HIST 388 D: Junior Seminar

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HIST 388 D Junior Seminar

• Mughals, Merchants, and WarriorsSouth Asia in
  the 18th Century

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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