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The black hole of empire : history of a global practice of power / Partha Chatterjee.

DS465 .C53 2012

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Format:: Book
Author/Creator:: Chatterjee, Partha, 1947-
Language:: English
Subjects (All):: East India Company.; Colonies.; History.; Bengal (India)--Colonization--History--18th century.; Bengal (India).; Black Hole Incident, Kolkata, India, 1756.; East India Company--History--18th century.; Imperialism--History.; Imperialism.; Europe--Colonies--History.; Europe.
Physical Description:: xiv, 425 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Place of Publication:: Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, [2012]
Summary:: When Siraj, the ruler of Bengal, overran the British settlement or Calcutta in 1756, he allegedly jailed 146 European prisoners overnight in a cramped prison. Of the group, 123 died of suffocation. While this episode was never independently confirmed, the story of "the black hole of Calcutta'' was widely circulated and seen by the British public as an atrocity committed by savage colonial subjects. The Black Hole of Empire follows the ever-changing representations of this historical event and founding myth of the British Empire in India, from the eighteenth century to the present. Partha Chatterjee explores how a supposed tragedy paved the ideological foundations for the "civilizing" force of British imperial rule and territorial control in India.; Chatterjee takes a close look at the justifications of modern empire by liberal thinkers, international lawyers, and conservative traditionalists, and examines the intellectual and political responses of the colonized, including those of Bengali nationalists. The two sides of empire's entwined history are brought together in the story of the Black Hole memorial: set up in Calcutta in 1760, demolished in 1821, restored by Lord Curzou in 1902, and removed in 1940 to a neglected churchyard. Challenging conventional truisms of imperial history, nationalist scholarship, and liberal visions of globalization, Chatterjee argues that empire is a necessary and continuing part of the history of the modern state. Book jacket.
Contents:: Chapter 1 Outrage in Calcutta 1; The Travels of a Monument; Old Fort William; A New Nawab; The Fall of Calcutta; The Aftermath of Defeat; The "Genuine" Narrative; Reconquest and More; Whose Revolution?; Chapter 2 A Secret Veil 33; The Conquest in History; The Age of Plunder; Early Histories of Conquest; The Modem State and Modem Empires; The Nabobs Come Home; The Critique of Conquest; Chapter 3 Tipu's Tiger 67; A Bengali in Britain; Contemporary Indian Histories; The Early Modern in South Asia; The Early Modern as a Category of Transition; Niti versus Dharma; An Early Modern History of Bengal; Tipu as an Early Modern Absolute Monarch; The Tiger of Mysore; The Mysore Family in Calcutta; Chapter 4 Liberty of the Subject 104; The New Fort William; The Early Press in Calcutta; The Strength of Constitution; The Making of Early Modern Citizens; Other Early Modern Institutions; Chapter 5 Equality of Subjects 134; The Falsehood of All Religions; The Colonization of Barbarous Countries; Citizens of Character and Capital; The Unsung End of Early Modernity; Chapter 6 For the Happiness of Mankind 159; The Founding of a Myth; The Utility of Empire; The Morality of Empire; The Myth Refurbished; Chapter 7 The Pedagogy of Violence 185; The Law of Nations in the East; Dalhousie and Paramountcy; Awadh under British Protection; The Road to Annexation; Awadh Annexed; Imperialism: Liberal and Antiliberal; A Chimerical Lucknow; Chapter 8 The Pedagogy of Culture 222; The Contradictions of Colonial Modernity; The City and the Public; The New Bengali Theater; Shedding a Tear for Siraj; On the Poetic and Historical Imaginations; Siraj and the National-Popular; The Dramatic Form of the National-Popular; Surveillance and Proscription; Chapter 9 Bombs, Sovereignty, and Football 264; The New Memorial; The Scramble for Empire; The Normalization of the, Nation-State; Violence and the Motherland; Early Actions; Strategies and Tactics; Igniting the Imagination; Football as a Manly Sport; Football and Nationalism; Official Responses; The Later Phase; Chapter 10 The Death and Everlasting Life of Empire 311; A Gigantic Hoax; We Are Kings of the Country, and the Rest Are Slaves; Siraj, Once More on Stage; Endgames of Empire; Empire Today; Afterword.
Notes:: Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN:: 9780691152004; 0691152004; 9780691152011; 0691152012
OCLC:: 742234372

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The black hole of empire : history of a global practice of power / Partha Chatterjee.

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