At the Heart of the Empire: Indians and the Colonial Encounter in Late-Victorian Britain
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Book Description
Antoinette Burton focuses on the experiences of three Victorian travelers in Britain to illustrate how "Englishness" was made and remade in relation to imperialism. The accounts left by these three sojourners--all prominent, educated Indians--represent complex, critical ethnographies of "native" metropolitan society and offer revealing glimpses of what it was like to be a colonial subject in fin-de-siècle Britain. Burton's innovative interpretation of the travelers' testimonies shatters the myth of Britain's insularity from its own construction of empire and shows that it was instead a terrain open to continual contest and refiguration.
Burton's three subjects felt the influence of imperial power keenly during even the most everyday encounters in Britain. Pandita Ramabai arrived in London in 1883 seeking a medical education and left in 1886, having resisted the Anglican Church's attempts to make her an evangelical missionary. Cornelia Sorabji went to Oxford to study law and became the first Indian woman to be called to the Bar. Behramji Malabari sought help for his Indian reform projects in England, and subjected London to colonial scrutiny in the process. Their experiences form the basis of this wide-ranging, clearly written, and imaginative investigation of diasporic movement in the colonial metropolis.
About the Author
Antoinette Burton is Senior Lecturer in History and Associate Director of Women's Studies at Johns Hopkins University and author of Burdens of History: British Feminists, Indian Women, and Imperial Culture, 1865-1915 (1994).
At the Heart of the Empire: Indians and the Colonial Encounter in Late-Victorian Britain,Antoinette Burton,University of California Press,0520209583,19th century,East Indians,Ethnic Studies - General,Ethnohistory,Europe - Great Britain - General,Great Britain,History,History - General History,History: World,Imperialism,India,Malabari, Behramji M,Relations,Social Science,Anthropology,British & Irish history,British Empire,Ethnic studies,History / General,Journeys,Ramabai Sarasvati,Social history,Sorabji, Cornelia,World history: c 1750 to c 1900
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