Colonial History of India

[Guest]

<!--QuoteBegin-mitradena+Jul 12 2006, 09:59 AM-->QUOTE(mitradena @ Jul 12 2006, 09:59 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->ben_ami,

Excellent quote.
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Thank you.


And the corollary of that quote is equally valid, at least from the point of view of all colonised nations.

<span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>
"The West was kicked out of its colonies not by the ideals of Ahimsha or moral values or religion but rather by strategically applying organized violence. Non-Westerners often forget this fact, Westerners never do."
</span>
- Ben_Ami

[Guest]

<!--QuoteBegin-Mudy+Jul 13 2006, 10:38 PM-->QUOTE(Mudy @ Jul 13 2006, 10:38 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->Did British ever paid to India?
[right][snapback]53651[/snapback][/right]
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no.

even germany bent over backwards to make it up to israel both in cash and kind (eg - technology transfer), the USA gave japan (by writting off loans) a whopping 1 trillion dollars as compensation for the fire bombings of Tokyo and the twin nukes. but the poms??? they gave us nothing back and instead busied themselves in explaining to fellow westerners how they, the germanic barbarians from saxony brought civilization to india.

[acharya]

<!--QuoteBegin-ben_ami+Jul 13 2006, 05:37 AM-->QUOTE(ben_ami @ Jul 13 2006, 05:37 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin--><!--QuoteBegin-Mudy+Jul 13 2006, 10:38 PM--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Mudy @ Jul 13 2006, 10:38 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->Did British ever paid to India?
[right][snapback]53651[/snapback][/right]
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
no.

even germany bent over backwards to make it up to israel both in cash and kind (eg - technology transfer), the USA gave japan (by writting off loans) a whopping 1 trillion dollars as compensation for the fire bombings of Tokyo and the twin nukes. but the poms??? they gave us nothing back and instead busied themselves in explaining to fellow westerners how they, the germanic barbarians from saxony brought civilization to india.
[right][snapback]53655[/snapback][/right]
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The money was owed to all the princely states of India.They helped the British to raise the defence force of 2Million in the Royal Army for WWII.


Hence for Freedom in 1947 Sardar Patel had to dismantle them and British did not have to pay to any of them.

The princely states had a 'Council of Princes' which could negotiate with the British.
But British could impress Patel and Nehru to accept the freedom/partition and disband the princely states so that Britain will never ask for money in exchange. India even gave away sterling in holding to Britain to tied away the war expenses.

Probably in exchange for reducing the debt of war torn Britain the British people were not angry at Indians at the time of Independence.

[Guest]

Hi everbody. <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->

I've been trying to search for books on the <b>East India Company/British rule of India.</b>

After doing some searches on the web, including this current strand, the only books that I think seem to be credible are those below. However can anyone please recommend books on this topic. Many thanks! <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->

1. <b>'White Mughals'</b> by William Dalrymple

2. <b>'Our Bones Are Scattered: The Cawnpore Massacres and the Indian Mutiny of 1857'</b> by Andrew Ward

3. <b>'Confronting Colonialism: Resistance and Modernization Under Haider Ali and Tipu Sultan' </b>by Irfan Habib

4. <b>'Victorian Holocausts'</b> by Mike Davis

5.<b> 'The Scandal of Empire: India and the Creation of Imperial Britain'</b> by Nicholas Dirks

Thank you! <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->

[Guest]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->3. 'Confronting Colonialism: Resistance and Modernization Under Haider Ali and Tipu Sultan' by Irfan Habib
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->useless, not even good for toilet paper.

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->2. 'Our Bones Are Scattered: The Cawnpore Massacres and the Indian Mutiny of 1857' by Andrew Ward
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interesting read.

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->'Victorian Holocausts' by Mike Davis
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Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World by Mike Davis

Excelent book, must have in your bookshelf

[Guest]

Here is an interesting article reviewing a book by Niall Ferguson, a defender of the British Empire, and see how the author shreds his arguments. I am posting the full article because I don't know how long the link will be up.


http://bostonreview.net/BR30.1/chibber.html


The Good Empire

Should we pick up where the British left off?

Vivek Chibber

Colossus: The Price of America's Empire
Niall Ferguson
The Penguin Press, $25.95 (cloth)

8 Not too long ago, it was difficult to find mention of empire in American intellectual circles, save in discussions of bygone eras or, more commonly, of the Soviet Union’s relation to its satellites. The steady stream of U.S. interventions in countries around the globe could not, of course, be denied; but they were commonly explained as defensive responses to Soviet or Chinese imperialism—as efforts to contain Communist aggression and protect our way of life. But America itself could not be cast as an imperial power.

Times have changed. America and empire are joined at the hip in political discourse, not just on the Left but also in visible organs of the Right. The United States is often described as an empire and proudly proclaimed to be in the company of the best, outshining its English predecessor and catching up with the standard-setting Romans.‚This semantic shift was not instantaneous. In the immediate aftermath of the Eastern Bloc’s demise, the terms most typically used to describe American supremacy were more benign—sole superpower, new hegemon, and so on. The real change came with the George W. Bush presidency, and especially in the aftermath of 9/11. Commentators and ideologues no longer shy away from the E word and, indeed, openly embrace it—as well as the phenomenon it describes.‚For the most part, the arguments favoring a Pax Americana have not been developed beyond short articles or op-ed pieces. But the work of Niall Ferguson—a Scottish historian now transplanted to Harvard—takes them further. In his recent and widely reviewed book Colossus, and in a series of other publications, Ferguson offers an extended defense of the imperial project, past and present. Unlike many of his conservative peers, however, Ferguson does not cast his defense of imperial expansion in terms of its benefits for the United States—as a strategy of prevention against potential aggressors or as a mechanism to secure American dominance for the foreseeable future. Instead, he views an American empire as a boon to its subjects. As he explains, he has “no objection in principle to an American empire,” for indeed, “many parts of the world would benefit from a period of American rule.” To be sure, American rule must be subject to constraints. Empire is beneficial, he avers, if it is imbued with, and institutionalizes, the spirit of liberalism: enlightened and non-corrupt administration, fiscal stability, and free markets. In short, what the world needs is not empire per se: it needs a liberal empire.‚In pursuing this project, the United States needn’t venture forth untutored because it can draw upon the considerable achievements of its predecessor, the British empire, which was the first to use its power to spread liberal institutions to the developing world. The British experience plays a dual role in this argument. First, it provides a record of historical achievement, which gives support to the view that a properly conducted imperialism can be a force for social improvement. Second, it offers lessons on how to properly go about colonizing those who need it. And there is no shortage of needy nations. Ferguson mentions, in passing, the Central African Republic, Uganda, Liberia, Rwanda, Chad, Niger, Eritrea, Guinnea-Bissau, Burundi, Ethiopia, Somalia, Afghanistan, and several others. That they are almost all in Africa does not escape his notice. The fact is, he writes, that the African “experiment” with decolonization (as he calls it) has largely failed. For many countries across the continent, the only hope is to be folded into a new empire, which could finish the job that the British started.

The only problem is that the United States seems unwilling to accept the challenge. It is chary to go beyond the imposition of informal control over its minions and hence is unable to provide the benefits of direct colonial rule. Ferguson’s large ambition is to persuade American elites to shed their hesitancy and embrace, for the good of the world, their colonial mission.

Ferguson’s defense of liberal empire has made him into something of a media celebrity: he is featured prominently on national radio and television, a much sought-after speaker on the lecture circuit, and even the star narrator of two television series. Although the attention is unusual for a professional historian, it is not entirely surprising. Here we have views that were, until recently, associated with the crackpot Right now being defended by a rising academic star who comes with all the status of Oxford (his previous employer) and Harvard. More surprising is the reception that his book has received in established academic journals and magazines. One might have thought that, in the most respectable organs of the liberal intelligentsia, a book calling for the resuscitation of colonial rule would have met with at least a few raised eyebrows. Instead, it has been given a surprisingly warm welcome. John Lewis Gaddis goes so far as to single out for special praise the call for the United States to colonize parts of the world to save them from their infirmities; in fact, Gaddis worries that the book’s other shortcomings might prevent a more serious consideration of the need for American “tutelage” of these deserving states. Further to the right, Charles Krauthammer has echoed Ferguson’s fond remembrance of the British Empire. In the fall 2004 issue of The National Interest he offers that the United States “could use a colonial office in the state department—a direct reference to British institutions.

Were it not for this warm reception, there would not be a pressing call to engage the arguments in Colossus. The book doesn’t cohere especially well, being more a concatenation of loosely connected essays than a well-structured argument. Ferguson writes in a highly discursive fashion, scattering the text with claims and asides that are often only distantly connected with the theme at hand. Some of them are so outlandish that they seem less the handiwork of a respected historian than of an academic shock jock. What, for example, are we to make of the notion that the United States ought to have seriously considered using nuclear weapons against China during the Korean War? The actual arguments Ferguson makes to support his case are by no means new; to the contrary, he trots out some of the hoariest myths of the colonial experience. To make matters worse, his own narrative undermines several of his central points, as I shall demonstrate below.

The main reason to examine the book closely, then, is that it reflects a widening current of opinion among American intellectuals, including its liberal wing. It is the fact of the book’s success, and the warm praise showered upon its author, that warrants a sustained examination of its arguments.

* * *

Ferguson identifies colonial rule with sound governance, and this identification lies behind his fondness for the imperial idea. Sound governance is, he says, the most significant British legacy—valuable as an end in itself, but also because it furthers democracy and economic growth. Ferguson can’t quite maintain that colonialism directly generated democracy, but he suggests that it laid the foundation by tutoring imperial subjects on the finer points of statecraft and by building secure administrative apparatuses. And by its commitment to the rule of law, secure property rights, and “sound” fiscal management, colonialism encouraged entrepreneurial initiative and coaxed an impressive economic performance out of the colonies. This wasn’t true of the whole span of colonial rule. Ferguson doesn’t think that the 18th-century slave trade, for example, catalyzed African democracy. He restricts his claims to the Victorian era, starting after the Indian Sepahi Rebellion, through the Scramble for Africa and the first decades of the 20th century. This was the high-water mark of liberal empire.

Colossus is a short book that makes many claims. In assessing them, we need to ask two main questions. First, are the claims true? In particular, was British rule basically about sound governance and the building blocks of democracy? And second, if they are true—if colonialism did have the beneficial outcomes Ferguson attributes to it—was colonial rule necessary to producing such outcomes? Was succumbing to external rule the price that colonies had to pay for democracy and modern economic growth?

Ferguson bases his defense of colonialism principally on the Indian experience, so I’ll start on the subcontinent. As it happens, the Victorian era provides a strong test of Ferguson’s claims about the quality of British statecraft, since it was marked by a series of severe droughts in areas of colonial rule. Thanks to Amartya Sen, we now know that famines are not naturally occurring phenomena; they can largely be averted, or at least minimized, if authorities intervene swiftly and decisively. If drought does turn into severe famine, it is most likely because of a breakdown in, or an absence of, well-functioning social institutions. On the Indian subcontinent, which relies heavily on the timeliness of the annual monsoons, droughts occurred periodically. Over the centuries, local elites and villagers had built up a rudimentary apparatus—in effect, an insurance system—to blunt the worst effects of the crop failures, and the British inherited this system as they took over. So at the very least, a regime that prided itself on good governance ought to have performed at least as well as its predecessors in minimizing damage from droughts.

In reality, the Victorian era witnessed perhaps the worst famines in Indian history. Their severity, and the role of colonial authorities in this pattern of disaster, has been brought to light by Mike Davis in his stunning book Late Victorian Holocausts. Even before the onset of the Victorian famines, warning signals were in place: C. Walford showed in 1878 that the number of famines in the first century of British rule had already exceeded the total recorded cases in the previous two thousand years. But the grim reality behind claims to “good governance” truly came to light in the very decades that Ferguson trumpets. According to the most reliable estimates, the deaths from the 1876–1878 famine were in the range of six to eight million, and in the double-barreled famine of 1896–1897 and 1899–1900, they probably totaled somewhere in the range of 17 to 20 million. So in the quarter century that marks the pinnacle of colonial good governance, famine deaths average at least a million per year.

Two factors contributed to this outcome. First, the structure of the colonial revenue system—with its high and inflexible tax rates—drastically increased peasant vulnerability to drought. Whereas pre-colonial authorities had tended to modulate revenue demands to the vagaries of the harvest, the British rejected this tradition. Agrarian revenues during the 19th century were critical to the colonial state, and to funding British regional and global military campaigns. So the screws on the peasant were kept tight, regardless of circumstance. This remorseless pressure drove a great number of peasants to the edge of subsistence, making them deeply vulnerable to periodic shocks in the agrarian cycle. Hence it is no surprise that, according to a report of 1881, 80 percent of all the famine fatalities came from the poorest 20 percent of the population—precisely those peasants who lived on the brink of disaster.

The second, more proximate factor was the administrative response to famine, which is neatly summed up in the Report of the Famine Commission of 1878: “The doctrine that in time of famine the poor are entitled to demand relief . . . would probably lead to the doctrine that they are entitled to such relief at all times . . . which we cannot contemplate without serious apprehension.” So Viceroy Lytton sent a stern warning that administrators should stoutly resist what he called “humanitarian hysterics” and ordered that there be “no interference of any kind on the part of Government with the object of reducing the price of food.” British officials energetically held the line against humanitarianism as grain prices skyrocketed upward. “Sound” public finance—according to Ferguson, one of the great gifts of Victorian governance—trumped even the most meager efforts at relief the moment they strained at the exchequer. Curzon, who oversaw the decimation wrought by the 1899 famine, warned that “any government which imperiled the financial position of India in the interests of prodigal philanthropy would be open to serious criticism; but any Government which by indiscriminate alms-giving weakened the fibre and demoralized the self-reliance of the population, would be guilty of a public crime.”

To help Indians internalize this Spartan ethic, Lytton, Elgin and Curzon shut down all but the most anemic relief efforts across the country. Grain surpluses in states where rainfall was adequate were not used for famine relief but were shipped instead to England, which apparently could relinquish its own self-reliance in agriculture without descending into moral turpitude. To further help the Indian peasant pursue his virtuous path, all pleas for tax relief were rebuffed, and collection efforts were redoubled: not a rupee of revenue was to be left on the parched plains. And in case peasants didn’t get the point that they were supposed to pay the government and not the other way around, relief camps were closed down in areas where tax collection threatened to fall short of normal receipts.

These taxes, it should be noted, were not covering the administrative costs of good governance, but were paying for British colonial wars—the Afghan wars in Lytton’s time, and the Boer War in Curzon’s reign. So as the British extended their empire across new frontiers, the bodies of the Indian peasants funding the effort were piling up outside the Viceregal verandas. The colonial state consciously forswore any attempt at intervening and averting these catastrophes. In so doing, it reversed centuries long traditions of famine relief, set aside known techniques of reducing mortality, telling the “natives” all the while that it was being done for their own good.

This last point bears emphasis. It isn’t that the British responded to the crisis with insufficient alacrity, or that they showed a want of resolve. The point instead is that they resolutely—indeed, with homicidal intensity—pursued policies that predictably escalated the human disasters. Ferguson notes that the late Victorian famines were indeed a pity but “were far more environmental than political than origin.” But he does not advance a shred of evidence in support of this thesis. A far more appropriate conclusion is the one drawn by Davis himself, that “imperial policies toward starving ‘subjects’ were the moral equivalent of bombs dropped from 18,000 feet.”

The sheer scale of human suffering wrought by the colonial state in just these few decades has deep moral significance. Even if Ferguson’s claims about the other positive legacies were true, we could justifiably wonder if they counterbalanced the staggering levels of suffering and death produced by the Victorian famines. But there is no call to concede to Ferguson his other arguments—either that British colonialism fostered economic growth in the colonies or that it encouraged the transfer of democratic institutions.

* * *

When it comes to the putative economic benefits of empire, Ferguson is a garden-variety neoliberal. Imperialism was great because it promoted the integration of markets and subordinated indigenous peoples to the stern hand of fiscal and monetary prudence. “[It] seems unequivocal,” he announces, that “Britain’s continued policy of free trade was beneficial to its colonies.” This he contrasts to the maladroit policies pursued by the natives after they acquired independence—which included high tariffs, industrial planning, labor protection, and the like. It is because of these policies that the “experiment with political independence . . . has been a disaster for most poor countries.” What liberal empire did, and will do again if the U.S. can gather up its resolve, was to save the natives from themselves.

A venerable literature criticizes the economics of empire—for draining wealth from the colonies, deindustrializing their economies, and discriminating against local industry. But Ferguson will have none of it. To the contrary, he insists, being in the empire brought the benefits that come from joining an exclusive club—colonies had the imprimatur of international, especially British, investors. Financial managers, always nervous about the possibility of default, saw a country’s colonial status as a kind of guarantee against government default on loans, precisely because they trusted the administrative expertise that Britain brought with it. The most notable effect of colonialism, he tells us, was that it provided the colonies access to British financial flows, which entered these regions as vast pools of capital ready to be invested. That, coupled with the sound governance that the masters provided, was the real benefit of the empire, one which would not have otherwise been available.

Once again, Ferguson manages to steer clear of the facts. The most striking fact about British capital flows in the Victorian era is how little of it went to the colonies. Ferguson reports that around 40 percent of British investments went to the colonies in these years. But the vast bulk of the money was flowing to the colonies of recent settlement—the self-governing colonies of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Only a small fraction went to the areas that Ferguson pretends to be talking about, namely, the dependent colonies in Asia and Africa, where the “experiment” of independence has failed. More than 70 percent of all the money that went to “the empire” was flowing to the colonies of recent settlement, leaving slightly more than a quarter—some 10 percent of total foreign investment—to be split between Asia and Africa. By comparison, the free countries of South and Central America—who did not have the good fortune of being subjugated by the British—did better than the colonies, as of course did the dominions. These facts, well known since Paish’s report at the turn of the century, have been confirmed by every major study of the past five decades.

Financial investors were, then, far more impressed by independent Latin America as an investment outlet than by the tropical colonies in Asia and Africa. Ferguson may be right in saying that England was not a drain on colonial wealth—though scholarly debate on this issue continues. But it is quite clear that the inverse of this argument—that the colonies were a magnet for British wealth—is not true.

In any case, there is no reason to focus so narrowly on numbers. The more important issue is the wider set of policies that characterized British colonialism and their economic effects. Here, Ferguson simply rehearses the standard neoliberal litany: since property rights were respected, fiscal prudence exercised, and open trade practiced, the imperial order was the best that the dependencies could have had it.

But in the Victorian era, high tariffs were strongly associated with high growth rates. Paul Bairoch made this observation years ago, and Kevin O’Rourke has recently confirmed it. It is consistent with the more general fact, well known to historians for generations, that all developed economies relied on subsidies and tariffs for substantial periods during their initial industrialization. So while Fergsuon assumes, without fact or argument, that the enforcement of a free-trade regime was beneficial to the colonies, we would seem on surer ground assuming the opposite, as did the nationalists whom he so consistently disparages.

In countries that developed in the 19th century, the state took an active and strategic role in the local economy—this was not the neoliberal’s night-watchman state. But, then, colonial states weren’t especially good night watchmen. They actively maintained policies to promote colonial and not local needs. So in the case of India, Ferguson’s exemplar, the main goals were threefold: to use India as the lynchpin of imperial defense policy, to keep the country open for British exports, and to siphon off its export receipts to London so England could balance its external account. Fulfilling these goals meant, as a standard history of the colonial economy explains, that “administrative concerns took precedence over development initiatives.” In fact, the main effect of colonial policy was undoubtedly a deflationary one, as a consequence of low tariffs, high exchange rates (to encourage imports) and a massive military budget, most of which was spent abroad. Indeed, the very book that Ferguson relies on to make his case, by Tirthankar Roy, shows that the development expenditures of the colonial state declined over time. We can do no better than to echo Tomlinson’s conclusion, that “the advances that were made in India . . . were largely achieved in spite of the inertia created by an administration that ruled in economic matters by a mixture of benign and malign neglect.”

* * *

With regard to self-determination, Ferguson maintains that the British bequeathed two critical legacies to their colonies: the idea of liberty, and the parliamentary institutions associated with democracy. Here, Ferguson is on firmer historical ground: democratic norms and institutions did migrate from England to its colonies. But as a defense of colonialism, this fact cannot suffice. For that, it needs to be shown that stable democratic institutions would not have emerged without British colonialism. But while the link to England may have been important for the parliamentary form of democracy, there is no reason to fix on one institutional form of democracy. The relevant issue is whether democracy would have emerged, whatever its form, and Ferguson gives us no reason for doubts on this score. There was no British tutelage of, say, Brazil, or Costa Rica, or Chile, all of which moved toward a more executive-centered democracy rapidly in the early 20th century. Of course, these countries had a colonial history, but hardly one that is congenial to Ferguson’s theory—unless he wants to make a case for Spanish and Portuguese colonialism as being liberal in nature. So even without British colonialism, some kind of movement for popular rights would likely have emerged in the developing world through the course of the past century or so. It could have been derailed, to be sure—but this possibility should be weighed against the horrible devastation wrought by colonial “good governance.” Why, then, insist that the minions should be happy to have suffered under colonial rule?

Ferguson makes it sound as if colonial authorities stuck around basically because they were readying their wards for self-rule. And it is easy to find lengthy disquisitions from Macaulay, Churchill, Smuts, and the like to this effect. Indeed, whenever he feels compelled to present evidence for his view, Ferguson quotes from them, rather than referring to the historical record. We very quickly encounter Churchill enunciating the general principle behind British colonialism: “to reclaim from barbarism fertile regions and large populations . . . to give peace to warring tribes” and so on. Soon thereafter, Macaulay is drafted to the campaign, declaring, “never will I attempt to avert or to retard” Indian self-rule, which, when it comes, “will be the proudest day in Indian history.”

Once demands for self-rule emerged in Asia and Africa, authorities responded with violence. From the early decades of the 20th century, progress toward self-rule proceeded in lockstep with the strength of the movements demanding it. But Ferguson makes no reference at all to either the massive independence movements that finally rid the world of British colonialism, or to the quality of the British response to them. But even the briefest consideration of these phenomena undermines the notion that the colonizers were educating the “natives” in the ways of self-rule.

In omitting this political dynamic, Ferguson’s obscures perhaps the most important aspect of the story behind institutional transfer. British resistance to independence movements was not exclusively military. When confronted with anti-colonial mobilizations, the British would make political concessions on the one hand, while taking steps to divide the opposition on the other. In India, the divide-and-rule strategy exploited existing religious divisions by communalizing the vote. From the passage of the Minto-Morley reforms in 1909, the advancement of the independence movement also brought in train a deepening of Hindu–Muslim tensions, as electoral mobilization—limited though the elections were—pitted communities against each other.

This maneuver was part of the deeply conservative core of colonial administrative techniques, which mobilized—and thus amplified—local traditions of rule and regulation. For the British, the central dilemma, as Mahmood Mamdani has reminded us, was to figure out how “a tiny and foreign minority [can] rule over an indigenous majority.” The natural strategy was to rely heavily on local elites—tribal chiefs, landlords, and especially the priestly strata—and thereby reinforce the symbolic, cultural, and legal traditions that sanctioned rule by these elites. In India, it meant using local caste and religious divisions and giving them a salience that they had never enjoyed before. In Africa, this entailed a splintering of civil law and political rights on ethnic and tribal criteria, relying ever more strongly on the despotic rule of chiefs and hardening indigenous linguistic and cultural divisions.

Consider the process of hardening in the case of equatorial Africa, Ferguson’s preferred target for re-colonization. Chiefs were certainly in place before the British arrival. But in pre-colonial times, chiefly power was circumscribed and balanced by both lateral checks—consisting of kinsmen, administrative functionaries, and clan bodies—and vertical checks, consisting of village councils and public assemblies. These institutions did not by any means democratize pre-colonial polities; but they did impose real social constraints on chiefly rule and thus imbue it with a degree of legitimacy. The chief was the paramount power, but his power was constantly negotiated with peers and subordinates.

Colonial rule either severely weakened or simply dissolved these social constraints. The colonial authorities needed to have clearly identifiable nodes of power through which they could exercise their rule, and these local functionaries could not be accountable to anyone but the colonizer. So the clan bodies, village councils, and public assemblies were either dissolved or made toothless against the chiefs. What remained was a stern, vertical line of authority from the colonial office, though the district administrator, to the chief—all according to London’s desires. Locally, the indigenous state structure was turned into what Mamdani has appropriately called a decentralized despotism, as chiefs were endowed with unprecedented power.

Having stripped away the checks to chiefly power, and thus the main sources of its legitimacy, the British were now confronted with the task of finding new means of making it stable. For this, they turned to customary law—with appropriate changes, decided as ever in London. The effect was that colonial rule preserved and hardened traditional structures of authority and group membership. Tribal membership now determined access to land, tax rates, and the entire gamut of rights enjoyed by African peasants. Tribal membership and identity became the primary sources of welfare—and also, by extension, a principal basis of political mobilization. Group membership of this sort in turn became a significant resource for anti-colonial movements, from the Maji Maji, to the Mau Mau, to the end of South African Apartheid. It also, not unsurprisingly, outlasted the colonial era and was the gift that the British left behind for the new governments to handle.

Ferguson seems clueless about this legacy. Colonial authorities of course did not invent caste divisions, tribalism, or religious fundamentalism. But there is little doubt that, prior to colonial rule, these divisions and religious identities were far more fluid. Left alone, they would have evolved in unpredictable ways through local negotiation and contestation over the course of time and through the formation of a central state. But the British enforced them with a vigor that was altogether new to the colonies. Far from revolutionizing local political traditions, imperial authorities rested on them and used them for their own ends. When we add this imposition to the very conscious strategy of divide and rule, it is impossible to avoid implicating colonialism in the hardening of indigenous divisions.

If the British gave the colonies parliamentary institutions, then, they also left behind the racialized, communalized, tribalized states within which the former were embedded, and which have consistently undermined the vitality of self-rule.

This double legacy suggests two alternative, though not incompatible, conclusions. The first is that the colonial legacy was a poisoned pill, bequeathing limited organs for self rule and also a host of institutions that subverted self-government. The second—stronger and more disturbing—conclusion is that if, as I have suggested, democracy was on the historical agenda anyway, then the legacy most specifically associated with colonial rule is a tribalized and communalized state, consciously created by colonial rule, and designed for precisely the divisive effects it has generated. In either case, we have compelling reason to reject Ferguson’s claim that the success of democratic institutions in the ex-colonies owes to the colonial legacy. It is far more accurate to say that what success we have seen of democratic self-rule in the ex-colonies has come about, not because of colonialism, but in spite of it.

* * *

The calamitous results of British rule should not surprise us. Colonialism was rule by an alien, despotic power, lacking local legitimacy, and utterly unaccountable to the local population. In such a situation, it was predictable that the rulers would use administrative instruments to weaken potential resistance, rather than to tutor in civic norms, and mask their assertions of power in the guise of “good governance.” Postcolonial pathologies were a natural consequence of normal colonial rule.

Ferguson’s inability to understand this is striking. And it is what lurks behind the remarkable sleight of hand that he performs in his political analysis: colonial rule gets all the credit for the things that went right but none of the blame for the disasters it left behind. Having elevated imperial history to the mythical realm of good governance, Ferguson eliminates the predictable violence of colonialism as well as any structural relation between British rule and the postcolonial order. If there was violence, repression, underdevelopment, tribal and communal statecraft, it was a product of “sins of omission”—as he pleasingly puts it—a result of the British falling short of their own noble ideals.

This blindness to the causal link between colonialism and its pathologies drives Ferguson’s equally facile conclusions about America’s own 200-year imperial history. Ferguson knows that history, and what troubles him most about it is that American imperialists, unlike their British cousins, have never stuck around in the countries they have invaded—at least not long enough to pursue the same noble ideals that drove the British. Indeed, for Ferguson, the largest failing of American empire is a kind of attention-deficit disorder. Americans have never admitted to themselves that they wield an empire. So instead of accepting their civilizing mission, they abjure it; instead of colonizing countries that “will not correct themselves”—as he puts it in his schoolmasterly way—they seek to dictate from afar.

Leave aside for the moment the untenable assumptions about the civilizing motivations and effects of the British predecessors, and attend, once again, to the facts that Ferguson mobilizes. Have America’s own interventions, with their own record of bloody devastation, fallen short of their virtuous effects because they failed to turn into long-term occupations? In response to this question, Ferguson engages in more serious historical argument, but in so doing, undermines his own case.

As to motivations, Ferguson shows that, as far as the developing world is concerned, American foreign-policy elites have not shown much interest in their victims’ economic development or democratic enhancement. He insists that noble motives were at work, with the usual reference to Wilsonian internationalism. But he finds that alongside this, “older imperialist impulses continued to work.” As his narrative unfolds, it becomes pretty clear that the “older impulses” were not just working alongside the high-minded internationalism but were undermining it at every turn. We are shown that economic and strategic considerations, not high-minded internationalism, dictated imperial policy toward Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Mexico, and Honduras—where by the 1920s, “any pretense of interest in democratic government was abandoned” by the United States, which was more concerned with the well-being of United Fruit. Indeed, we are told that the United States not only intervened to overthrow democratically elected governments when they interfered with imperial interests, but that when “left-wing governments were overthrown with American assistance or approval, they were generally replaced by military dictatorships whose murderous conduct did nothing to endear the United States to Hispanic-Americans.”

These observations completely undercut Ferguson’s central argument: what difference would it have made if the Americans had stayed on as colonizers if their motives were to set up “a decent place for the National City Bank Boys to collect revenues in”? How would “staying the course” have helped to promote democracy or the rule of law?

Let us consider the two countries that the United States did occupy as colonies in the 20th century, Haiti and the Philippines. How do these cases figure in Ferguson’s argument? Hardly at all. From reading Colossus, one would not know that the United States occupied Haiti for almost 20 years and the Philippines for close to a half-century. This neglect is unfortunate, because the benefits of good governance and institutional transfer would surely be most evident here, where Americans had the power—and the long-term engagement—they lacked elsewhere. It might have been illuminating to examine how, as a colonial power, the United States was able to achieve substantially better results than it managed with the less committed invasions of Central and South America. Unfortunately, however, Ferguson does not explore the differences between Nicaragua’s Somoza, the misbegotten spawn of a half-hearted imperial effort, and Haiti’s “Papa Doc” Francois Duvalier, the legitimate progeny of a fully committed colonial occupation.

Of course, the fact of colonization made no difference to the results, at least not of a kind that would be congenial to Ferguson’s argument. The virtuous outcomes of sustained occupation have never materialized because the occupations were used to undermine any efforts toward such ends. In this respect, the American record conforms to the record of British colonialism. But just as Ferguson can’t make the connection between British colonialism and the devastation it wrought, so too is he blind to the forces behind, and consequences of, the American counterpart.

Bad things, it seems, just happen to follow these empires around.

* * *

Pace Ferguson, America’s reluctance to follow in Britain’s footsteps does not derive from a national lack of resolve (whatever that might mean). It is, rather, a consequence of the United States being a latecomer to the game on a genuinely global level. As Ferguson seems to recognize, nothing in American history suggests a squeamishness about the nasty business of conquest. It’s just that, for the first hundred years or so, there was so much to conquer in North America. Westward expansion involved considerable annexation of Mexican territory, not to mention the annihilation of Native American tribes. A rapidly expanding frontier and, more importantly, a burgeoning national market, provided more than enough opportunity for profit; on the other hand, the same expansion consumed considerable political and military energy. America was interested in imperialism, but empire began at home.

This much Ferguson appears to understand. What puzzles and frustrates him is that the process was not continued with appropriate vigor in the 20th century (aside from the admirable efforts in Haiti and the Philippines). But there is nothing to puzzle over, if we appreciate the history of 20th-century colonialism. The British empire came to an end because independence movements made its continuation impossible. These movements make no real appearance in Ferguson’s account, and he seems genuinely not to understand their significance. This is why he so coolly enjoins American elites to embrace the venture, wondering all the while why they don’t. What he fails to confront is that the independence movements are not just of historical significance, but are symptomatic of a deeper phenomenon, which makes any future colonial projects impossible.

This phenomenon, of course, is the emergence of national identities and a deep sense of national rights. Colonial empires might have been possible in the 18th and 19th centuries, prior to the emergence of strong national identities; but they became increasingly untenable as such identities came into being and basic notions of self-determination took root. For countries that had annexed territory in the preceding two centuries, the only real option was to fight for as long as seemed possible and then arrange an orderly retreat. But it made no sense for a country, operating in a world of nationalist movements and convictions, to assume the costs of colonial occupation. Britain operated differently from the United States as a global power not because of a remarkable national capacity for sustained attention but because of the pre-nationalist world in which British colonialism operated. Given the changes in the world, the United States adopted a prudent and effective strategy of ruling through intermediaries, quislings, or friendly autocrats.

The proposition that the United States could embark on a colonial enterprise today, with national identities arguably more powerful than ever, is mind-boggling. No peoples will accept a military occupation for any length of time, especially by the United States. Ferguson clearly doesn’t wish that American colonizers limit themselves to occupying only countries that invite their own colonization. But uninvited colonization cannot but take a despotic form. Confronted from the outset by a vast and growing popular opposition to their presence, American occupiers will have to rely overwhelmingly, if not exclusively, on military rule.

Sound familiar? The devastation now being wrought on Iraq exemplifies the essential problem with the new colonialism. Where does Ferguson think the venture will succeed, if it is being torn apart by a nation already in tatters from a brutal sanctions regime and bled dry by its own dictator? He seems to hold out hope that, once stabilized, the occupation will rest on an alliance with local elites recruited to the job. But what kind of legitimacy will any such regime enjoy? Any ruling government colored by the tint of collaboration will face unceasing opposition, because the opposition will have strong incentives to argue that any objectionable policy is really a result of subordination to the occupying power. The current situation in Iraq has historical parallels, but not of the kind Ferguson would like to see. Iraq isn’t a modern replay of the initial stages of colonial rule—the military phase of pacification, to be followed by the onset of stable indirect rule. Rather, the popular anti-colonial resistance, which historically signaled the terminus of colonial rule, has emerged in its earliest stages. The political dispensation to follow will be either stable or colonial, but not both.

Over the course of the 20th century, members of the American foreign-policy establishment understood the importance of nationalism and appreciated, as a rule, that the days of formal empire and annexation were over. So they devised a vast apparatus for wielding political and economic influence, steering states in a direction consistent with American interests, while leaving the formal apparatus of rule in local hands. That strategy was remarkably effective. In terms of its economic and strategic payoffs, the American empire has been at least as successful as its predecessor. Not only has its elite avoided formal empire, there has been no need for it.

If arguments like Ferguson’s are now enjoying wide currency today, it is an understandable reflex of a culture and an elite drunk with power: proof of Acton’s dictum about the corruptions produced by absolute power. Visions of Rome, British Viceroys and grand processions, the benevolent babus tutoring their hapless and childlike wards—these are the fantasies of an imperial elite suddenly finding itself without peer. And this explains the popularity of Ferguson’s history. For what he offers is not an analysis of empires past and present, but empire’s self-image—buffed and manicured. Until recently, such fantasies were expressed mainly by the far right, or in the laments of despondent Oxbridge dons. But with the new cabal of neocons in power, and a new imperial project seemingly underway, such fantasies resonate powerfully with elite moods.

Such fantasies would be amusing, were they not so dangerous to the rest of us.

Vivek Chibber is an assistant professor of sociology at New York University.

[Guest]

Thanks Mudy! <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->

Can anyone else recommend books on this topic - <b>East India Company/British rule of India?</b>

[Guest]

<!--QuoteBegin-imy+Jul 22 2006, 09:11 PM-->QUOTE(imy @ Jul 22 2006, 09:11 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->Thanks Mudy!  <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->

Can anyone else recommend books on this topic - <b>East India Company/British rule of India?</b>
[right][snapback]54330[/snapback][/right]
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->


<b>India in Bondage</b>
by Jabez T. Sunderland;
Lewis Copeland Company, 1932

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->FOREWORD TO THE PRESENT, NEW, REVISED EDITION
It is now two years since the publication of the first edition of "India In Bondage." During all this time, India's great struggle for freedom has been one of the most dramatic and absorbing subjects before the attention of the world. Interest in it does not show any sign of diminishing. <b>Indeed, more and more it is coming to be seen that India's cause is the world's cause, that the bondage of more than one-sixth of the human race is a menace to the world's peace and in every way a world calamity. </b>

It is because of these facts and in order to bring the record of India's struggle strictly up to date, in the light of the most accurate and latest information, that this revised edition of "India In Bondage" has been prepared and published.

The first edition of the book endeavored to portray, as comprehensively, accurately and graphically as possible, the India of 1930. The present new and revised edition aims to describe, not less fully and accurately, the India of 1932, together with the momentous events of the last two years in London and in India, and (what is highly important) the probable effects of the same on the future of India and the British Empire. I believe that the new matter contained in this revised edition will be recognized by readers as of great significance.

J. T. SUNDERLAND.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Guest]

Hi, thank you! <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->

Unfortunately, the book is out of print <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif' /><!--endemo-->

I've been constantly on the net for so many hours, every day, trying to search for books on this topic. But I've yet to find a book that shows the <b>British rule of India </b>as being one of <b>'divide-and-rule'</b>, <b>racism</b> and <b>arrogance.</b> I don't know much about this subject, hence the search, but I've heard of the <b>court intrigues in the Bengal Court</b> which favoured the British over the ruler. Thus leading up to the <b>expultion of the East India Company</b> and then the subsequent return with a private army which led to the <b>Battle of Plassey.</b> And then there is the <b>mutiny</b> and <b>British violence and atrocities, etc, etc.</b>

How come I can't find books that discuss all that without being pro-british. I've come across recent books on all topics relating to Colonial rule - the food they ate; theory of colonization; architecture, etc, etc but <b>no narrative that is anti-british?</b>

<b>'Late Victorian Holocausts' </b>and <b>'Scandal of Empire' </b> are probably close but isn't a nararative of the entire episode of colonial rule. Although, I think <b>'India, a Concise History' by Barbara and Thomas Metcalf </b>might be good.

Anyway, I hope someone out there knows of some recent, available books that put the story (and the British) straight! <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->

Kindest Regards
Imy

[Guest]

Imy, Try here.

[Guest]

thank you - most kind! <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->

[acharya]

Anthropology's Nicholas Dirks Provides Historical Context for Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children in Humanities Festival Lecture
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/03/03/ni...Dirks.html


By Kristin Sterling

Salman Rushdie's award winning novel "Midnight's Children" begins with the confession that the narrator, Saleem Sinai, was born in Bombay, not just once upon a time, as many fables would have it, but at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the moment of India's independence from British imperial rule. The date is significant to millions because it represents the end of nearly 200 years of British oppression on the Indian subcontinent.

In one of the opening events for the Midnight's Children Humanities Festival, a series of public dialogues and discussions to give context to the play and celebrate the marriage of arts and ideas that the production exemplifies, Nicholas Dirks, Franz Boas Professor of Anthropology and History and chair of the anthropology department, offered historical background for "Midnight's Children." He addressed the atrocities of British imperial rule that ultimately led to the independence of India and the creation of Pakistan. Knowing the complicated history of India's struggle for independence helps to offer insight into the way Saleem views the world around him.

Britain's interest in India began in the 1600s when the East Indian Company established trading stations in Surat, Bombay and Calcutta, using the colony to import spices, silk and cotton and to export textiles. By 1757, the British empire in India began.

In response, a tide of nationalism began to rise in the 19th century and a series of protests ensued. After the Great Rebellion of 1857, Queen Victoria issued a proclamation permitting religious toleration and ceasing further annexation.

In 1919, a group of Indians staged the biggest and most violent anti-British protest since the Great Rebellion. Protests were sparked by the combination of post-World War I grievances, growing nationalist sentiment, a developing belief that Mahatma Gandhi could provide leadership and reactions to brutal repression imposed by the British, especially in the Punjab.

On April 11, 1919, General Reginald Dyer, the lieutenant governor of Punjab, declared martial law. Two days later, a peaceful, unarmed crowd of villagers gathered, unaware of the ban on meetings. Dyer's troops opened fire on the crowd, resulting in 1,500 casualties, many of them women and children. This incident propelled the nationalist movement in India, while the British hailed Dyer as a hero for defending Britain's imperialism in the East.

Despite the tremendous use of force against his followers, Gandhi continued to promote the non-violent, non-cooperation movement and began to recruit Muslim support. Over the next year, Gandhi organized a series of strikes throughout the country. Britain responded with more repression. In November 1921, Britain outlawed all voluntary organizations, imposed restrictions on the press and imprisoned 30,000 Indians.

When an outbreak of peasant violence occurred in February 1922, killing 23 policemen, Gandhi called the effort off, fearing that his followers were not ready for the final stages of a movement that depended on peace as a means to an end.

Gandhi reorganized in 1942 to start the Quit India revolt, a non-violent campaign of mass struggle and resistance. The strategy soon took the form of guerilla warfare -- 500 post offices, 250 railway stations and 150 police stations were destroyed or damaged, trains were derailed and courts were attacked. British police and troops responded by taking hostages, imposing fines, setting villages on fire and staging public whippings. "Colonial panic" set in and by the end of the year, nearly 100,000 Indians had been arrested.

The combination of nationalist mobilization, exhaustion and depletion from World War II finally brought the British to consider "quitting" the continent. In June 1945, the British convened the Simla Conference, in the foothills of the Himalayas, to consider post-colonial development of India. Although everyone present agreed that there needed to be parity between Hindus and Muslims, the conference broke down without resolution.

Under pressure from more strikes, in 1946 the British government allowed an interim, independent "Indian" government to be established. Though there was still no formal talk of partition, the British proposed a loose confederation with three parts, of which two were Muslim-controlled.

On August 16, 1946, violence broke out between the Hindus and Muslims with unprecedented communal riots in Calcutta, Bombay and Noakhali. With the growing violence, the British began to plan their departure, setting June 30, 1948, as the date for withdrawal from India.

In early March 1947 the Muslim League brought down the Coalition government in Punjab and renewed its claim to form the government in the province that was seen as the cornerstone of the Pakistan proposal. In June 1947 it was decided that Pakistan would split off from India. Officials were given one month to draw the borders between India and Pakistan and the rush to independence became the rush toward partition, according to Dirks.

As hundreds of thousands were on the move to return "home," the violence again increased. Nearly a million people were killed and five million fled their homes. Borders closed and early beliefs of freedom of movement and joint citizenship were abandoned.

Had the British been prepared to work toward a "transfer of power" before the combination of World War II and overwhelming nationalist resistance brought them to their knees, Dirks said that they may not only have avoided the tragedies associated with partition, but have been able to play a very different role in the transition.

"Instead, the end turned as nasty as the beginning -- with all its corruption, scandal, violence and disruption -- had been 200 years before," said Dirks. These problems, Dirks added, are carried by Saleem throughout "Midnight's Children," burdening him with "the weight of too much history."

"Saleem confessed in retrospect that history's multiple determinations and accidents led to failures not just of the imagination but of the dream of freedom itself. In some ways all midnight's children were fathered and mothered by history," said Dirks.

[acharya]

<img src='http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/southasia/newmanas/babywhegirl.jpg' border='0' alt='user posted image' />

An English baby girl being carried on a palanquin by Indian bearers, on the road fo Nainital. Photograph dated 1904.

Memsahib in Rickshaw, photograph from South India, C. 1895.

"The Saga of Subhas Bose", review of Leonard Gordon's Brothers Against the Raj, Economic and Political Weekly 27, no. 4 (25 January 1992):155-156.

"The Incident of the Crawling Lane: Women in the Punjab Disturbances of 1919", Genders, no. 16 (Spring 1993):35-60.

"Surat Under the Raj", review of Douglas Haynes, Rhetoric and Ritual in Colonial India, Economic and Political Weekly 28, no. 18 (1 May 1993):863-865.

"Imperial Nostalgia", review of The Raj: India and the British 1600-1947, by C. A. Bayly et al., Economic and Political Weekly 28, nos. 29-30 (17-24 July 1993):1511-13.

"Beyond Alterity", review of Sara Suleri's The Rhetoric of English India, Economic and Political Weekly 30, no. 5 (4 February 1995):254-55.

"The Courtesan and the Indian Novel", a review-article on Hasan Shah, The Nautch Girl, and Mirza M. H. Ruswa, Umra Jan Ada, Courtesan of Lucknow, Indian Literature, no. 139 (Sept-Oct 1995):164-70.

"Masculinity and Femininity in The Chess Players: Sexual Moves, Colonial Manoeuvres, and an Indian Game", in Manushi: A Journal of Women and Society, nos. 92-93 (Jan.-April 1996):41-50.

"Good Nazis and just scholars: much ado about the British Empire", review of P. J. Marshall, ed., Cambridge Illustrated History of the British Empire, Race and Class 38, no. 4 (April-June 1997):89-101.

"Hill Stations: Pinnacles of the Raj." Review article on Dale Kennedy, The Magic Mountains: Hill Stations and the British Raj, Capitalism, Nature, Socialism 8, no. 3 (September 1997):123-132.

"John Stuart Mill and India", a review-article. New Quest, no. 54 (January-February 1998):54-64.

"Everyday Crime, Native Mendacity and the Cultural Psychology of Justice in Colonial India." Studies in History (New Series) 15, no. 1 (1999):145-66.

[acharya]

Memsahib in Rickshaw, photograph from South India, C. 1895.
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/southasia/Histo...BrIndia2im.html

[acharya]

http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/southasia/Histo...sh/BrIndia.html

[acharya]

Official and Semi-Official Documents:


A: The British Perspective


Campbell-Johnson, Alan. Mission with Mountbatten. London: Hale, 1982; reprinted, New York: Atheneum, 1986.

Mansergh, N.; Lumby, E. W. R.; and Moon, Penderel, eds. India: The Transfer of Power 1942-1947. 12 vols. London: HMSO, 1970-1983.

Moon, Penderel. Divide and Quit. Delhi: Oxford UP, 1998 [1961].

Philips, C. H. and Wainwright, M. D., eds. The Partition of India: Policies and Perspectives 1935-47. London: Allen and Unwin, 1970.

B: The Pakistani Perspective


Government of Pakistan. Disturbances in the Punjab 1947: A Compilation of Official Documents. Islamabad, 1995.

The Partition of Punjab: A Compilation of Official Documents. Lahore: Sang-e-Meel, 1993.


Pirzada, Syed Sharifuddin, ed. Foundations of Pakistan: All-India Muslim League Documents, 1906-1947. Karachi: National Publishing House, 1970. 2 vols. Volume 1: 1906-1924; Volume 2: 1924-1947.

West Punjab Government. Note on the Sikh Plan. Lahore: Superintendent, Government Printing, 1948.

West Punjab Government. RSS in the Punjab. Lahore: Superintendent, Government Printing, 1948.

West Punjab Government. The Sikhs in Action. Lahore: Superintendent, Government Printing, 1948.

C: The Indian Perspective


Chopra, P. N., ed. Towards Freedom: Documents on the Movement for Independence in India, 1937. Delhi: Oxford UP, 1986.

Gupta, P. S., ed. . Towards Freedom: Documents on the Movement for Independence in India, 1942-1944. Delhi: Oxford UP, 1997.

Menon, V. P. The Transfer of Power in India. Bombay: Orient Longman, 1957.

Singh, Kirpal, ed. Select Documents on Partition of Punjab -- 1947, India and Pakistan. Delhi: National Bookshop, 1991.

Talib, G. S., ed. Muslim League Attack on Sikhs and Hindus in the Punjab 1947. New Delhi: SGPC, reprinted 1991.

D: Other Compilations of Official Records:


Sadullah, Mian Muhammad, compiler. The Partition of the Punjab 1947. Lahore: National Documentation Centre, 1983. 4 vols. Part II of Volume 1 contains the memoranda and representations submitted to the Punjab Boundary Commission by the Congress, Muslim League, the Sikhs, and others; Volume II contains the proceedings of the commission, or the oral arguments made before the commission; Volume III carries the reports of the members of the Commission, and Volume IV contains large-sized reproductions of maps. This is an indispensable collection.

II: History/Historiography


Ahmad, Aijaz. " ‘Tryst with destiny’ -- free but divided." India (15 August 1997), Special Number, pp. 21-28.

Ahmed, Ishtiaq. "The 1947 Partition of India: A Paradigm for Pathological Politics in India and Pakistan", Asian Ethnicity 3, no. 1 (March 2002).

Azad, Maulana Abul Kalam. India Wins Freedom. New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1959; new ed., 1988.

Bhattarcharjea, Ajit. Countdown to Partition: The Final Days. New Delhi: HarperCollins, 1998.

Brasted, H. V. and Bridge, Carl. "The Transfer of Power in South Asia: An Historiographical Review." South Asia 17, no. 1 (1994), pp. 93-114.

Chatterji, Joya. Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition, 1932-1947. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994.

Chatterji, Joya. "The Fashioning of a Frontier: The Radcliffe Line and Bengal’s Border Landscape, 1947-52." Modern Asian Studies 33, no. 1 (1999), pp. 185-242.

Copland, I. "The Further Shores of Partition: Ethnic Cleansing in Rajasthan, 1947." Past and Present, no. 160 (August 1998).

French, Patrick. Liberty or Death: India’s Journey to Independence and Division. London, 1997.

Gilmartin, David. Empire and Islam: Punjab and the Making of Pakistan. London: Oxford UP, 1988.

Guhathakurta, Meghna. "Understanding the Bengal Partition through reconstructing family histories: a Case Study", Journal of Social Studies 76 (April 1997), pp. 57-65..

Hasan, Murhirul. Legacy of a Divided Nation: India’s Muslims Since Independence. New Delhi: Oxford, 1997.

Hasan, Mushirul. "Memories of a Fragmented Nation: Rewriting the Histories of India’s Partition." Economic and Political Weekly 33, no. 41 (10 October 1998), pp. 2662-68. [Also included in Hasan, Inventing Boundaries {see below}, pp. 27-44]

Hasan, Mushirul, ed. India’s Partition: Process, Strategy and Mobilization. New Delhi: Oxford UP, 1993.

Hasan, Mushirul, ed. Inventing Boundaries: Gender, Politics and the Partition of India. Delhi: Oxford UP, 2000.

Hodson, H. V. The Great Divide: Britain-India-Pakistan. Karachi: Oxford UP, 1993 [1969].

Jalal, Ayesha. The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985.

Jalal, Ayesha. "Conjuring Pakistan: History as Official Imagining." International Journal of Middle East Studies 8, no. 4 (1974).

Jalal, Ayesha. "Secularists, Subalterns, and the Stigma of ‘Communalism’: Partition Historiography Revisited." Indian Economic and Social History Review 33, no. 1 (1996), pp. 93-103.

Jalal, Ayesha. "Nation, Reason and Religion: Punjab’s Role in the Partition of India." Economic and Political Weekly 33, no. 32 (8 August 1998), pp. 2183-90.

Jha, P. S. Kashmir, 1947: Rival Versions of History. Delhi: Oxford UP, 1996.

Khosla, G. D. Stern Reckoning: A Survey of the Events Leading Up to and following the Partition of India. New Delhi: Oxford, 1989 [1949].

Kumar, Ravinder, ed. "Partition Historiography: Some Reflections." In India’s Partition, Prelude and Legacies, eds. Ramakand R. Mahan (Jaipur: Rawat, 1998).

Lamb, Alistair. Birth of a Tragedy: Kashmir 1947. Hertingfordbury: Roxford Books, 1994.

Lohia, Ram Manohar. Guilty Men of India’s Partition. Allahabad: Navahind, 1960.

Low, D. A. and Brasted, Howard, eds. Freedom, Trauma, Continuities: Northern India and Independence. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1998.

Lumby, E. W. R. The Transfer of Power. London: Allen, 1954.

Mandelbaum, David G. "Hindu-Moslem Conflict in India", The Middle East Journal 1, no. 4 (October 1947), pp. 369-385.

Michel, A. A. The Indus Rivers: A Study of the Effects of Partition. New Haven: Yale UP, 1967.

Moore, R. J. Escape from Empire: The Atlee Government and the Indian Problem. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1982.

Mosley, Leonard. The Last Days of the Raj. London, 1961.

Naim, C. M., ed. Iqbal, Jinnah and Pakistan: The Vision and the Reality. Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 1979.

Pandey, B. N. The Break-up of British India. London: Macmillan, 1969.

Pandey, Gyanendra. "The Prose of Otherness." In David Arnold and David Hardiman (eds.), Subaltern Studies VIII: Essays in Honour of Ranajit Guha, pp. 188-221. Delhi: Oxford UP, 1994.

Samaddar, Ranabir, ed. Reflections on Partition in the East. New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1997.

Sherwani, L. A. The Partition of India and Mountbatten. Karachi: Council for Pakistan Studies, 1986.

Singh, Anita Inder. The Origins of the Partition of India, 1936-1947. New Delhi: Oxford UP, 1987.

Talbot, Ian. Freedom’s Cry: The Popular Dimension in the Pakistan Movement and Partition Experience in Northwest India. Karachi: Oxford UP, 1996.

Talbot, Ian and Gurharpal Singh, eds. Region and Partition: Bengal, Punjab and the Partition of the Subcontinent. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Tinker, Hugh. Experiment with Freedom, India and Pakistan 1947. London: Oxford UP, 1967.

Yong, Tan Tai and Kudaisya, Gyanesh. The Aftermath of Partition in South Asia. London: Routledge, 2000.



III: Fiction and Literary Studies


Bhalla, Alok. Stories about the Partition of India. 3 vols. New Delhi: HarperCollins, 1994.

Bhalla, Alok. The Life and Works of Saadat Hasan Manto. Simla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 1997.

Cowasjee, S. and Duggal, K. S., eds. Orphans of the Storm: Stories on the Partition of India. New Delhi: UBS Publishers, 1995.

Hasan, Murhirul, ed. India Partitioned: The Other Face of Freedom. 2 vols. New Delhi: Roli Books, 1995.

Manto, Saadat Hasan. Kingdom’s End and Other Stories. Trans. Khalid Hasan. Delhi: Penguin, 1987.

Manto, Saadat Hasan. Partition Sketches and Stories. New Delhi: Viking, 1991.

Manto, Saadat Hasan. Black Milk: A Collection of Short Stories. Trans. Hamid Jalal. Lahore: Sang-e-Meel Publications, 1997.

Memon, M. U. An Epic Unwritten: The Penguin Book of Partition Stories. New Delhi: Penguin, 1998.

Mufti, Aamir. "A Greater Story-writer than God: Genre, Gender and Minority in Late Colonial India", in Subaltern Studies XI: Community, Gender and Violence, eds. Partha Chatterjee and Pradeep Jeganathan (Delhi: Permanent Black; New York: Columbia UP, 2000), pp. 2-36.


Rai, Alok. "The Trauma of Independence: Some Aspects of Progressive Hindi Literature." Journal of Arts and Ideas 6 (1984) [also included in Hasan, Inventing Boundaries, pp. 351-370].

Ravikant and Saint, Tarun K., eds. Translating Partition. New Delhi: Katha, 2001.

Sahni, Bhisham. Tamas [English tr.]. New Delhi: Penguin, 1988.

Singh, Khushwant. Train to Pakistan. London: Chatto and Windus, 1956.

IV: Victims and their Voices; Memoirs; Eyewitnesses


Anand, Som. Lahore: Portrait of a Lost City. Lahore: Vanguard Books, 1998.

Bourke-White, Margaret. Halfway to Freedom: A Report on the New India in the Words and Photos of Margaret Bourke-White. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1949.

Butalia, Urvashi. "Blood." Granta, no. 57 (Spring 1997), pp. 13-22.

Butalia, Urvashi, ed. The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India. New Delhi: Penguin, 1998.

"Freedom." Photographs by Sanjeev Saith. Granta, no. 57 (Spring 1997), pp. 23-38.

Kidwai, Begum A. Azadi ki Chhaon Main. Delhi: National Book Trust, 1990.

Nandy, Ashis. "The Death of an Empire." Persimmon

Nevile, P. Lahore: A Sentimental Journey. New Delhi: Penguin, 1993.

Salim, Ahmad. Lahore 1947. New Delhi: India Research Press, 2001.

V: Sociology, Psychology, Politics, Critical and Cultural Studies


Alam, Javeed and Sharma, Suresh. "Remembering Partition." Seminar, no. 461 (1998).

Alter, Stephen. Amritsar to Lahore: A Journey Across the India-Pakistan Border. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001.

Chakrabarti, Prafulla. The Marginal Men The Refugees and the Left -- Political Experiment in West Bengal. Calcutta: Lumiere, 1990.

Chaudhary, M. Partition and the Curse of Rehabilitation. Calcutta: Bengal Rehabilitation Organization, 1964.

Das, Veena. "National Honour and Practical Kinship: Of Unwanted Women and Children." In her Critical Events: An Anthropological Perspective on Contemporary India, pp. 55-84. New Delhi: Oxford UP, 1995.

Das, Veena and Nandy, Ashis. "Violence, Victimhood and the Language of Silence." In Veena Das (ed)., The Word and the World: Fantasy, Symbol and Record. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1986.

Kalra, Virinder S. and Purewal, Navtej K. "The Strut of the Peacocks: Partition, Travel and the Indo-Pak Border." In Travel Worlds: Journeys in Contemporary Cultural Politics, eds. Raminder Kaur and John Hutnyk (London: Zed Press, 1999), pp. 54-67.

Menon, Ritu and Bhasin, Kamla. Borders and Boundaries: Women in India’s Partition. New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1998.

Nandy, Ashis. "The Invisible Holocaust and the Journey as an Exodus." Postcolonial Studies 2, no. 3 (1999).

Randhawa, M.S. Out of the Ashes: An Account of the Rehabilitation of Refugees from West Pakistan in Rural Areas of East Punjab. Bombay, 1954.

Sen, Geeti (ed.). Crossing Boundaries. Delhi: Indian International Centre, 1997. [First published as a theme issue of the India International Centre Quarterly.]

VI: Special Journal Issues on the Partition:


Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Vol. 1, no. 2 (1999): Special Topic, "The Partition of the Indian Sub-Continent", edited by Ritu Menon.

South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, vol. 18 (1995), Special issue, "North India: Partition and Independence".

History Today 47, no. 9 (September 1997).

[ramana]

E-Book Modern India by William Eleroy Curtiss

It gives a picture of India in the 1900s before the WWI by an American writer.

[Guest]

Was the British Raj good for India?
Amit Mehta
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->To the vast majority of Hindus in the UK, who are also vociferously proud of their Indian roots, the answer to the question of whether the British Raj was good for India would be an immediate and resounding 'NO'. British rule is irrevocably associated with brutality, economic exploitation and a 'divide and rule' policy that caused lasting schisms between sections of Indian society that continue to haunt India today.

However, the idea that British rule was a force for good, unpalatable as it may sound, is not uncommon in Britain. Read right-of-centre newspapers and you will regularly find articles and columns that glorify Britain's colonial past, giving the impression that Britain was spreading the light of Western Civilisation to the dark corners of the world. Furthermore, most British history books still do their best to highlight the benefits that Britain brought to their numerous colonies and possessions, rather than the countless miseries. Recently in an interview with the BBC, Niall Ferguson, a British historian who has recently produced a six-part documentary series for Channel 4, and also works in a research department at Oxford University, said that British rule greatly benefited the ruled nations and people.

To be sure, many white Britons, perhaps even the majority, think that the colonial era is not something to be proud of. But at the same time it must be acknowledged that the idea of British rule as benevolent is quite mainstream. In this light it is worth examining some facts about the British Raj that are seldom discussed in the media.

History is never black and white. There are benefits that come out of otherwise bad situations. In the case of India, British rule certainly did have some benefits, such as development of previously absent infrastructure. Of course, colonial historians such as Niall Ferguson will be fast to point this out:

By the 1880s the British had invested £270 million in India, not much less than one-fifth of their entire investment overseas.
But at what cost were these investments made? The pro-colonial authors miss out or even cover-up some basic points about the British Raj, which should be the foundation of any debate about the 'merits' of colonialism,

The economic devastation of India under British rule is discernible from the fact that India's share of world trade fell from 17% percent in 1800 (almost equal to America's share of world trade in 2000) to less than 2%. It is a very telling fact that during British rule of India, British per capita gross domestic product increased in real terms by 347 per cent, Indian by a mere 14 per cent. But even more important are the famine statistics of British-controlled India.

According to British records, one million Indians died of famine between 1800 and 1825, 4 million between 1825 and 1850, 5 million between 1850 and 1875 and 15 million between 1875 and 1900. Thus 25 million Indians died in 100 years! Since Independence, although poverty still exists, there have been no such mass famines, a record of which India should be proud. Funnily enough, there is no mention of this by pro-colonial authors. It is certainly a strange omission on their part and something they should be ashamed of. Perhaps not surprising as it would make British investment in India seem trivial and pointless by comparison. Any rational person would rather avoid millions of deaths than have a few railway tracks built and some land irrigated.

<img src='http://www.hinduvoice.co.uk/images/7/family.JPG' border='0' alt='user posted image' />

How did these famines occur? The main reason was not bad weather or natural causes but rather the breaking up of India's indigenous crop patterns. The British replaced food crops such as rice and wheat and instead forced Indian farmers to produce jute, cotton, tea and oil seeds, which they needed as raw materials for their home industries. The implication of this in times of shortages was catastrophic, as the famine figures show.

Niall Ferguson also credits the British with labouring to improve India's public health:

It was the British who introduced quinine as an anti-malarial prophylactic, carried out public programmes of vaccination against smallpox - often in the face of local resistance - and laboured to improve the urban water supplies that were so often the bearers of cholera and other diseases.
Once again, there is some truth in this, but also some omission, and some downright distortion. On the subject of smallpox vaccination, it is well documented that before the British arrived, Indians had a system of immunisation against smallpox, in which cowpox was used inoculate against smallpox. The British doctor J Z Holwell wrote a book in 1767 describing the system, accepting that it was safe and effective. European medicine did not have any treatment against the disease at that time.

Inoculation against smallpox became a part of Western medicine by 1840. No sooner did that happen that the British in India banned the older method of vaccination, denouncing it as barbaric, without making certain that sufficient number of inoculators in the new technique existed. Smallpox in India became a greater scourge than before. This is not the only example in which the British undermined and even banned indigenous systems of knowledge, particularly medicine, creating dire consequences.

In making these points, I am not trying to stir up bitterness amongst readers. As I have mentioned, even many white Britons see colonialism as a dark part of their history, and refrain from glorifying it or acting triumphant over it. I am simply trying to combat the smug, celebratory version of Imperial history that is currently in vogue in some circles. This article is dedicated to the millions men, women and children, of India as well as other nations, who perished in unnecessary and avoidable famines during the colonial era.
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[acharya]

Imagined Hinduism : British Protestant Missionary Constructions of Hinduism, 1793 -- 1900/Geoffrey A. Oddie.Imagined Hinduism : British Protestant Missionary Constructions of Hinduism, 1793 -- 1900/Geoffrey A. Oddie. New Delhi, Sage, 2006, 376 p., ills., $43. ISBN 81-7829-591-1.

Contents: Acknowledgements. Introduction. I. Winds of influence: Hinduism in the British imagination, 1600-1800: 1. Hinduism in travel and missionary accounts, 1600-1800. 2. Hinduism as represented by protestant friends of mission in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. 3. Orientalist models and missionary scholarship. II. The construction of missionary models: 4. Hinduism in missionary education and training. 5. The emergence of a dominant paradigm (a) William Carey: a pioneer's journey of exploration. (b) William Ward's history. 6. The guardians--consolidating the paradigm: duff, mundy and others. 7. Hinduism in missionary society periodical literature. 8. A changing context: some general developments affecting missionary perceptions of Hinduism, 1850-1900. 9. Critics and commentators on the dominant view, 1850-1900. 10. Empathy or otherness? Changing evaluations of Hinduism in the nineteenth century. 11. Gender issues in the construction of Hinduism with special reference to the church of England Zenana Missionary Society, 1880-1900. Conclusion. Select bibliography. Index.

"This important book explores the emergence and subsequent refinement of the idea of Hinduism as it developed among British protestant missionaries in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.<span style='color:red'> The author demonstrates how the missionaries' construction of Hinduism grew out of their own roots in post-enlightenment Europe, their Christian conception of religion, the colonial reality of India, and their need to 'know the enemy' in order to spread Christianity more effectively.</span>

Drawing upon missionary writings, Geoffrey Oddie shows how the early view of Hinduism as pagan or heathen settled into the dominant paradigm of Hinduism as a unitary, Brahman-controlled 'system', ridden with idolatry, ritualism, superstition and sexual licence. This 'other' was compared with evangelical Christianity, in which inward devotion counted for more than outward ritual, and where the individual was free from oppression and 'priestcraft'.

Finally, this book looks at the impact of these representations of Hinduism in India and the west. By the late nineteenth century, as the author demonstrates, the missionaries' increasing acquaintance with Hinduism not only prompted a more sympathetic approach, but also a revision of the unitary model. Some even spoke of 'the many Hindu religions'. Among Hindu leaders, in contrast, the notion of being Hindu and of Hinduism as one system had taken hold.

Issues of topical interest discussed in this book include the nature of knowledge, notions of religion, concepts of Hinduism, the orientalism debate, and the relationship between missionaries and empire. This fascinating and thorough work of scholarship will appeal to all those interested in South Asian history, religion and society, as well as to students and scholars of anthropology, theology, philosophy, intellectual history and political science."

Return to History and Politics Catalogue

[ramana]

FRom IANS

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Chennai, Aug 24 (IANS) It must have been simply fabulous to be Miss Madras in 1939. As the Tamil Nadu capital celebrates 368 years of its existence, dwellers in this bustling metro are recalling the olden days with nostalgia.

Madras (now Chennai) is the first love of 85-year-old Sheelagh Humphreys, the daughter of a Scottish officer here who was also a furniture designer. Crowned Miss Madras, Sheelagh had a shop called Wrenn Bennett in the Khaleeli building on Mount Road, the city's main artery, opposite Spencer's, another landmark.


'I don't know what they call it today, the whole city seems to have metamorphosed', says Humphreys.


Those were the days of the Spencer & Company - provider of the ultimate shopping experience - the Curzon's, Misquith's, Whiteaway and Laidlaw, all shops of excellent repute and highly patronised in a crowded Raj presidency.


There are still a lot of antique furniture, old curiosity shops, gun shops and clock makers like P. Orr & Co in the city, if one knows where to look for them.


According to the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), commerce shaped Thomas Parry's (who set up the industrial unit EID Parry) Madras. In 1856, Royapuram became the first train station in southeren India.


Of course, the Khaleeli building, named by its Persian owners, changed hands and is now known as the Aghor Chand Mansion. A decrepit looking Indo-Saracenic structure with its magnificent turrets crumbling has two guns at the front door leading to piles of rubbish.


Another grand specimen of Raj architecture falling to pieces is the Bharat Insurance Building, also on Mount Road, of great real estate value and a brutal example of great neglect by post-independence India.


Though much has changed, the Lattice Bridge Road is still known by this name though the bridge itself may be hard to find today.


There is also the story of the Barber's Bridge, a modern English translation of what people called the Ambattan Bridge. The bridge was actually named Hamilton Bridge but locals soon mispronounced it as 'ambattan' (Tamil word for barber). The new city authorities, hoping to remember the British, renamed it Barber's Bridge.


Despite such historical hazards, people like Humphreys love Madras. Married to an army doctor, George Humphreys, Sheelagh grew up on Jeremiah Road. 'A band played in those days in the Madras University senate hall as young British women visited the milliners in phaetons,' she recalls.


It is the city that crowned a shy 19-year-old Sheelagh, dressed in a blue dress, Miss Madras, at the then famous Victoria Public hall near the General Hospital.


<b>It was in 1639 - some say 1638 - that British merchants Francis Day and Andrew Cogan and their associate Beri Thimappa acquired three acres of land from the Vijayanagar ruler Damerla Venkatadri Nayak for the East India Company.


The plot was called Madraspatanam, a little north of the bustling seaside village of Chennaipattinam (beautiful city) on the east coast of India, trading in spices and cloth with the Romans 2000 years ago.


There was a Portuguese official on this coast in the 1500s, Madre de Sois, long before the British set up the trade post here. The Portuguese were the first to start calling it Madras.


It is also said that there was a fishing hamlet here with a headman named Madaresan who persuaded Day to name his trading outpost Madras.</b>


This week, Clive Hall in Fort St George is host to half a dozen exhibitors - from ASI to the Southern Railways - all displaying their collections of Madras memorabilia and pictures of the Raj days.


One can see coins and currency minted for the Madras presidency and listen to lectures on the history of the city. The walks include one through the old George Town, one through the Mylapore Santhome church and one through Fort St George.


© 2006 Indo-Asian News Service
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Can our chennai members gather any inof on the three founders? I am interested in Beri Thimappa.
Never mind: Beri Thimappa

He is from Palakol near Machilpatnam!!!

AND

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