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HIST 388 D: Junior Seminar

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HIST 388 D: Junior Seminar Mughals, Merchants, and Warriors South Asia in the 18th Century General Goals for the class Learning to analyze primary and secondary ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: HIST 388 D: Junior Seminar


1
HIST 388 D Junior Seminar
  • Mughals, Merchants, and WarriorsSouth Asia in
    the 18th Century

2
General Goals for the class
  • Learning to analyze primary and secondary sources
  • Weighing the strength and weaknesses of
    historical evidence
  • Identifying influences, methodological
    constraints, biases, distortions in historical
    arguments
  • Formulating solid historical critiques of your
    own in oral and written work

3
Trajectory of Class
  • Wks1-2 examine how the myth of the 18th C as a
    Dark Age was created and why it persisted for
    so long
  • Wks.3-5 Read new histories that tried to
    question the old myth and the way in which they
    read sources in new ways
  • Wks. 6-10 Look at new studies of the 18th c. and
    see how our understanding of the lives of
    warriors, merchants, nobility, and peasants
    changed over time

4
Origins of the Myth of the Dark Age
  • Had an early origin in the first English
    histories of India produced by Merchants and
    officials of the East India Company
  • The most influential was Alexander Dows
    three-volume History of Hindostan (p. 1772)and
    his essays on Indian Depotism and Bengal (the
    first British colony)
  • We will read a small portion of the essays for
    next class

5
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6
Context of Dows writing
  • The English East India Company had just conquered
    Bengal and was considering expansion into the
    hinterland of India.
  • News of the Companys shady dealings in Bengal,
    corporate malfeasance, and corruption reach
    Britain
  • Shareholders, the public, and some members of
    parliament want an investigation of the affairs
    in Bengal
  • Huge public interest in Indian affairs leads to a
    demand for new works on Indian history and
    politics.

7
Dows position in Society
  • Born in Scotland in 1739, but leaves for India in
    1757 under mysterious circumstances
  • Participates in Battle of Chunar in 1764, is
    wounded and returns to Britain
  • Begins to write plays, scholarly works to try to
    establish reputation as an intellectual
  • Is accused by Company officials/scholars of lack
    of knowledge of Persian, the court language of
    the Mughal Empire in India
  • Returns to India to recoup fortune, but dies very
    young in 1779

8
State of Colonial society in 18th C.
  • Early 18th C. very few colonial officers, most
    there for only a short time to make forutnes
  • many others adapt to local custom and stay longer
  • Have Indian wives, partners, business connections
  • Their going Native is seen in an ambivalent way
    by other Europeans

9
Late 18th C changes in colonial society
  • Growing disapproval of cultural adaptation after
    Bengal conquest
  • Attempts made to retain a British identity in
    Indiain marriages w/ european women, raising of
    children, social segregation by race

10
Impact of these social changes
  • An earlier generation of officials had used their
    local knowledge of Indian customs to become
    experts in Indian languages
  • These Orientalists were valued at first for
    their skills by the company
  • With the move to a more Europeanized culture in
    the colony, such knowledge is less valued
  • News of the corruption of older officials of
    company makes their entire social networks seem
    suspect and contaminated by association
  • Support grows for a more Europeanized style of
    government as a way of checking moral and social
    corruption

11
The Indian Orgins of the Dark Age
  • Not wholly the creation of Orientalist scholars
    such as Dow
  • The last great Indian Empire was beginning to
    unravel, the court histories and memoirs of upper
    nobility exhibit a sense of pessimism and gloom
  • New states created through war and rebellion make
    the political history of this period seem like
    one of chaos and violence on the surface

12
Why Question this?
  • More to the history of a region than the lives of
    nobility and upper government
  • 18th c. is also a period of great social mobility
    for
  • Merchants
  • Peasant soldiers
  • Specific ethnic groups Sikhs, Jats, Marathas

13
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14
Other issues to consider
  • 18th c. sees the creation of new literary
    cultures as the high language of Persian
    fadesex. Urdu, Hindi/Braj
  • New states appear, some of which are as efficient
    and stable as larger empires
  • This period forces us to examine the
    interconnection between war, social mobility, and
    our presumptions about the pre-modern period

15
What presumptions?
  • The global nature of economic relationships in
    the 1500-1800 period
  • The Historical obsession with Empires, Politics,
    and states versus the life of common people,
    social change, the possibility of a history not
    trapped within a Statist/ National framework
  • Examining our own pre-suppositions about
    modernity decadence feudal in studying
    early periods and non-European cultures

16
Possible Benefits
  • Making us more skeptical about secondary sources
    and also more engaged readers of primary sources
  • Seeing the global connections b/w all kinds of
    histories, rather than studying them as separate
    developments
  • Learning to examine the presuppositions in others
    and our own ways of thinking
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