The Raj

This is a cultural history of the British Empire in India presented through ten key non-literary texts. Each of these texts embodies a particular attitude, ideology and/or development in imperial thinking, administrative process or cultural practices, and it is this attitude, ideology and development that the book unpacks through a reading of the texts, along with excerpts from the original documents.
­The aim is to flag and signpost momentous events and ideas through imperial texts such as J.Z. Holwell’s 1756 account of the Black Hole of Calcutta, T.B. Macaulay’s 1835 ‘Minute’ on Indian education and Flora Annie Steel and Grace Gardiner’s 1888 advice book on colonial domesticity, ­The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook.
­Through this book, it is hoped, the reader will get a flavour and glimpse of the complex and complicated structure that was the Raj. ­The book will appeal not only to the academic audience and literary scholars keen on the rhetoric of empire but also to the general, informed readers.