The Library
Weak ties in a tangled web? relationships between the political residents of the English East India Company and their munshis, 1798-1818
Tools
Wilkinson, Callie (2019) Weak ties in a tangled web? relationships between the political residents of the English East India Company and their munshis, 1798-1818. Modern Asian Studies, 53 (5). pp. 1574-1612. doi:10.1017/S0026749X17000932 ISSN 0026-749X.
|
PDF
WRAP-weak-ties-tangled-web-Wilkinson-2017.pdf - Accepted Version - Requires a PDF viewer. Download (1494Kb) | Preview |
Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17000932
Abstract
Although historians have long recognized the important role which Indians played in the English East India Company’s operations, the focus has usually been on the mechanics of direct rule in ‘British’ India. Yet, the expertise of Indian cultural intermediaries was arguably even more important, as well as more contested, in the context of the Company’s growing political influence over nominally independent Indian kingdoms. This article examines the relationships between the East India Company’s political representatives (Residents) and their Indian secretaries (munshis) at Indian royal courts during a period of dramatic imperial expansion, from 1798 to 1818. The article considers how these relationships were conceptualized and debated by British officials, and reflects on the practical consequences of these relationships for the munshis involved. The tensions surrounding the role of the munshi in Residency business exemplify some of the practical dilemmas posed by the developing system of indirect rule in India, where the Resident had to decide how much responsibility to delegate to Indian experts better versed in courtly norms and practices, while at the same time maintaining his own image of authority and control. Although the Resident-munshi relationship was in many respects mutually beneficial, these relationships nevertheless spawned anxieties about transparency and accountability within the Company itself, as well as exciting resentments at court. Both Residents and munshis were required to negotiate between two political and institutional cultures, but it was the munshi who seems to have borne the brunt of the risks associated with this intermediary position.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Subjects: | D History General and Old World > DA Great Britain D History General and Old World > DS Asia |
||||||
Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > History | ||||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | East India Company -- Officials and employees, India -- History -- 18th century, India -- History -- 19th century | ||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Modern Asian Studies | ||||||
Publisher: | Cambridge University Press | ||||||
ISSN: | 0026-749X | ||||||
Official Date: | September 2019 | ||||||
Dates: |
|
||||||
Volume: | 53 | ||||||
Number: | 5 | ||||||
Page Range: | pp. 1574-1612 | ||||||
DOI: | 10.1017/S0026749X17000932 | ||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||
Copyright Holders: | © Cambridge University Press 2019 | ||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 22 May 2019 | ||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 23 May 2019 | ||||||
Related URLs: |
Request changes or add full text files to a record
Repository staff actions (login required)
View Item |
Downloads
Downloads per month over past year