The Tropics and the Traveling Gaze: India, Landscape, and Science, 1800-1856 (Culture, Place, and Nature) - Hardcover

Arnold, David John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 029598581X ISBN 13: 9780295985817

Publisher: University of Washington Press, 2006

Synopsis

This is a book about land. It is about a land―- about India and how that vast and diverse region came to be known to, and conceptualized by, British and other European travelers and observers in the first half of the nineteenth century. But it is also a book about the land, about the ways in which India’s material environment became increasingly subject to the colonial understanding of landscape and nature, and to the scientific scrutiny of itinerant naturalists. . . . [It] is concerned with European responses to an unfamiliar landscape, about the land as an object of colonial fear and desire, utility and aesthetics. It seeks to show how India, in passing under British control, was evaluated in ways that combined scenic delight and practical opportunity with a harsher appraisal of India as a land of death and disease, of desolation and deficiency.from the Introduction

The Tropics and the Traveling Gaze considers the European representation and understanding of landscape and nature in early nineteenth-century India. It draws on travel narratives, literary texts, and scientific literature to show the diversity of European (especially British) responses to the Indian environment and the ways in which these contributed to the wider colonizing process. Through its close examination of the correlation between tropicality and “otherness,” and of science as a means of colonial appropriation, the book offers a new interpretation of the history of colonial India and a critical contribution to the understanding of environmental history and the tropical world. It will be of interest to historians of the environment, science, and colonialism; South Asianists; and cultural and environmental anthropologists and geographers.

About this title

Book Description:

A new interpretation of the history of colonial India and a critical contribution to the understanding of environmental history and the tropical world.

About the Author:

David Arnold is professor of the history of South Asia at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He is the author of a number of books, including Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth-Century India and The Problem of Nature: Environment, Culture, and European Expansion.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 029598581X
• ISBN 13: 9780295985817
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 312