01473nam a22002177a 4500 20260604162411.0 260604b |||||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d 9780520084056 : Donated by Prof. Romila Thapar 954.8 IRS Irschick, Eugene F. Dialogue and history : constructing South India, 1795-1895. / Eugene F. Irschick. Berkeley : University of California Press, , 1994. xiii, 261p. : 24cm. 00 Eugene 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. History. South India Eugene F. Irschick RBK 68865 68865 0 0 ddc 0 0 SNUL SNUL 2026-06-04 Donated by Prof. Romila Thapar 0.00 0 954.8 IRS G8293 2026-06-04 16:24:25 2026-06-04 RBK Prof. Romila Thapar Collection