The Classics and Colonial India

Abstract

Greeks and Romans, Indians and Britons, all come together in the exploration of a fascinating and under-explored phenomenon. Written by a leading authority in the subject, this book provides a lively and detailed discussion 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 and Nehru and Macaulay and Gladstone; it makes accessible hard-to-find texts and archival material; and it covers a range of different disciplines as it sweeps from the eighteenth century to the end of the British Raj in the twentieth. The book shows how classical culture pervaded the thoughts and minds of the British colonizers; it also shines a bright light on 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. Among the ancient and modern figures studied are Alexander the Great, Homer, Virgil, William Jones, Benjamin Jowett, John Seeley, Charles Dilke, Henry Derozio, and Michael Madhusudan Dutt. Offering a new kind of cross-cultural study, this book will be of interest to literary scholars and historians of the classical world, the British Empire, and South Asia.

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