The Black Hole Of Empire

When Siraj, the ruler of Bengal, overran the British settlement of Calcutta in 1756, he allegedly jailed 146 European prisoners overnight in a cramped prison. Of the group, 123 died of suffocation. While this episode was never independently confirmed, the story of "the black hole of Calcutta" was widely circulated and seen by the British public as an atrocity committed by savage colonial subjects. The Black Hole of Empire follows the ever-changing representations of this historical event and founding myth of the British Empire in India, from the eighteenth century to the present. Partha Chatterjee explores how a supposed tragedy paved the ideological foundations for the "civilizing" force of British imperial rule and territorial control in India. Chatterjee takes a close look at the justifications of modern empire by liberal thinkers, international lawyers, and conservative traditionalists, and examines the intellectual and political responses of the colonized, including those of Bengali nationalists. The two sides of empire's entwined history are brought together in the story of the Black Hole memorial: set up in Calcutta in 1760, demolished in 1821, restored by Lord Curzon in 1902, and removed in 1940 to a neglected churchyard. Challenging conventional truisms of imperial history, nationalist scholarship, and liberal visions of globalization, Chatterjee argues that empire is a necessary and continuing part of the history of the modern state.

When Siraj, the ruler of Bengal, overran the British settlement of Calcutta in 1756, he allegedly jailed 146 European prisoners overnight in a cramped prison. Of the group, 123 died of suffocation. While this episode was never independently confirmed, the story of "the black hole of Calcutta" was widely circulated and seen by the British public as an atrocity committed by savage colonial subjects. The Black Hole of Empire follows the ever-changing representations of this historical event and founding myth of the British Empire in India, from the eighteenth century to the present. Partha Chatterjee explores how a supposed tragedy paved the ideological foundations for the "civilizing" force of British imperial rule and territorial control in India. Chatterjee takes a close look at the justifications of modern empire by liberal thinkers, international lawyers, and conservative traditionalists, and examines the intellectual and political responses of the colonized, including those of Bengali nationalists. The two sides of empire's entwined history are brought together in the story of the Black Hole memorial: set up in Calcutta in 1760, demolished in 1821, restored by Lord Curzon in 1902, and removed in 1940 to a neglected churchyard. Challenging conventional truisms of imperial history, nationalist scholarship, and liberal visions of globalization, Chatterjee argues that empire is a necessary and continuing part of the history of the modern state. Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions.

A history of the idea of "black holes" explores the tumultuous debate over the existence of this now well-accepted phenomenon, focusing particular attention on Indian scientist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar.

"George Black rediscovers the history and lore of one of the planet's most magnificent landscapes. Read Empire of Shadows, and you'll never think of our first—in many ways our greatest—national park in the same way again." —Hampton Sides, author of Blood and Thunder Empire of Shadows is the epic story of the conquest of Yellowstone, a landscape uninhabited, inaccessible and shrouded in myth in the aftermath of the Civil War. In a radical reinterpretation of the nineteenth century West, George Black casts Yellowstone's creation as the culmination of three interwoven strands of history - the passion for exploration, the violence of the Indian Wars and the "civilizing" of the frontier - and charts its course through the lives of those who sought to lay bare its mysteries: Lt. Gustavus Cheyney Doane, a gifted but tormented cavalryman known as "the man who invented Wonderland"; the ambitious former vigilante leader Nathaniel Langford; scientist Ferdinand Hayden, who brought photographer William Henry Jackson and painter Thomas Moran to Yellowstone; and Gen. Phil Sheridan, Civil War hero and architect of the Indian Wars, who finally succeeded in having the new National Park placed under the protection of the US Cavalry. George Black1s Empire of Shadows is a groundbreaking historical account of the origins of America1s majestic national landmark.

"This book is about a story that entered the national myth-bank, and lodged there with unusual tenacity. As so often with the historical episodes the British take to their hearts, it is a story of heroism in failure, turning a miserable defeat into a matter of national pride. The story was used for good and for ill. All tales of exceptional human bravery and resilience have an important place in our minds, and this one came with other attractive characteristics: the aura of money and battles, of exotic places and people, of youth and daring and living against the odds. There is probably no great harm if a little exaggeration creeps in to such narratives. However, the way in which this particular episode also resonated as a fear of strangeness, and came to epitomize through its very name the savagery of other peoples, is much less savoury."--BOOK JACKET.

"A black hole is a region of space-time with such strong gravitational effects that nothing not even particles and electromagnetic radiation such as light can escape from inside it. In BLACK HOLE FACTORY, poet Eric Smith writes his way into and out of such holes with a commitment to the history and craftsmanship of the well-shaped poem. He compresses experience, intellect, and feeling within concentrated stanzas of compelling density. Even traditional rhyme and meter become sources of surprise and innovation in his hands. The book has poems that communicate impressive control, intellect, and wit poems that cultivate ironic self-awareness and detachment on the part of both poet and reader. And then there are breakthrough moments giving up both irony and control in which poet and reader experience a kind of gravitational collapse powerful enough to deform and reshape space and time. In the end, Eric Smith has shaped a profound and accomplished manuscript of deep personal engagement graced by moving, open flights of lyricism."-From Amazon.

The forms of liberal government that emerged after World War II are in the midst of a profound crisis. In I Am the People, Partha Chatterjee reconsiders the concept of popular sovereignty in order to explain today’s dramatic outburst of movements claiming to speak for “the people.” To uncover the roots of populism, Chatterjee traces the twentieth-century trajectory of the welfare state and neoliberal reforms. Mobilizing ideals of popular sovereignty and the emotional appeal of nationalism, anticolonial movements ushered in a world of nation-states while liberal democracies in Europe guaranteed social rights to their citizens. But as neoliberal techniques shrank the scope of government, politics gave way to technical administration by experts. Once the state could no longer claim an emotional bond with the people, the ruling bloc lost the consent of the governed. To fill the void, a proliferation of populist leaders have mobilized disaffected groups into a battle that they define as the authentic people against entrenched oligarchy. Once politics enters a spiral of competitive populism, Chatterjee cautions, there is no easy return to pristine liberalism. Only a counter-hegemonic social force that challenges global capital and facilitates the equal participation of all peoples in democratic governance can achieve significant transformation. Drawing on thinkers such as Antonio Gramsci, Michel Foucault, and Ernesto Laclau and with a particular focus on the history of populism in India, I Am the People is a sweeping, theoretically rich account of the origins of today’s tempests.

Adapted from the critically acclaimed chronicle of U.S. history, a study of American expansionism around the world is told from a grassroots perspective and provides an analysis of important events from Wounded Knee to Iraq.

You don't want to mess with Durango. He left his crew behind. His father is dead. And he's going to prove himself to Vienne, even if he dies trying. As he races through flood and fire and across a violent and terrifying planet, there's a 97% chance he's going to die trying. But who's counting.