12 India, Inc.?
-
Antoinette Burton
Abstract
The re-domestication of the end of the British Raj in and around the production of Indian Ink has, moreover, an intimately familial history. In the case of empire, the danger is not that it will disappear as a subject, but rather that the staging of its end will produce heroes and heroines in new, and newly seductive, romances of empire. In the case of Raj nostalgia, the challenge is to understand the ways in which the loss of India offers an apparently endless opportunity to see empire. In addition to being an orientalist production, the Aldwych version of Indian Ink was clearly an exercise in feeding what was left of the Raj nostalgia machine in the 1990s. White women are the keepers of imperial memory, and in the end, like many memsahibs before 1947, they remain guarantors of empire's reproduction for future generations.
Abstract
The re-domestication of the end of the British Raj in and around the production of Indian Ink has, moreover, an intimately familial history. In the case of empire, the danger is not that it will disappear as a subject, but rather that the staging of its end will produce heroes and heroines in new, and newly seductive, romances of empire. In the case of Raj nostalgia, the challenge is to understand the ways in which the loss of India offers an apparently endless opportunity to see empire. In addition to being an orientalist production, the Aldwych version of Indian Ink was clearly an exercise in feeding what was left of the Raj nostalgia machine in the 1990s. White women are the keepers of imperial memory, and in the end, like many memsahibs before 1947, they remain guarantors of empire's reproduction for future generations.
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Contents v
- General editor’s introduction vi
- Notes on contributors viii
- Acknowledgements xi
- Introduction 1
- 1 The persistence of empire in metropolitan culture 21
- 2 Empire loyalists and ‘Commonwealth men’ 37
- 3 Coronation Everest 57
- 4 Look back at empire 73
- 5 ‘No nation could be broker’ 91
- 6 The imperial game in crisis 111
- 7 Imperial heroes for a post-imperial age 128
- 8 Imperial legacies, new frontiers 145
- 9 Wandering in the wake of empire 163
- 10 Communities of Britishness 180
- 11 South Asians in post-imperial Britain 200
- 12 India, Inc.? 217
- Index 233
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Contents v
- General editor’s introduction vi
- Notes on contributors viii
- Acknowledgements xi
- Introduction 1
- 1 The persistence of empire in metropolitan culture 21
- 2 Empire loyalists and ‘Commonwealth men’ 37
- 3 Coronation Everest 57
- 4 Look back at empire 73
- 5 ‘No nation could be broker’ 91
- 6 The imperial game in crisis 111
- 7 Imperial heroes for a post-imperial age 128
- 8 Imperial legacies, new frontiers 145
- 9 Wandering in the wake of empire 163
- 10 Communities of Britishness 180
- 11 South Asians in post-imperial Britain 200
- 12 India, Inc.? 217
- Index 233
