Reading the East India Company 1720-1840: Colonial Currencies of Gender (Women in Culture and Society)

Reading the East India Company 1720-1840: Colonial Currencies of Gender (Women in Culture and Society)

In Reading the East India Company , Betty Joseph offers an innovative account of how archives—and the practice of archiving—shaped colonial ideologies in Britain and British-controlled India during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Drawing on the British East India Company's records as well as novels, memoirs, portraiture and guidebooks, Joseph shows how the company's economic and archival practices intersected to produce colonial "fictions" or "truth-effects" that strictly governed class and gender roles—in effect creating a "grammar of power" that kept the far-flung empire intact. And while women were often excluded from this archive, Joseph finds that we can still hear their voices at certain key historical junctures. Attending to these voices, Joseph illustrates how the writing of history belongs not only to the colonial project set forth by British men, but also to the agendas and mechanisms of agency—of colonized Indian, as well as European women. In the process, she makes a valuable and lasting contribution to gender studies, postcolonial theory, and the history of South Asia. In Reading the East India Company , Betty Joseph offers an innovative account of how archivesand the practice of archivingshaped colonial ideologies in Britain and British-controlled India during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Drawing on the British East India Company's records as well as novels, memoirs, portraiture and guidebooks, Joseph shows how the company's economic and archival practices intersected to produce colonial "fictions" or "truth-effects" that strictly governed class and gender rolesin effect creating a "grammar of power" that kept the far-flung empire intact. And while women were often excluded from this archive, Joseph finds that we can still hear their voices at certain key historical junctures. Attending to these voices, Joseph illustrates how the writing of history belongs not only to the colonial project set forth by British men, but also to the agendas and mechanisms of agencyof colonized Indian, as well as European women. In the process, she makes a valuable and lasting contribution to gender studies, postcolonial theory, and the history of South Asia. In Reading the East India Company , Betty Joseph offers an innovative account of how archives—and the practice of archiving—shaped colonial ideologies in Britain and British-controlled India during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Drawing on the British East India Company's records as well as novels, memoirs, portraiture and guidebooks, Joseph shows how the company's economic and archival practices intersected to produce colonial "fictions" or "truth-effects" that strictly governed class and gender roles—in effect creating a "grammar of power" that kept the far-flung empire intact. And while women were often excluded from this archive, Joseph finds that we can still hear their voices at certain key historical junctures. Attending to these voices, Joseph illustrates how the writing of history belongs not only to the colonial project set forth by British men, but also to the agendas and mechanisms of agency—of colonized Indian, as well as European women. In the process, she makes a valuable and lasting contribution to gender studies, postcolonial theory, and the history of South Asia. Betty Joseph is an associate professor of English at Rice University. READING THE EAST INDIA COMPANY, 1720-1840 Colonial Currencies of Gender By Betty Joseph The University of Chicago Press Copyright © 2004 The University of Chicago All right reserved. ISBN: 978-0-226-41203-0 Contents Foreword by Catharine R. Stimpson........................................................ixAcknowledgments..........................................................................xiiiIntroduction: The Archive without Walls..................................................11 Globalizing Defoe.....................................................................332 Archival Fictions: Memories of Violence in the Age of Sensibility.....................613 The Politics of Settlement............................................................924 The Rani of Burdwan as Historical Subject.............................................1235 Critical Genealogies..................................................................153Epilogue: Recon(figuring) Woman..........................................................178Notes....................................................................................181Bibliography.............................................................................203Index....................................................................................215 Chapter One Globalizing Defoe The Latter Part of her History lay Abroad, and cou'd not so well be vouch'd as the First; yet, as she has told it herself, we have the less Reason to question the Truth of that Part also. -Daniel Defoe, preface to Roxana (