History of British India [Lec 04]

History of British India [Lec 04]; Upper-division undergraduate course, comprised of 20 lectures, taught in Fall 2013 at UCLA; Lecture of 8 October 2013. Overview of British presence in India, 1601-1757; European settlements in India; largely coastal presence of Europeans. A discussion of the painting, "The East Offering Her Riches to Brittania" by Spiridione Roma. Early trade between the Company and India: spices, textiles, etc from India, and silver/bullion from Britain; the Portuguese and Jesuits in India; the Company, the Crown, and Parliament; spread of Company trade in India; establishment of colonial cities--Fort St. William, Surat, Bombay, etc. How did the British come to acquire India? The idea of the stranger and the other in India, and in other civilizations; history and the other; the vulnerability of India because of its cosmopolitanism; English provincialism; history of corruption in India; parliamentary inquiry into corruption in India in 1695; acquisition of Bombay as part of dowry; renewal of East India Company charter; Company's resistance of missionary activity; 'the man on the spot' theory; Britain and empiricism; Company's increasing acquisition of rights in Indian territories; Company goes to war with Aurangzeb, is humiliated, and is forgiven; death of Aurangzeb; William Dalrymple on early history of Europeans in India; Europeans and their Indian mistresses; critique of Dalrymple; lost opportunities of intercultural dialogue; elements of exoticism in cultural exchanges

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