Forgotten Voices of the British Empire

How Knowledge was Created and Curated in Colonial India and Burma

Carol Ann Boshier

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9781538159897
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Asian Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This study investigates the contribution made by outsiders in accumulating knowledge from the days of the East India Company until the early twentieth century, when photography became an important tool for recording information. It focuses on heterogeneous voices on the periphery, who interacted with the indigenous population to produce knowledge in original or unexpected ways that extended beyond the limits prescribed by the term 'colonial.' Largely unrecognized today, their endeavors to satisfy their own intellectual curiosity, or improve their material circumstances, produced a perspective on colonial life that stripped away conventions; where their ordinary everyday experiences sometimes became extraordinary, as they forged new networks throughout the subcontinent and beyond its frontiers. Their journeys and experiences offer a discursive historical construct as significant as official reports, censuses, and surveys, and contribute towards our understanding of the diverse creative processes through which intellectual histories of the colonial state were constructed.

Table of contents

• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Spheres of Knowledge
• 2 Indigenous Informants and Go-Betweens
• 3 The Botanical Surveys of Francis Buchanan-Hamilton
• 4 Francis Whyte Ellis: ‘A Nearly Perfect Embodiment of Orientalism as Colonial Policy’
• 5 ‘The White Pundit’: William Johnson and the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India
• 6 Dr Clement Williams: A British Merchant at the Court of King Mindon
• 7 Frederick Marshman Bailey: ‘The Right Sort’ of Political Officer and Collector
• 8 J.P. Mills ICS: Collecting and Photographing the Naga Peoples of North-East Burma
• 9 The Last Word from the Women of the Empire
• Afterword
• Bibliography
• Index