Eight scholars from Australia, Canada, and the United States have collaborated to produce an attractive and engaging collection of studies of emblematic individuals and events from the history of colonial India. In her editorial introduction, Kate Brittlebank notes the residual dominance of the imperial narrative of South Asia's history. Several strategies have emerged in the modern incarnations of the field, wherein students are now led to read sociological and cultural texts to enrich the historical canvas. Such innovative initiatives are informative and gratifying, but in my experience, they are determined by faculty who already know the “conventional story,” whereas for their students, it is all very new and unconnected to any narrative frame. In the volume under review, each essay considers an event or individual in a cogent reexamination.
Ian Barrow suggests that by examining four different interpretations of the Black Hole of Calcutta incident, “it is possible to read the history of the narrative's reception as a window into various phases of colonialism” (p. 17). Rahul Sapra explores Warren Hastings's views on Indian culture and East India Company policy and suggests an interpretation that is disconnected from the modern conventions of “orientalism,” as propounded by Edward Said.
Kate Brittlebank, who is already well known for her outstanding study Tipu Sultan's Search for Legitimacy (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), here offers a fascinating look at how Tipu maintained a record of his dreams—opening fresh insights into one of India's most complex precolonial rulers and reminding readers that one ought not ignore the effects historical actors' beliefs that spiritual forces are present and determinative in human life. The idea of dreams having significance to political actors may not immediately engage the reader's mind until he or she recalls modern state leaders deferring to the advice of astrologers in reaching decisions of secular import.
Students need reminding that there are few “inevitabilities” in history—Churchill might have not survived his early adventures, Gandhi might not have gotten his second change posting in South Africa, and one of the nineteenth century's dominant military figures, the Duke of Wellington, might have blotted his copy book when he was still just Arthur Wellesley. The future “Iron Duke” did earn his initial fame in India—but Channa Wickremasekara, in a chapter appropriately titled “From Novice to Hero,” notes that his emblematic victory at Assaye in 1803 was grounded in inexperience and chance. Louis E. Fenech revisits the career and interpretation of Ranjit Singh and the Sikh kingdom of the Punjab, noting contradictions between the priorities of early nineteenth-century rule and the sentiments of late twentieth-century ethnonationalism.
In a very carefully argued chapter on William Sleeman and the representation of thugee, Mark Brown offers the most explicit analysis of how past persons and phenomena have been studied. For many an undergraduate student, Brown's careful exposition might be a helpful guide to the tangles of understanding the uses of Said and Foucault in reading the South Asian past. Brown cogently notes the scope and the limits of applying literary theory to colonial texts. “If we are to advance our understanding of the past and shift the point from which it is viewed, we must identify native agency or native resistance through processes of documentation however widely this notion may be interpreted, and not simply through alternative or ‘critical’ readings” (p. 85).
Troy Downs's contribution—based on a recent doctoral dissertation, unpacks the uprising of 1857 in eastern districts of the now Uttar Pradesh, relating that story to the research of other scholars such as the late Eric Stokes or Rudrangshu Mukherjee. His examples, drawn from the evidence of the shifting fortunes of the Rajput thakurs. Kama Maclean, known for her studies of the Kumbhamela at Allahabad, examines the career of an important, but not so well understood, political leader, Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, founder of the Benaras Hindu University and a Hindu Mahasabha activist. Maclean illustrates how the application of the term “religion” can influence the interpretation of a politician as a nationalist or communalist.
Each of these thoughtful essays is accessible and well written, and could provide a ready basis for supplementary readings for students of colonial Indian history. These essays offer wonderful complications of conventional narratives and deserve extensive attention. Some students would benefit from contextualizing to appreciate the range of interpretive meanings that lie in these chapters, but as all of the contributions are very clearly written, their essential value will be self-evident. Another advantage lies in the clear evidence that all of these essays are informed by recent scholarship—for example, Maclean cites recent publications of Leah Renold, Francesca Orsini, Gyanesh Kudaisya, and Carey Watt.
This volume reflects a welcome initiative of the Monash Asian Institute and the University of Monash Press—clearly, it will behoove scholarly readers and bibliographers to take note of this new source of stimulating publications.
