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Welcome to THE AGE OF KIPLING This unit studies the British occupation of India, from the time of conquest in the mid-eighteenth century to the height of empire at the end of the Victorian era in the beginning of the twentieth century (1757-1905). Attention will focus on the phenomenon of British imperialism within the particular context of India, on the development of imperial attitudes to India and Indians, on the changing goals and methods of British rule, and on the social life of a community in exile. Imperialism is one of those developments, which although shaping and still influencing the modern world, is not well comprehended.
How and why was the British raj [rule] established? What form and character did it acquire? What impulses governed the attitudes of the administrative class commissioned to govern a society totally alien to its own. Where did this very hierarchical class live and what activities helped reconcile it to a life of exile in India? What in turn were the Indian responses to the coming of a different governmental system, based on a different ordering of society, unfamiliar notions of the public good and a new bureaucratic infrastructure of economic and legal management? Towards the end of the Victorian era indigenous opposition to the 'raj' and to some of the values it represented began to materialise but within defined limits. For one of the outstanding features of colonialism to emerge is that it involved not only a conquest of territory but most importantly the appropriation of thinking as well. The colonisation of the Indian mind and the absorption of transplanted cultural values by a middle-class elite are outstanding features of the imperial encounter that this unit will investigate. I am available in person at Room G68 of the Arts Building History Department University of New England Armidale, New South Wales Australia 2351 or ring my office number: 02-67732081 within Australia 61-2-67732081 outside Australia External students may also use email. Associate Professor Howard Brasted
Associate Professor H.V. Brasted is one of the most high profile and internationally recognised scholars of South Asia in Australia. His standing in the field arises from a combination of research, professional and teaching achievement. Publishing in major international outlets he is a frequently cited authority on the dismantling of the British empire in South and West Asia, and the rise of new nation states - particularly India and Pakistan. More recently he has initiated projects on "Child Labour in Asia" and "Islamic Change in Asia" - both leading to significant ongoing publications - and is Managing Editor of a Sage Publications [New Delhi] series: Studies in contemporary South Asia, and Co-Editor of a new Macmillan monograph series on South Asia: History, Development and Change in South Asia. He is currently engaged on a Wellcome Trust funded project on "Women Workers in Industrialising Asia" under the leadership of Professor Amarjit Kaur. Professionally, since 1984 Associate Professor Howard Brasted has played a pivotal role in the promotion of South Asian studies and scholarship, both in Australia and overseas. This role has been performed in two quite distinct capacities: as Executive Director of the South Asian Studies Association [SASA], a professional academic organisation of 450 members, which is the effective liaising body with South Asianists in Australia and around the world; and as Editor of the international refereed journal, South Asia, a preferred journal (with Modern Asian Studies) with some of the best original research in the field. To date he has edited over 35 issues of the journal. He also serves the profession as a foundation Board Member of the National Centre for South Asian Studies (Melbourne); and wrote the ARC Discipline Survey chapter on 'South Asian Studies' in D.A. Low (ed.), Strategic Review of Research in the Humanities (Academy of the Humanities, 1998). This contains some basic, very useful information from books that tend to be out of print. Included in this volume are: |
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