Dialogue and History: Constructing South India, 1795-1895

Author/Contributor(s):	Irschick, Eugene F
Publisher:	University of California Press
Date:	04/05/1994
Binding:	Paperback
Condition:	NEW

Eugene Irschick deftly questions the conventional wisdom that knowledge about a colonial culture is unilaterally defined by its rulers. Focusing on nineteenth-century South India, he demonstrates that a society's view of its history results from a dialogic process involving all its constituencies.

For centuries, agricultural life in South India was seminomadic. But when the British took dominion, they sought to stabilize the region by inventing a Tamil golden age of sedentary, prosperous villages. Irschick shows that this construction resulted not from overt British manipulation but from an intricate cross-pollination of both European and native ideas. He argues that the Tamil played a critical role in constructing their past and thus shaping their future. And British administrators adapted local customs to their own uses.