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

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments vii 1 Introducing Colonial Discourse 1 2 Travel, Exploration, and ‘‘Discovery’’: From Imagination to Inquiry 12 Imagining Multiple Worlds: The Fantasy of ‘‘Discovery’’ 18 The Narrative Organization of Discovery 29 ‘‘Inquiry’’ and the Documentation of the Others 41 Conclusion: ‘‘Discovery’’ and Wonder, ‘‘Contracted and Epitomized’’ 49 3 The Discourse of Difference: Constructing the Colonial Exotic 55 The Colony and Imperial Wealth 57 The Exotic in English Culture 59 The Colonial Exotic: Aesthetics, Science, and Difference 60 The Sentimental Exotic 62 The Scientific Exotic 79 Conclusion: From the Indian to the Colonial Exotic 95 4 Empire Management: From Domestication to Spectacle 104 The Domestication of Colonial Spaces 106 Administering Colonial Spaces 121 ‘‘Raising the General Credit of the Empire’’: The Spectacle of Empire 140 Conclusion: Imperial Improvisation and the Spectacle 145 5 Civilizing the Empire: The Ideology of Moral and Material Progress 161 England’s Age of Improvement 164 Discipline and Improve 170 Imperial Lessons 174 The Salvific Colonial 178 Rescue, Reform, and Race 183 Conclusion: From Improvement to Self-Legitimization 194 6 Aesthetic Understanding: From Colonial English to Imperial Cosmopolitans 201 The Self-Fashioning of the Scholar-Colonial 204 Antiquarian Aesthetics and Colonial Authority 213 ‘‘Consumption, Ingestion, and Decoration’’: Colonial Commodities 219 The ‘‘Empire City’’: Pageantry and Empire 226 Conclusion: From Colonial English to Imperial Cosmopolitan 229 References 235 Index 260