Ideologies of the Raj

Author: Thomas R Metcalf
Publisher: Cambridge University press
Year: 2005
Language: English
Pages: 244
ISBN/UPC (if available): 81-7596-054-X

Description

Ideologies of the Raj examines how the British sought to justify their rule over India. Thomas Metcalf argues that two divergent strategies were devised to legitimate their authority: the one defined characteristics which the Indians shared with the British themselves, while the other emphasized qualities of enduring difference.

In the end, however, the differences predominated in the colonial view of India. Since the British constructed few explicit ideologies of empire, the author explores the working of the Raj through study of its underlying assumptions as revealed in policies and writings.

REVIEW

It is a tribute to the range of Metcalf’s scholarship that he can write illuminatingly and with assured authority on so many different aspects of British India.
-P J Marshall, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History

Contents

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PREFACE

Introduction: Britain and India in the eighteenth century

Liberalism and empire

The creation of difference

Coping with contradiction

Epilogue: Raj, nation, empire

BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY

INDEX