Document Raj
Subtitle: writing and scribes in early colonial south India
By: Bhavani Raman
Series: South Asia across the disciplines; South Asia across the disciplines
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Chicago; London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 278
ISBN-13: 9780226703275; 9780226703299
Subjects: Documentation; Public administration; Records and correspondence; Writing; East India Company; Tamil language; Accounting; Scribes; History
Description: Historians of British colonial rule in India have noted both the place of military might and the imposition of new cultural categories in the making of Empire, but Bhavani Raman uncovers a lesser-known story of power: the power of bureaucracy. Drawing on extensive archival research in the files of the East India Company's administrative offices in Madras, she tells the story of a bureaucracy gone awry in a fever of documentation practices that grew ever more abstract - and the power, both economic and cultural, this created.
Table of contents: title: Introduction; title: Scribal practice; title: Cutcherry scribes; title: Scribal skills; title: Writing and pedagogy; title: Cutcherry Tamil; title: Schools and writing; title: Document Raj; title: Duplicity and evidence; title: Addressing the Raj; title: Conclusion.