01422nam a22001937a 450000500170000000800410001702000180005802800370007608200140011310000250012724500890015226000590024130000250030036500070032552008440033265000130117665000160118970000230120520260604162411.0260604b        |||||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d  a9780520084056  a: Donated by Prof. Romila Thapar  a954.8 IRS  aIrschick, Eugene F.   aDialogue and history b: constructing South India, 1795-1895.c/ Eugene F. Irschick.  aBerkeley b: University of California Press, c, 1994.  axiii, 261p.c: 24cm.  b00  aEugene Irschick deftly questions the conventional wisdom that knowledge about a colonial culture is unilaterally defined by its rulers. Focusing on nineteenth-century South India, he demonstrates that a society's view of its history results from a "dialogic process" involving all its constituencies.

For centuries, agricultural life in South India was seminomadic. But when the British took dominion, they sought to stabilize the region by inventing a Tamil "golden age" of sedentary, prosperous villages. Irschick shows that this construction resulted not from overt British manipulation but from an intricate cross-pollination of both European and native ideas. He argues that the Tamil played a critical role in constructing their past and thus shaping their future. And British administrators adapted local customs to their own uses.  aHistory.  aSouth India  aEugene F. Irschick