RECENT RESEARCH IN
IMPERIAL HISTORY
I. Imperial History
II. Colonial History – the case study of Indian history
A New Nostalgia for Empire?
• Niall Ferguson
• W. H. Crocker -- The Politically Incorrect Guide to the
Empire – British empire not imperialist enough
• Jeremy Paxman – ‘Empire’
Earlier Perspectives
• Gallagher and Robinson – the ‘official mind’; economic coercion and
gunboat diplomacy; indigenous collaborators
• Hopkins and Cain – Bankers, Merchants and
‘Gentlemanly Capitalism’
Later Developments
• Revival of ‘imperial history’ and the emergence of new perspectives
• Critique of top-heavy models
• John Mackenzie – that imperialism was a huge part
of popular culture in Britain, right down to the 1950s
• Ann Stoler – the fragmented nature of imperialism
Connected Histories
• Sanjay Subrahmanyam: Critique of artificial boundaries –’South Asia’,
‘South East Asia’
• Parallel/connected developments
• C. A. Bayly – Imperial Meridian – Similar developments
in South Asia, South East Asia, ‘Middle East’
• De-centering Colonialism
Critique of the new historiography
• Is it right to decentre colonialism?
• Ignoring asymmetrical power relations
• Connected – but in an unequal way
II . COLONIAL HISTORY
NATIONALIST HISTORIES
• The post-colonial period and nationalist histories
• Preoccupied with the National Movement – Gandhi, Nehru
• Fashioning an identity, re-claiming the past
Marxist Influences
• 1970s -- A Growing Dissatisfaction with Post-colonial developments
• A Broadening of Historians’ Concerns – from nationalism, to
economic histories
• Also a move away from ‘elitist histories’
• Not just an Indian phenomenon
The Subaltern School
• Dissatisfaction with existing perspectives
• A Move towards ‘history from below’
• The Influence of E. P. Thompson on earlier volumes
Edward Said and Orientalism
• ‘Otherisation’, sterotypes, binaries
• The cultural discourse that backed the empire
• Within the Indian context– a shift towards
‘colonial discourse analysis’
Critique of these new trends
• Too much cultural studies, colonial discourse?
• Ignoring Economic history, or history from below
• Interrogates categories, but is it politically useful? Example of
feminism
Conclusion -- The Impact of ‘new histories of
colonialism and imperialism’
• A move away from top-heavy histories
• A greater suspicion of Eurocentric histories
• Interrogating categories – for instance, questioning of a the idea of a
unified ‘imperialism’
• Greater awareness of an inter-connected world