Chatterjee, Amal

Representations of India, 1740-1840: the Creation of India in the Colonial Imagination

This book considers how writing over the period of a century justified and was affected by introduction and extension of British domination of India, thus demonstrating the link between writing and the ideological, economic and political climate and debates. It proposes that initial interest in the great wealth gained in India by "Nabobs" was gradually concealed behind ideas of military, social, religious and racial superiority, thus laying the foundations for Victorian excuse of a "civilizing mission". Drawing a range of fiction and nonfiction, it analyzes examples of representations of Britons in India (traders, soldiers and administrators), Indian religion and religious practices (religion itself, and the practices of Sati and "Thuggee"), and Indian society, government and rulers (with a separate study of Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan). By doing so, this book fills the gap between the early colonial "exotic East" and the later "primitive subject nation" perceptions.