This set of essays written over a span of forty years from 1961 to 2002, examines the structure and working of the British Raj in India during the first half of Crown Rule (1858-1914). The essays are grouped under three general headings: land tenure and land policy, colonial architecture, and migration. Two themes dominate. One is an assessment of what the British thought they were doing in India, and second, how India ought to be ruled. In these essays, Thomas Metcalf examines British policies towards India and the way the British, as rulers, endeavoured to sustain and legitimate the imperial structure. He also explores the consequences of the ideas and policies as they affected the lives of ordinary Indians, from the landed elite to lowly policemen and labourers. Many of the essays- both those that examine policy and those that assess its consequences- take as a central turning point the revolt of 1857. The essays provide insight into varied ways in which the massive structure of the British Raj in India functioned in the heyday of empire. They give the reader some sense of the Raj as a functioning imperial government, and at the same time attempt to critically assess the various strategies that it devised to justify its rule.
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Thomas R. Metcalf is Emeritus Professor of History and Sarah Kailath Professor of India Studies, University of California, Berkeley.
"Metcalf has rendered a valuable service to those interested in the Raj, South Asia, and colonial history and historiography by collecting and publishing his essays in a single volume. Readers, from the scholar to the articulate layman, will learn much about British attitudes and policies as well as conditions of life in South Asia during the half-century following the mutiny when the British were seeking to sustain and legitimate the Raj."--John L. Gordon Jr., History: Reviews of New Books
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