Nabobs

This book considers the controversy caused by 'nabobs', and the debate regarding British identity and British imperialism in the late eighteenth century.

This new dictionary not only presents the known vocabulary of Anglo-India, but also provides the sources, etymologies, and usages of the words of the past 350 years. With an extensive historical introduction and register of references, this complete source offers a lively and scholarly history of previous lexicographical work in this area as well as a socio-linguistic analysis of the growth of Anglo-Indian words and their use in the literature of India.

Many have told of the East India Company’s extraordinary excesses in eighteenth-century India, of the plunder that made its directors fabulously wealthy and able to buy British land and titles, but this is only a fraction of the story. When one of these men—Warren Hastings—was put on trial by Edmund Burke, it brought the Company’s exploits to the attention of the public. Through the trial and after, the British government transformed public understanding of the Company’s corrupt actions by creating an image of a vulnerable India that needed British assistance. Intrusive behavior was recast as a civilizing mission. In this fascinating, and devastating, account of the scandal that laid the foundation of the British Empire, Nicholas Dirks explains how this substitution of imperial authority for Company rule helped erase the dirty origins of empire and justify the British presence in India. The Scandal of Empire reveals that the conquests and exploitations of the East India Company were critical to England’s development in the eighteenth century and beyond. We see how mercantile trade was inextricably linked with imperial venture and scandalous excess and how these three things provided the ideological basis for far-flung British expansion. In this powerfully written and trenchant critique, Dirks shows how the empire projected its own scandalous behavior onto India itself. By returning to the moment when the scandal of empire became acceptable we gain a new understanding of the modern culture of the colonizer and the colonized and the manifold implications for Britain, India, and the world.

This entertaining account of the English in India studies the behavior and the customs of the English from the very first connections down to the end of the eighteenth-century. It attempts to trace and account for the various phases of the development of the social life of the English in eighteenth-century India. The author, the late Dr. Percival Spear (1901-1982) taught history at St. Stephen's College, Delhi, and was the author of The Oxford History of Modern India 1740-1975.

Original research sheds light on the fascinating biography of one of Yale University’s early supporters Elihu Yale's name is famous for the great educational institution, Yale University, of which he was an early benefactor. He made his fortune in India, mostly through trading in diamonds. Arriving in Madras in 1672, through his outstanding abilities he rose through the hierarchy of the East India Company settlement from clerk to governor. When he returned to London in 1699 he brought with him Indian gems, furniture, and textiles, and proceeded to amass a collection of some ten thousand items, dispersed at seven auction sales after his death in 1721. The catalogs of these sales survive, providing information about the lively London art market. Hitherto neglected by historians, the Yale sales prove to be a landmark in the history both of collecting and of auctioning art in early 18th-century England. The authors explore Elihu Yale’s life and interests, and then turn to a study of Yale as a dealer (particularly of gems) and a collector of diamonds and jewelry, works of art, furniture, books, and other objects—some of which are now at Yale University, and some in national collections around Britain.