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Personal Knowledge ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
British India ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Counter Narrative ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Methodology ◽  
Conjectural History

This chapter evaluates the writing Harkness produced during her time living in the countries that are now India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Placing Harkness’s work in a nineteenth-century tradition of British historiographical writing about India that begins with James Mill’s History of British India (1817), the chapter argues that her work during this period consciously eschews conventional historical methodology and offers an important counter-narrative to colonial history. It suggests that in her attention to the ways that social movements and political institutions shape people’s daily lives, which is set within a broad foundation of personal knowledge, Harkness’s writing engages more ardently with the conventions of cultural history than it does with those of travel writing.

The Makings of Indonesian Islam

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Laffan
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
The State ◽  
Religious Culture ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Balanced Assessment ◽  
Clifford Geertz ◽  
History Of ◽  
European Colonialism ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Popular Image

Indonesian Islam is often portrayed as being intrinsically moderate by virtue of the role that mystical Sufism played in shaping its traditions. According to Western observers—from Dutch colonial administrators and orientalist scholars to modern anthropologists such as the late Clifford Geertz—Indonesia's peaceful interpretation of Islam has been perpetually under threat from outside by more violent, intolerant Islamic traditions that were originally imposed by conquering Arab armies. This book challenges this widely accepted narrative, offering a more balanced assessment of the intellectual and cultural history of the most populous Muslim nation on Earth. The book traces how the popular image of Indonesian Islam was shaped by encounters between colonial Dutch scholars and reformist Islamic thinkers. It shows how Dutch religious preoccupations sometimes echoed Muslim concerns about the relationship between faith and the state, and how Dutch–Islamic discourse throughout the long centuries of European colonialism helped give rise to Indonesia's distinctive national and religious culture. This book presents Islamic and colonial history as an integrated whole, revealing the ways our understanding of Indonesian Islam, both past and present, came to be.

Scottish Orientalism: From Robertson to James Mill

1982 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Rendall
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
British India ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
History Of ◽  
Close Interrelationship

It is by now accepted that James Mill’s History of British India, which exercised such influence over the British image of India and Indians throughout the nineteenth century, was cast in the mould of‘philosophical history’, the kind of historical writing typical of the Scottish Enlightenment By the 1790s such an approach was faught at Edinburgh by Dugald Stewart, and in Glasgow by John Millar; and their teachings and writings did much to form Mill’s approach, overlaid though it later was by the Benthamite political message. The characteristics of ‘ philosophical history’ can be identified. Writers of the Scottish Enlightenment were concerned to apply to the study of man and society methods of enquiry comparable to those of the natural sciences, and this, for them, involved the formulation of general laws on the basis of observation, and the available evidence about the history, economy, culture, and political institutions of different societies. Certain guidelines were evolved. The starting point was the close interrelationship between all aspects of men's life within society, between the economy, government, culture, and social life of a people. Secondly, a civilisation, by which was implied all these aspects of a society, could be located on an evolutionary scale, a ladder of civilizations running from ‘rudeness’ to ‘refinement’.

INVOLUNTARY SIGHTSEEING: SOLDIERS AS TRAVEL WRITERS AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF COLONIAL BURMA

2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 389-407 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Keck
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
British India ◽  
Military Conflict ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
War Narratives ◽  
British Rule ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Territorial Claim ◽  
Asian Economy

British Burma has never beenadequately or even systematically studied as both students of modern Burmese history and British empire historians have given it relatively short shrift. Nonetheless, imperial rule lasted for nearly five generations and helped to produce the nation which now identifies itself as Myanmar. By the end of the nineteenth century, Burma was crucial to the wider South Asian economy, supplying oil, minerals, teak, and, above all, rice to destinations around the Indian Ocean. Yet, it took three Anglo-Burmese Wars to make Burma a part of British India. These conflicts are largely forgotten but they determined not only the fate of the country, but helped to shape its future trajectories. Military conflict proved more durable than colonization as independence brought with it a situation in which the “state has been continuously at war with the population mapped into its territorial claim” (Callahan 13). Nonetheless, the intellectual and cultural history of British Burma is rich and fascinating: colonial authors made the country their subject matter and they left behind a diverse corpus which bore the stamp of Victorian civilization. The experience of writing about Burma – particularly by those writers who identified with Burmese culture – produced some forgotten masterpieces. However, the dominant British understanding of the country arose from military conflict and occupation; this paper focuses on four British war narratives (which followed each of the Anglo-Burmese Wars) because they disclose more than their recounting of these conflicts might suggest. By exploring the works of John James Snodgrass, Henry Gouger, William F. B. Laurie, and Major Edmond Charles Browne, it will be possible to trace the beginnings of the colonizing narrative which helped to shape British rule. These writers experienced the Anglo-Burmese Wars directly and their narratives illustrate that they were “involuntary sightseers” recording not only the details of conflict, but their assessments of Burma and the Burmese.

From Bataille to Badiou

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian May
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Maurice Blanchot ◽  
Counter Narrative ◽  
History Of ◽  
French Theory ◽  
Political Value ◽  
French Intellectuals ◽  
Financial Capitalism

This book provides an exhaustive reading of the significant yet understudied intellectual review Lignes, from 1987 to 2017, to demonstrate how it has managed to preserve and develop the legacy of French radical thought often referred to as ‘French Theory’ or ‘la pensée 68’. Whilst many studies on intellectual reviews from the 1930s to the 1980s exist, this book crucially illuminates the shifting intellectual and political culture of France since the 1980s, filling a major gap in contemporary debates on the continued relevance of French intellectuals. This book provides a strong counter-narrative to the received account that, after the anti-totalitarian ‘liberal moment’ of the late 1970s, Marxism and structuralism were completely banished from the French intellectual sphere. It provides the historical context behind the rise of such internationally renowned thinkers such as Alain Badiou, Jacques Rancière Jean-Luc Nancy, whilst placing them within an intellectual genealogy stretching back to Georges Bataille and Maurice Blanchot in the 1930s. The book also introduces the reader to lesser known but nonetheless significant thinkers, including Lignes editor Michel Surya, Dionys Mascolo, Daniel Bensaïd, Fethi Benslama, Anselm Jappe and Robert Kurz. Through the review’s pages, a novel cultural history of France emerges as intellectuals respond to pressing contemporary issues, such as the fall of Communism, the European migrant crisis and rising nationalist tensions, the globalisation of financial capitalism and the 2008 economic crisis, scandals surrounding paedophilia and the return of religious thought to France, as well as debates on literature and the political value of art.

Representations of Empire

2002 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Near East ◽  
Source Material ◽  
The Political ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
The Relationship

This book covers the whole of the period in which Rome dominated the Mediterranean world. The belief shared by all the contributors is that the Roman empire is best understood from the standpoint of the Mediterranean world looking in to Rome, rather than from Rome looking out. The chapters focus on the development of political institutions in Rome itself and in her empire, and on the nature of the relationship between Rome and her provincial subjects. They also discuss historiographical approaches to different kinds of source material, literary and documentary — including the major Roman historians, the evidence for the pre-Roman near east, and the Christian writers of later antiquity. The book reflects the immense complexity of the political and cultural history of the ancient Mediterranean, from the late Republic to the age of Augustine.

Austria as a Region of German Culture: 1900–1938

1992 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 135-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
David S. Luft
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
German Culture ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
History Of ◽  
Austrian Studies ◽  
The Relationship

This Essay Attempts to contribute to our understanding of the intellectual and cultural history of Central Europe by making explicit a variety of themes that haunt discourse about Austrian culture and by making some suggestions about periodizing the relationship between Austria and German culture. I originally developed these thoughts on Austria as a region of German culture for a conference in 1983 at the Center for Austrian Studies on regions and regionalism in Austria. Although the political institutions of Central Europe have undergone a revolution since then, the question of Austria's relationship to German culture still holds its importance for the historian-and for contemporary Austrians as well. The German culture I have in mind here is not thekleindeutschnational culture of Bismarck's Reich, but rather the realm that was once constituted by the German-speaking lands of the Holy Roman Empire. This geographical space in Central Europe suggests a more ideal realm of the spirit, for which language is our best point of reference and which corresponds to no merely temporal state.

scholarly journals Arhiivimaterjalide juurdepääsu ja konteksti küsimused Õpetatud Eesti Seltsi käsikirjakogu näitel / Issues of Access and Context of Archival Materials: Explorative Database of the Manuscript Collection of the Learned Estonian Society

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (26) ◽  
Author(s):  
Larissa Leiminger ◽  
Aija Sakova
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Special Role ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Dublin Core ◽  
The Public ◽  
Additional Information ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Russian Empire

Artikkel uurib Eesti riiklikes arhiivides asuvate mitte-eestikeelsete käsikirjakogude juurdepääsu ja konteksti küsimusi. Juhtumiuuring keskendub baltisaksa estofiilide 1938. aastal asutatud Õpetatud Eesti Seltsi käsikirjakogudele Eesti Kirjandusmuuseumis, mis on jagatud Eesti Kultuuriloolise Arhiivi ja Eesti Rahvaluule Arhiivi vahel. Käsikirjakogude asukohtadest ülevaate saamine osutus keeruliseks aja- ja töömahukaks ülesandeks, mida komplitseeris veelgi fakt, et uurija ei valda eesti keelt. Täiendavaks takistuseks osutus seegi, et kättesaadavaid digihoidlaid oli võimalik kasutada ainult eesti keeles. Ühe võimaliku lahendusena neile probleemidele pakuti välja avastusliku relatsioonandmebaasi loomine, mis toob kokku mõlemas arhiivis hoitavad materjalid. Käesolevas artiklis kirjeldatakse selle andmebaasi teostamist: erisuguste metaandmete ühtlustamist ja andmebaasi täiendamist isikuregistriga, ning arutletakse, kuidas seda andmebaasi mugava kasutajaliidese abil edasi arendada.   Access to archival sources is often determined by the cultural-historical context of the archive where it is preserved. The Estonian state funded archives’ provenance is largely shaped by the Estonian Baltic-German colonial history, the earlier belonging of the Estonian territory to the Swedish Empire (1583–1721) and its later incorporation into the Russian Empire (1721–1917); as a result, archives contain very multi-layered and multi-language archival materials. This article is dedicated to the issues of access and context of German archival materials from the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century in Estonian archives. It is based on the manuscript collection of the Learned Estonian Society (LES), located at two different archives of the Estonian Literary Museum: The Estonian Folklore Archives and the Estonian Cultural History Archives. The access to this collection is obstructed for non-Estonian speakers by a complex Estonian archival system. However, without the public being able to interact with materials and re-evaluate and re-figure their contents (Hamilton, Harris, and Reid 2002, 7), the relevance of materials to be preserved in an archive diminishes. The questions of what, how, and when materials can be made accessible, especially through digitisation processes, are convoluted and carry a lot of weight. Every decision made in this regard by the custodians can reflect and perpetuate power dynamics in archives, favouring certain groups of materials and dismissing others. The article discusses how an archive’s special role as a memory institution should influence these decisions about accessibility. Therefore, the relations between memory, history and institutions are reflected in the light of Aleida Assmann’s and Juri Lotman’s theories of memory.  The article also proposes the building of a new explorative database as one possible solution helping to overcome some of these issues connected to access and context. It thus presents the Master’s Project by Larissa Leiminger (2020a) and the resulting website “Sammlungen der Gelehrten Estnischen Gesellschaft” (accessible via https://galerii.kirmus.ee/GEG/) (2020b), which explored and implemented this solution. The database is constructed on the basis of the Omeka Classic software and displays metadata according to the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI). It currently contains 931 objects, (717 manuscript items and 214 individuals), which can be explored via two different search options as well as by a tag word system and the implicit relations between items and creators. At the same time, it provides some additional information on the context of the collections and the persons connected with the shaping of these collections. A short history of the LES, its collections and secondary literature can be found on the pages “Die Gesellschaft” and “Die Sammlungen”. To follow the principles of transparency and to reflect the archival practices involved, the website also holds information about the scope, intention, and shortcomings of this Project on the “Das Projekt” page. The “F&A” page further clarifies some of the website’s functions and provides some details on how the archival materials can be accessed either digitally or in person. As a newly established resource, the website and the incorporated database could pave the way to a multitude of different research questions.

scholarly journals The masque of Blackness: Or, performing assimilation in the white academe

Organization ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 432-446 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sadhvi Dar
Keyword(s):  
Ben Jonson ◽  
Black Body ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Counter Narrative ◽  
History Of ◽  
Brown Bodies

‘Diversity’ is a dangerous misnomer in the white academe because the idea fails to recognize the politics of Whiteness that structure a spectrum of assimilation academics of colour are positioned by. Taking the title and plotline from the Jacobean masque written by Ben Jonson in 1605, this revisionist play sets out to consider the politics of assimilation academics of colour perform in their daily lives. Drawing on Black liberation and anti-racist literature, the play draws attention to how Black and Brown bodies that are asked to perform and use voice daringly or silence instrumentally to leverage degrees of assimilation into white structures. The play first, questions the ontology of foreignness by reflecting on the colonized history of the Black body becoming assimilated into Whiteness, and second, it provides a counter-narrative to those who experience perpetual exclusion and racism at work while other academics of colour seem to become accepted and even celebrated by white hierarchies.

Democratic Attitudes and Practices in Iraq, 1921-1958

2005 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adeed Dawisha
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Democratic Deficit ◽  
Democratic Institutions ◽  
Political Pluralism ◽  
Attitudes And Practices ◽  
Democratic Attitudes ◽  
Counter Narrative ◽  
History Of

The prevalent perception is that democracy is untenable in Iraq because, it is argued, the country has an authoritarian political culture and no history of democratic institutions. This article presents a counter-narrative that shows that Iraq and its people do not necessarily suffer from an immutable democratic deficit. Focusing on the 1921-1958 era, periods of democratic attitudes and practices are chronicled and traditions of political pluralism and experience with representative political institutions are demonstrated.

scholarly journals Biography and Homoeopathy in Bengal: Colonial lives of a European heterodoxy

2015 ◽  
Vol 49 (6) ◽  
pp. 1732-1771 ◽  
Author(s):  
SHINJINI DAS
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Medical Science ◽  
British India ◽  
Principal Mode ◽  
Writing Practices ◽  
History Of ◽  
Contemporary Status ◽  
State Archives

AbstractDespite being recognized as a significant literary mode in understanding the advent of the modern self, biographies as agenrehave received relatively little attention from South Asian historians. Likewise, histories of science and healing in British India have largely ignored the colonial trajectories of those sectarian, dissenting, supposedly pseudo-sciences and medical heterodoxies that have flourished in Europe since the late eighteenth century. This article addresses these gaps in the historiography to identify biographies as a principal mode through which an incipient, ‘heterodox’ Western science like homoeopathy could consolidate and sustain itself in Bengal. In recovering the cultural history of a category that the state archives render largely invisible, this article argues that biographies are more than a mere repository of individual lives, and in fact are a veritable site of power. In bringing histories of print and publishing, histories of medicine, and histories of life writing practices together, it pursues two broad themes: first, it analyses the sociocultural strategies and networks by which scientific doctrines and concepts are translated across cultural borders. It explores the relation between medical commerce, print capital, and therapeutic knowledge to illustrate that acculturation of medical science necessarily drew upon and reinforced local constellations of class, kinship, and religion. Second, it simultaneously reflects upon the expanding genre of homoeopathic biographies published since the mid-nineteenth century: on their features, relevance, and functions, examining in particular the contemporary status of biography vis-à-vis ‘history’ in writing objective pasts.

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