Nayar Colonial Voices

The Discourses of Empire
1. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-1-118-27897-0
Verlag: John Wiley & Sons
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 256 Seiten, E-Book

This accessible cultural history explores 400 years of Britishimperial adventure in India, developing a coherent narrativethrough a wide range of colonial documents, from exhibitioncatalogues to memoirs and travelogues. It shows how these textshelped legitimize the moral ambiguities of colonial rule even asthey helped the English fashion themselves.
* An engaging examination of European colonizers'representations of native populations
* Analyzes colonial discourse through an impressive range ofprimary sources, including memoirs, letters, exhibition catalogues,administrative reports, and travelogues
* Surveys 400 years of India's history, from the 16thcentury to the end of the British Empire
* Demonstrates how colonial discourses naturalized the racial andcultural differences between the English and the Indians, andcontrolled anxieties over these differences

Autoren/Hrsg.

Nayar, Pramod K.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments vii
1 Introducing Colonial Discourse 1
2 Travel, Exploration, and''Discovery'': From Imagination to Inquiry12
Imagining Multiple Worlds: The Fantasy of''Discovery'' 18
The Narrative Organization of Discovery 29
''Inquiry'' and the Documentation ofthe Others 41
Conclusion: ''Discovery'' and Wonder,''Contracted and Epitomized'' 49
3 The Discourse of Difference: Constructing the ColonialExotic 55
The Colony and Imperial Wealth 57
The Exotic in English Culture 59
The Colonial Exotic: Aesthetics, Science, and Difference60
The Sentimental Exotic 62
The Scientific Exotic 79
Conclusion: From the Indian to the Colonial Exotic 95
4 Empire Management: From Domestication to Spectacle104
The Domestication of Colonial Spaces 106
Administering Colonial Spaces 121
''Raising the General Credit of theEmpire'': The Spectacle of Empire 140
Conclusion: Imperial Improvisation and the Spectacle145
5 Civilizing the Empire: The Ideology of Moral and MaterialProgress 161
England's Age of Improvement 164
Discipline and Improve 170
Imperial Lessons 174
The Salvific Colonial 178
Rescue, Reform, and Race 183
Conclusion: From Improvement to Self-Legitimization194
6 Aesthetic Understanding: From Colonial English to ImperialCosmopolitans 201
The Self-Fashioning of the Scholar-Colonial 204
Antiquarian Aesthetics and Colonial Authority 213
''Consumption, Ingestion, andDecoration'': Colonial Commodities 219
The ''Empire City'': Pageantry andEmpire 226
Conclusion: From Colonial English to ImperialCosmopolitan 229
References 235
Index 260

Über Autor(innen)

Pramod K. Nayar is a member of the English Faculty at theUniversity of Hyderabad, India. He has been Smuts Visiting Fellowin Commonwealth Studies at the University of Cambridge, the CharlesWallace India Trust-British Council Fellow at the Universityof Kent at Canterbury and Fulbright Senior Fellow at CornellUniversity. His many publications include States of Sentiment:Exploring the Cultures of Emotion (2011), An Introduction toNew Media and Cybercultures (2010), Postcolonialism: A Guidefor the Perplexed (2010), English Writing and India,1600-1920: Colonizing Aesthetics (2008), and WritingWrongs: The Cultural Construction of Human Rights in India(2012). Forthcoming is a book on new media.