Ideology and empire in eighteenth-century India : the British in Bengal / Robert Travers.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Travers, Robert, 1972-

Contributor:

Anne and Joseph Trachtman Memorial Book Fund.

Series:

Cambridge studies in Indian history and society ; 14.

Cambridge studies in Indian history and society ; 14

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

East India Company.

History.

Legitimacy of governments.

Bengal (India)--Politics and government--18th century.

Bengal (India).

Legitimacy of governments--India--Bengal--History--18th century.

Bengal (India)--Colonization--History--18th century.

East India Company--History--18th century.

India--Bengal.

Physical Description:

xvi, 273 pages : map ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Summary:

Robert Travers' analysis of British conquests in late eighteenth-century India shows how new ideas were formulated about the construction of empire. After the British East India Company conquered the vast province of Bengal, Britons confronted the apparent anomaly of a European trading company acting as an Indian ruler. Responding to a prolonged crisis of imperial legitimacy, British officials in Bengal tried to build their authority on the basis of an 'ancient constitution', supposedly discovered among the remnants of the declining Mughal Empire. In the search for an indigenous constitution, British political concepts were redeployed and redefined on the Indian frontier of empire, while stereotypes about 'oriental despotism' were challenged by the encounter with sophisticated Indian state forms. This highly original book uncovers a forgotten style of imperial state-building based on constitutional restoration, and in the process opens up new points of connection between British, imperial and South Asian history.

Contents:

Map of Bengal and Bihar in the Eighteenth Century xvii

1 Imperium in imperio: the East India Company, the British empire and the revolutions in Bengal, 1757-1772 31

2 Colonial encounters and the crisis in Bengal, 1765-1772 67

3 Warren Hastings and 'the legal forms of Mogul government', 1772-1774 100

4 Philip Francis and the 'country government' 141

5 Sovereignty, custom and natural law: the Calcutta Supreme Court, 1774-1781 181

6 Reconstituting empire, c. 1780-1793 207.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [254]-268) and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Anne and Joseph Trachtman Memorial Book Fund.

ISBN:

9780521861458

0521861454

OCLC:

76898081

Online:

Publisher description