Gender, morality, and race in Company India, 1765-1858
By: Joseph Sramek
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2011
Place of publication: New York, NY
Language: eng
Number of pages: 250
ISBN-13: 9780230116931
Subjects: Politics and government; Colonial administrators; HISTORY / Social History; HISTORY / Europe / Great Britain; Race relations; British; East India Company; Public opinion; HISTORY / Modern / 19th Century; Masculinity; Moral conditions; HISTORY / Asia / India & South Asia; Imperialism; HISTORY / Modern / 18th Century; History
Description: "Between 1765 and 1858, British imperialists in India obsessed continuously about gaining and preserving Indian "opinion" of British moral and racial prestige. Weaving political, intellectual, cultural, and gender history together in an innovative approach, Gender, morality, and race in Company India, 1765-1858 examines imperial anxieties regarding British moral misconduct in India ranging from debt and gift giving to drunkenness and irreligion and points out their wider relationship to the structuring of British colonialism. Showing a pervasive fear among imperial elites of losing "mastery" over India, as well as a deep distrust of Indian civil and military subordinates through whom they ruled, Sramek demonstrates how much of the British Raj's notable racial arrogance after 1858 can in fact be traced back into the preceding Company period of colonial rule. Rather than the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857 ushering in a more racist form of colonialism, this book powerfully suggests far greater continuity between the two periods of colonial rule than scholars have hitherto generally recognized"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.
Table of contents: title: Colonial beginnings, ca. 1600-1793; title: Trying to rule India without Indians, 1793-1831; title: Honor, racial prestige, and gentlemen sepoys, 1757-ca. 1830; title: "If the natives were competent, from their moral qualities" : race, paternalism, and partial indianization, 1813-1857; title: Martial races, caste-ridden sepoys, and British fears of losing control : the British and their Indian armies in late Company India.