The role of empire in understanding colonies—or, in various segments of scholarship, the former colony—has been the subject of scrutiny, debate, and some of the most theoretically advanced work in recent history. In his forward, Nicholas B. Dirks briefly outlines this trajectory, focusing on the historiography of the imperial state; he locates Fringes of Empire within a discourse that seeks to reevaluate the stability of imperial power by reexamining what he calls “tensions and contradictions” within the British Empire (p. xi). Fringes of Empire, edited by Sameetah Agha and Elizabeth Kolsky, is a volume looking to explore precisely the actors and locations often overlooked, under-studied, or assumed absent: namely, borderlands, seemingly bounded communities, and communities that must be fluid, and the ways in which these actors—geographic, human, and social—speak to the decentralized nature of power, and in turn, a vision of a more permeable British Empire.
In fact, in the editor's introduction, Elizabeth Kolsky sums up the intended work the essays are to perform, stating that the “historical essays in this volume revisit this question of how the British empire in India was built and sustained by taking as their central subject the people, places, and moments at the imperial margins” (p. 2). She adds that the volume uses “fringe” as a “theoretical site, geographic location, and social position” (p. 2).
Agha and Kolsky have compiled essays into two sections, representing the geographic expressions of empire (“Borders and Boundaries”) and the personal interactions with empire (“Outsiders and Insiders”). In the former, authors play with the ideas of temporal and geographic rule, examining closely theoretical ideas from South Asian historiography and beyond, as well as locations within the global network of empire. Alex McKay's essay “‘Tracing lines upon the unknown areas of the earth’: Reflections on Frederick Jackson Turner and the Indo-Tibetan Frontier,” deftly investigates and considers the functionality in the usage of “frontier” within the Indo-Tibetan landscape (pp. 69–93). Turner's “Frontier Thesis” is an influential, widely known, and widely contested theory within studies of the American West, and McKay does well to root his discussion of European expansion with another, long-standing theoretical frame that focuses on the appearance, use, and maintenance of frontiers.
In the second section, “Outsiders and Insiders,” the role of persons and groups that do not neatly fit into either British imperial or Western historiographic categories take the fore, as the section title would imply. The articles range widely, from actors on the psychiatric margins to prisoners to Colonel Crawley's court martial to patrons in South India. What is most remarkable about the essays in this section is not merely the range of subjects, but often the ways in which authors push categories and historical understandings. For example, in his article “Psychiatry on the Edge? Vagrants, Families and Colonial Asylums in India, 1857-1900,” James H. Mills starts with the documentation of how an Indian might be sent to a lunatic asylum, citing the Rules for the Management and Control of the Lunatic Asylum at Lucknow (pp. 188–190). Mills explains that European custom and a desire to control the population dictated much, if not all, of British treatment of vagrants and “lunatics.” That said, Mills’ essay provides a detailed account of institutional infrastructure that itself is, as we might find our own institutions, riddled with loopholes, unwilling participants, and lower-level administrators looking to pass the buck—all of which highlights the treatment of a fringe population (vagrants, the mentally ill, so-called unseemly persons) by an imperial entity with varying degrees of actual authority.
Fringes of Empire, a volume that grew out of a panel by the same title at the 32nd Annual Conference on South Asia in Madison, Wisconsin, is clearly intended for an academic audience, and, even more specifically, a specialist audience of South Asianists. It is purposefully geared toward those who have historical knowledge about South Asia, and therefore can appreciate arguments that run against convention, follow the heavily detailed and nuanced perspectives, and contextualize the fringes that are the center of this work. While I think these articles, on the whole, are impeccably written and important to the field of South Asian historiography, the very nature of this volume's audience leads us to conclude that the fringes, for all their interest and import, are peripheral; these individual actors, scenarios, and theoretical devices speak to the center of British empire historiography, but they continue to assume that the center exists—a precept that is oft-debated, if not reconciled.
This is a volume with many highlights and highpoints, and one that the scholar of South Asia should read thoroughly, so that the marginalia of history may become part of the text.
