: constructing South India, 1795-1895 Irschick, Eugene F. creator Eugene F. Irschick text Berkeley : University of California Press , 1994 monographic eng

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xiii, 261p. : 24cm. 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. / Eugene F. Irschick. History South India 954.8 IRS 9780520084056 : Donated by Prof. Romila Thapar 260604 20260604162411.0