Colonial Voices
The Discourses of Empire
1. Edition April 2012
272 Pages, Hardcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd
Short Description
Drawing on a vast array of textual sources, this analysis of the discourse of colonialism tracks the many narratives and narrative strategies of imperial domination. Focusing on British involvement in India, it shows how subtle changes of emphasis in written documents reflect evolving colonial attitudes towards their conquered territories, shifting from flights of the imagination to factual inquiry, to a narrative of exoticism and heterogeneity that safely compartmentalized colonial 'otherness' via natural history, ethnography and cartographies of disease.
This accessible cultural history explores 400 years of British imperial adventure in India, developing a coherent narrative through a wide range of colonial documents, from exhibition catalogues to memoirs and travelogues. It shows how these texts helped legitimize the moral ambiguities of colonial rule even as they helped the English fashion themselves.
* An engaging examination of European colonizers' representations of native populations
* Analyzes colonial discourse through an impressive range of primary sources, including memoirs, letters, exhibition catalogues, administrative reports, and travelogues
* Surveys 400 years of India's history, from the 16th century to the end of the British Empire
* Demonstrates how colonial discourses naturalized the racial and cultural differences between the English and the Indians, and controlled anxieties over these differences
1. Introducing: Colonial Discourse
2. Travel, Exploration and 'Discovery': From Imagination to Inquiry
3. The Discourse of Difference: Constructing the Colonial Exotic
4. Empire Management: From Domestication to Spectacle
5. Civilizing the Empire: Colonialism and the Ideology of Moral-Material Progress
6. Aesthetic Understanding: From Colonial English to Imperial Cosmopolitans
Bibliography
Index