The Classics and Colonial India

by Vasunia, Phiroze

• ISBN13: 9780199203239
• ISBN10: 0199203237
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-07-12
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

This extraordinary book provides a detailed account of the relationship between classical antiquity and the British colonial presence in India. It examines some of the great figures of the colonial period such as Gandhi, Nehru, Macaulay, Jowett, and William Jones, and covers a range of different disciplines as it sweeps from the eighteenth century to the end of the British Raj in the twentieth. Using a variety of materials, including archival documents and familiar texts, Vasunia shows how classical culture pervaded the thoughts and minds of the British colonizers. His book highlights the many Indian receptions of Greco-Roman antiquity and analyses how Indians turned to ancient Greece and Rome during the colonial period for a variety of purposes, including anti-colonialism, nationalism, and collaboration. Offering a unique cross-cultural study, this volume will be of interest to literary scholars and historians of the classical world, the British Empire, and South Asia.

Author Biography

Phiroze Vasunia is a Professor of Classics at the University of Reading.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Illustrations
Introduction
Part One: Alexander in India
1. Dreams of Alexander
2. Sikandar and the History of India
Part Two: Caesar in Peccavistan
3. Greater Rome and Greater Britain
4. Visions of Antiquity: Architecture and the Classical Style
5. Competitionwallahs: Greek, Latin, and the Indian Civil Service
Part Three: Co-operation and Liberation
6. Homer and Virgil
7. Aristophanes Wealth and Dalpatram s Lakshmi
8. Athens in Calcutta: Derozio, Dutt, and the Bengal Renaissance
Epilogue: Gandhi, Nehru, Socrates
Bibliography