| FT-61726-14 | Research Programs: Summer Stipends | Thomas Robert Travers | Indian Petitioning and the Making of the British Empire in South Asia, 1765-1800 | 6/1/2014 - 7/31/2014 | $6,000.00 | Thomas | Robert | Travers | | | | Cornell University | Ithaca | NY | 14850-2820 | USA | 2014 | Intellectual History | Summer Stipends | Research Programs | 6000 | 0 | 6000 | 0 |
My study examines the large literature of ‘complaints’ produced by Indian subjects during the first half century of British colonial rule in eastern India, c. 1765-1800. By studying Indian petitions preserved in the British East India Company’s records, together with treatises produced in Persian (the language of political elites in Mughal India), I examine how Indian subjects became entangled within a modern colonial rule of law, and also how they critiqued this regime by drawing on Indo-Islamicate theories of consultative rulership. Situating my study within an emerging global and comparative history of early modern political thought, I also explore moments of cross-fertilization within colonial encounters, showing how authors in Persian and English often sought to ‘bridge cultures’ by highlighting points of overlap between European and Indo-Islamicate notions of political justice. |