Ideology and Empire in Eighteenth-Century India : The British in Bengal / Robert Travers.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Travers, Robert, 1972-

Series:

Cambridge books online.

Cambridge Studies in Indian History and Society ; no. 14

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

Legitimacy of governments.

History.

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

Bengal (India).

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

India--Bengal.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (296 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2007.

System Details:

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

text file

PDF

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:

Title from publishers bibliographic system (viewed on 02 Mar 2012).

Other Format:

Print version:

ISBN:

9780511497438

9780521861458

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.