Taming the imperial imagination : colonial knowledge, international relations, and the Anglo-Afghan encounter, 1808-1878 / Martin J. Bayly.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bayly, Martin J., 1984- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Knowledge, Theory of--Political aspects--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Knowledge, Theory of.

Public opinion--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Public opinion.

Imperialism--History--19th century.

Imperialism.

Colonists--Afghanistan--History--19th century.

Colonists.

Afghan Wars--Political aspects.

Afghan Wars.

Afghanistan--Foreign relations.

Afghanistan.

Great Britain--Foreign relations--Afghanistan.

Great Britain.

Afghanistan--Foreign public opinion, British.

Afghanistan--Colonial influence.

Afghanistan--Discovery and exploration--British.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xv, 334 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2016.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Taming the Imperial Imagination marks a novel intervention into the debate on empire and international relations, and offers a new perspective on nineteenth-century Anglo-Afghan relations. Martin J. Bayly shows how, throughout the nineteenth century, the British Empire in India sought to understand and control its peripheries through the use of colonial knowledge. Addressing the fundamental question of what Afghanistan itself meant to the British at the time, he draws on extensive archival research to show how knowledge of Afghanistan was built, refined and warped by an evolving colonial state. This knowledge informed policy choices and cast Afghanistan in a separate legal and normative universe. Beginning with the disorganised exploits of nineteenth-century explorers and ending with the cold strategic logic of the militarised 'scientific frontier', this book tracks the nineteenth-century origins of contemporary policy 'expertise' and the forms of knowledge that inform interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere today.

Contents:

Part I. Knowledge

1. Early European explorers of Afghanistan

2. Knowledge entrepreneurs

Part II. Policy

3. "Information... information" : Anglo-Afghan relations in the 1830s

4. Contestation and closure : rationalising the Afghan polity

Part III. Exception

5. The emergence of a violent geography, 1842-1853

6. Overcoming exception, 1853-1857

7. "Science" and sentiment : the era of frontier management, 1857-1878

Appendix 1: Afghanistan's Ethnic Groups

Appendix 2: Tribes of the Pashtun Ethnic Group

Appendix 3: European Explorers of Afghanistan in Chronological Order, 1793-1839

Appendix 4: European Explorers of Afghanistan 1843-1878

Appendix 5: The Elphinstone Map

Glossary.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 May 2016).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-316-66817-7

1-316-66877-0

1-316-66887-8

1-316-66897-5

1-316-66937-8

1-316-66907-6

1-316-33917-3