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An innovative remapping of empire, Imperial Connections offers a broad-ranging view of the workings of the British Empire in the period when the India of the Raj stood at the center of a newly globalized system of trade, investment, and migration. Thomas R. Metcalf argues that India itself became a nexus of imperial power that made possible British conquest, control, and governance across a wide arc of territory stretching from Africa to eastern Asia. His book, offering a new perspective on how imperialism operates, emphasizes transcolonial interactions and webs of influence that advanced the interests of colonial India and Britain alike. Metcalf examines such topics as law codes and administrative forms as they were shaped by Indian precedents; the Indian Army's role in securing Malaya, Africa, and Mesopotamia for the empire; the employment of Indians, especially Sikhs, in colonial policing; and the transformation of East Africa into what was almost a province of India through the construction of the Uganda railway. He concludes with a look at the decline of this Indian Ocean system after 1920 and considers how far India's participation in it opened opportunities for Indians to be a colonizing as well as a colonized people.
Price: $31.95
Pages: 280
Publisher: University of California Press
Imprint: University of California Press
Series: California World History Library
Publication Date:
20 October 2008
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9780520258051
Format: Paperback
"Metcalf's study is a tour de force, a testimony to the breadth of the author's interests and the depth of his research. . . . a remarkably rich and nuanced account of the bluewater Raj. . . . this book succeeds in demonstrating the importance of framing the British Empire within a wider global and transnational context."
“A delightful undertaking . . . Without a doubt the book is a great contribution not only to British imperial history but also modern Asian history.”
“In beautiful prose and with abundant facts, Metcalf has produced a thought-provoking and truly innovative work. It is worth perusal by scholars of history, politics and economics. And it is a must for libraries.”
“An invigorating and most useful book that deserves a wide readership among Africanists as well as Indian Ocean specialists.”
“Thomas Metcalf’s study of India in an Indian Ocean arena is innovative in allowing us to connect the use of governmental, legal, and ruling frameworks from colonial India across a wider space, their linkages with specific labouring, clerical, and diasporic circuits across empire, as well as the complex identities they generated for the British Indian subjects who moved with them. . . . Thomas Metcalf’s is a welcome and comprehensive effort to bring what is variously a transnational, imperial, oceanic, and a global history forward.”
“A unique overview of Indian history. . . . Essential reading for anyone interest[ed] in British Imperial History and Indian Colonial History, and it will serve as an excellent supplemental text in both undergraduate and graduate level history courses.”
“With names, facts, figures, and concepts, this is a detailed, fine, and useful study.”
"Imperial Connections offers an erudite account of how India functioned as a sub-imperial power and how Indians made their way across the variegated landscapes of the British Empire in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By re-centering the history of British India in the larger context of the 'ocean arena,' Thomas Metcalf offers one model of how to transnationalize the study of the Raj, illuminating new domains of future research and raising critical questions about the relationship of empire to the regional, the global, and the intra-colonial as well."
Thomas R. Metcalf, Professor of History Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, is author of Forging the Raj, Ideologies of the Raj, An Imperial Vision: Indian Architecture, and Britain’s Raj (UC Press), and, with Barbara Daly Metcalf, A Concise History of Modern India.
List of Illustrations
Preface
Introduction: Empire Recentered
1. Governing Colonial Peoples
2. Constructing Identities
3. Projecting Power: The Indian Army Overseas
4. Recruiting Sikhs for Colonial Police and Military
5. “Hard Hands and Sound Healthy Bodies”: Recruiting “Coolies”
for Natal
6. India in East Africa
Conclusion
List of Abbreviations
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
Preface
Introduction: Empire Recentered
1. Governing Colonial Peoples
2. Constructing Identities
3. Projecting Power: The Indian Army Overseas
4. Recruiting Sikhs for Colonial Police and Military
5. “Hard Hands and Sound Healthy Bodies”: Recruiting “Coolies”
for Natal
6. India in East Africa
Conclusion
List of Abbreviations
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index