Review: Eighteenth-Century Issues in South Asia

Author(s): D. A. Washbrook
Review by: D. A. Washbrook
Source: Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. 44, No. 3 (2001), pp.
372-383
Published by: BRILL
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3632357
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EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ISSUES IN SOUTH ASIA

D.A. WASHBROOK*
A ReviewArticleof:
FromProsperityto Decline: Eighteenth-Century
Sushil CHAUDHURY,
Bengal. Delhi:
+
Rs
500.
ISBN
xvi
377.
81-7304-105-9.
1995.
PRAKASH,
Om
Manohar,
Pp.
in
Pre-colonial
India.
Commercial
Enterprise
Cambridge:Cambridge
European
University Press, 1998. Pp. Xviii + 377. ?60. ISBN 0521-257581. Sudipta
SEN, Empire of Free Trade: the East India Company and the Making of the
Colonial Marketplace. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998.
Indigenous
Pp. 225. US$ 37.50. ISBN 0-8122-3426-X. Lakshmi SUBRAMANIAN,
Delhi:
and
the
West
Surat
Coast.
and
Bombay,
Imperial Expansion:
Capital
Oxford University Press, 1996. Pp. viii + 368. Rs 495. ISBN 0-19-563559-0.
Matthew H. EDNEY,Mapping an Empire: The Geographical Construction of
British India, 1765-1843. Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1997.
Pp. xv + 458. US$ 35. ISBN 0-226-18487-0. Michael H. FISHER (ed.), The
Travels of Dean Mahomet. An Eighteenth-Century Journey through India.
California: University of California Press, 1997. Hb. US$ 45. Pb. US$ 16.95.
ISBN 0-520-20716-5.
Until relatively recently, the eighteenth century was one of the most neglected
periods in the history of South Asia. Sandwiched between the high points of
Mughal imperial splendour in the seventeenth century and British imperial
might in the nineteenth, it was widely dismissed as an epoch of decay, chaos,
greed and violence. However, in the last couple of decades, it has started to
undergo a serious re-appraisal. It was during the eighteenth century that what
might be termed the point of gravity in global history shifted decisively from
East to West, from Asia to Western Europe and North America. Moreover,
events that took place in South Asia were critical to this shift: the rise of the
English East India Company to dominance in Mughal India represented the first
instance of the European 'conquest' of a major Asian power and also provided
a platform-of men, money and materielle-for the subjugation of the entire
region from the eastern Mediterranean to the South China Sea. Understanding what happened in India in the eighteenth century has become central to

* Dr. D.A. Washbrook, St. Antony's College, Oxford University, 62 Woodstock Rd.,

Oxford,OX26JF, England,david.washbrook@st.antonys.oxford.ac.uk.
? KoninklijkeBrill NV, Leiden, 2001

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JESHO44,3

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY
ISSUESIN SOUTHASIA

373

the subsequenthistoryof the Western-dominated

world and, relatunderstanding
and
of
which
the
that
modernity,
edly,
processes capitalism
historyreleased.
All the books gatheredhere explore, in one way or another,South Asia's
eighteenthcenturyand the interactionsbetween Europeansand Indians,which
it contained.But they do so from markedlydifferentperspectivesand reflectthe
continuing controversies surroundingthe subject. A first such controversy
concerns the impact of the Europeantrading companies on the South Asian
economy. As is well-known, until the mid-eighteenthcenturySouth Asia possessed a very wealthy economy (or perhapsseries of regionaleconomies) centred on textile manufacturing-but,then, what happened?The terrainof debate
is neatly laid out between Sushil Chaudhury'sFrom Prosperity to Decline:
Eighteenth-Century Bengal and Om Prakash's European Commercial Enterprise

in Pre-colonialIndia, which repriseand extend argumentsthat the authorshave

alreadydeployed in 'combat' against each other in the pages of specialisthistoricaljournals.'Chaudhurytakes a starkview of the impactof Europeantrade
and emergentpoliticalpower:he contrastsa situationof high commercialprosperity, based mainly on inland trade, in Bengal in the first half of the eighteenth centurywith one of famine, depradationand decline in the second half,
as the East India Companyseized power and sought to annex the local economy to its sea-borneinterests.Prakashoffers a less dramatic,but also more
complex, thesis. Previously,he has arguedthat Europeansea-bornetradefrom
the later seventeenthcenturywas of positive benefit to the Bengal economy,
stimulatinga periodof growth.2Here, he broadenshis perspectiveto attemptan
assessmentof the Europeanimpact across the whole of South Asia from the
early sixteenthto the late eighteenthcenturies.He carefullyweighs costs against
benefits: off-setting the loss of control over shipping and long distance sea
routes against the advantageof new marketsand increasedsources of specie.
While recognising that the acquisitionof monopoly powers by the European
companies,as a result of their late eighteenth-centurystate-buildingactivities,
createdproblems,he remainsinclined to take an optimisticview. By implication, he dates the full 'colonial' subordinationof the South Asian to the European economy to the nineteenthcentury,not earlier.
The debatebetween Chaudhuryand Prakashtouches a wide range of issues.
Perhapsthe least tractableof them concernsthe statusof the data on which they
base their assessments.Here, it is interestingthat both should see at least the
first half of the eighteenth century in Bengal as marked by prosperity and
Sushil Chaudhury,'EuropeanCompanies'; Om Prakash, 'On Estimatingthe Employment
Implications'.
2 Om Prakash, The Dutch East India Company.

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374

D.A. WASHBROOK

growth. This stands in sharp contrastto the general perspectiveon the epoch
advancedby Irfan Habib,which takes economic decline to have become established much earlier,with the waning of Mughalimperialpower.3Chaudhuryand
Prakashadd importantsupportto the 'revisionist'interpretationsassociatedwith
ChristopherBayly, AndreWink and MuzaffarAlam, who see Mughalpolitical
decline in the context of secular economic growth.4With regardto the second
half of the century,however,Chaudhury'sargumentis seriously questionedby
the more recent researchesof Rajat Datta. In examining the commercialisation
of Bengal, Datta casts doubton the accuracyof data suppliedby contemporary
Company officials, who had an interestin maximising the appearanceof economic decline, not least to reduce the levels of revenue which they were
required to remit to their superiorsin Calcutta. Chaudhury'scase rests very
heavily on the uncriticaluse of this same data. In contrast,Datta surmisesthat,
while episodes such as the famine of 1770 and increased pressureof revenue
extractionmay have slowed growth in the last decades of the eighteenthcentury, contemporaryimages of mass immiserationwere greatly exaggerated.5
In many ways, it is supremelyironic that Chaudhury'sargumentshould fall
a victim of 'false' propagandaby Companyofficials because it is plainly meant
as a root-and-branchdenunciationof colonialism, and fits into a venerablehistraditionreachingbackto AlexanderDow's firstHistoryof Hindostan,
toriographical
which critiqued the rapacity of the Company, and DadhabhaiNaoroji's UnBritish India, which signalled the beginnings of the Indian nationaliststruggle
against British rule. It would be difficultto deny the realities of colonial domination in the nineteenthcentury:of the subordinationand exploitationof an
'Indian' by a 'British' economy. Equally, by this era, the categories 'Indian'
and 'British' were clearly definedand sharplyjuxtaposedin almost every walk
of social life. However, in consideringthe eighteenth century there is a danger-ever presentin historicalinterpretation-thatthe shadowof subsequentevents
will serve to obscure the natureof antecedentconditions.
Several of the key debates on this era turn, in effect, on how far the catecolonialismand nationalismcan be read back into
gories of nineteenth-century
the
the events bringing
Europeans to power a hundred years earlier. Were
'Indian' and 'European' interests always juxtaposed? Did the conquest take
place through the impact of a superiorexogenous force-wholly formed and
fashioned outside South Asia-on a pristine, indigenous (and proto-national)

Irfan Habib, The AgrarianSystemof MughalIndia.

C.A. Bayly, Rulers, Townsmenand Bazaars; Andre Wink, Land and Sovereigntyin India;

Muzaffar
Alam,TheCrisisof Empire.

5 Rajat Datta, Society, Economyand the Market.

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EIGHTEENTH-CENTURYISSUES IN SOUTH ASIA

375

culture? Or were, at this time, Indian and Europeaninterests and identities

deeply entangled and did the 'conquest'-if it can be so-called-take place
because of cleavages and conflictswithin a commonSouthAsian polity (or perhaps, more properly,a Eur-Asianone)? These questionsalso carry corollaries
which are of special relevancefor South Asia's place in worldhistory:was the
conquestmerelythe firstmanifestationof an innate'superiority,'which destined
Europe for subsequentglobal domination; or was the conquest a contingent
phenomenonand, itself, strategicallycrucial to enabling this dominationsubof juxtaposed'Indian'and 'British'
sequentlyto arise?How far was the structuring
identitiesand interestsa consequenceof the conquestratherthanits cause?
Chaudhurytakes a strong position, reading the eighteenthcenturyin terms
of oppositional Indian and European(national/colonial)categories, which he
extends even to a dichotomybetween inland and sea-bornecommerce.But his
case may run into severe difficulties. On the one hand, in the light of Om
Prakash'searlierwork, is it meaningfulto hold inlandand sea-bornecommerce
so clearly apart?Prakashshows, for example, how the Europeandemand for
textiles in Bengal stimulated a demand for raw cotton, which started to be
broughtoverlandfrom as far away as Gujarat,on the otherside of the sub-continent. Also, the work of Jos Gommanshas indicatedthat a very large part of
the specie metal broughtto India by trade with the Europeansmay have been
expended in buying war-horsesbroughtoverlandfrom CentralAsia.6 The distinctionbetweeninland(domestic)and sea-borne(colonial)economiesis hardto
context when, as K.N. Chaudhurihas argued,
sustain in the eighteenth-century
differentregionaleconomies in South Asia may betterbe conceivedas partsof
at least three 'circuitsof tradeand civilization'linkingthem,variously,to SouthEast Asia, West Asia and Arabia, the Levant and Europe.7
Equally,Chaudhury'sposition makes it extremelydifficultto understandhow
the European'conquest'can have happenedat all. It has long been a sore-point
for nationalisthistoriansof Bengal that the standardaccountsof the Company's
rise make it the beneficiaryof an internal coup in which key Hindu Bengali
bankersand financiersswitchedtheir political allegiancefrom Muslim Nawabs
to the English Company.8Chaudhurydenies that this took place: or ratherthat
the switch was performedby any more than a single family, the famous Jagath
Seth, who subsequentlypaid heavily for their 'treason.'But, if not with the help
of Bengali bankers,how exactly did the Companycome to power in this society-where its officials were extraordinarilyfew in number,lacking in capital
Jos Gommans,The Rise of the Indo-AfghanEmpire.
7 K.N. Chaudhuri,Tradeand Civilisation.
8 Abdul Majed Khan,The Transitionin Bengal; P.J. Marshall,Bengal.
6

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376

D.A. WASHBROOK

and possessed of only the most limited technological advantages?Moreover,

how should we understandsubsequentdevelopments,such as the displacement
of the Nawabi capitals of Dacca and Murshidabadwith very Anglo-Hinducentre of Calcutta and the PermanentSettlementof 1793, by which the English
gave landlordrights to a Bengali Hindu commercial'gentry'? Chaudhurymay
exculpate his fellow Bengalis from 'complicity' in colonialism, but at full cost
to historicalexplanation.He also may have omitted to mention two key facts:
first that, as the JagathSeth are estimatedto have held about two-thirdsof the
Nawab's revenues, the Companydid not really need the defection of any other
state bankers;and second, that, as it largely functionedas a shell for the 'private' trade interests of its officials, what matteredwas much less the institutional relationshipbetweenthe Companyand state bankersthanthat between its
individual officials and their own Bengali commercial agents-and we have
copious evidence of the scope of these.9
A more plausible account of the transitionto Companyrule is providedin
Lakshmi Subramanian's Indigenous Capital and Imperial Expansion, albeit for

Western India and for a slightly later period. Subramanianmakes critical the
way in which Indianbankinggroups,who previouslyhad financedthe states of
the Maratha Empire, came to direct their support towards the East India
Company.The reasonswhy they did so may certainlyhave reflectedaspects of
European 'superiority'-but in specific and limited areas. In particular,the
Company'sdominationof the sea and its policies protecting'capital' (including
its own) from political confiscationwere importantin an era of declining overseas trade opportunities(caused by disturbancesin West Asia) and vagarious
militaryfiscalism. But such 'superiorities'-or advantages-on their own could
scarcely have given the Europeans power over the Western Indian hinterland. Rather, it was Indian financial agency which combined with them and
drew them forward.The Company'sinitial empire in the west was very much
an Anglo-Indian affair, created by shared interests in advancing the dominance of capital over trade and production.In Subramanian'sperspective,the
eighteenthcenturyis best seen in terms of a history of capitalism,which was
as yet cross-culturaland multi-national:clearer categories of colonial domination and nationalistresistancewere to emerge only later.
By contrast,SudiptaSen's Empireof Free Tradewould seem to suggest that
they had emerged in India ratherbefore most historians would regard them
as having done so in Europe or anywhere else in the world. Sen returns to
Chaudhury'scontext of eighteenth-centuryBengal but views it from a very

P.J. Marshall,East India Fortunes.

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ISSUESIN SOUTHASIA
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377

different angle. He claims to be interested in the economy-or rather 'the

market'-not in termsof its materialitybutratheras 'idea.' In essence,he contrasts
a discourseof 'the market'takenfrom the commentariesof pre-colonialNawabi
officials with one taken from those of Company officials in the years shortly
after the Companydisposed of Nawabi rule (1765). What he finds might most
easily be seen as representinga Polanyi-esquecontrastbetween a view of the
marketas 'embedded'in social and political relations and one which seeks to
liberateit from such encumbrancesin the name of 'free trade.' On this basis,
he claims to see the transitionto Companyrule in Bengal as markinga true
'colonial conquest,' definedby relationsof culturaldifferenceand domination.
His perceptionof relationsof differenceand dominationare also extended to
the mechanismsof the transitionitself: wherehe supportsChaudhury'scase that
Bengali bankers,otherthanthe invidiousJagathSeth, were in no way involved.
But, once again, he fails to considerthe issue of 'private' trade.
Sen's argument (like Chaudhury's) is most valuable for pointing to the
vibrancy of the Bengali economy in the first half of the eighteenth century:
where his evidence raises importantquestions for contemporaryneo-classical
economic theorists about any necessary relationship between free trade and
commercial prosperity.Also, such theorists will be obliged to take note-if
living throughthe Reaganand Thatcheryears had not suggestedit already-of
the connectionhe makes between 'free trade' and the elaborationof state coercive force to guarantee'freedom.'However,the very contemporarynatureof his
allusions indicates potentialheuristicdifficultiesand dangersof reading subsequentoutcomesinto antecedentevents. In the end, his book perhapsserves most
to raise questions about the methodological status of discourse analysis and
the possibilitiesof writinghistory in the 'post-colonial'United States (where it
was published).
To begin, the complete disconnectionbetween 'idea' and materialitymakes
it very difficultto assess the practicalimplicationsof Sen's thesis. His bibliography contains virtually no references to the economic and political historiographyof Bengal. But in this historiography,the prosperityof Nawabi Bengal
is widely attributedto the new centralisingpolicies of Nawab MurshidQuli
Khan,'0which anticipatedthose of the Company,and to the positive impactof
Europeancommerce.How, then, can the Nawabi market-placebe set up as a
completely different (stereo-) type in juxtaposition to that of the Company
period, which also was the product of the same politico-economic forces?
Moreover, in terms of market foundations and practices, did the difference
toFor these policies, see MuzaffarAlam and SanjaySubrahmanyam,The MughalState.

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378

D.A. WASHBROOK

matter? Sen points to the proliferationof market foundationsin the Nawabi

period at the behest of local powers. His emphasis on a Companydiscourse
aimed at declaring such local foundations illegitimate would suggest that
Companyrule put an end to this process. But he producesno evidence to show
that it did and, curiously,even concedes thatwhat evidencehe has indicatesthat
more local marketswere foundedunderthe Companythan ever before.In terms
of the 'material'historyof Bengal, it is quite unclearwhat the significanceof his
case can be.
No doubt, it is meant to relate to the quality of the ideas expressedby his
commentators.But here, furtherdifficulties arise over selectivity and context.
The only conceptionof the pre-colonialmarketthat Sen offers us, is that from
Nawabi nobles who might be expected to have taken a jaundicedview of the
Company,which was displacingthem. But what of othergroupsin society, particularly the merchants and bankers who were associated with Company
officials? Not only do we hear nothingfrom them but, in a curiousaside redolent of anthropologicalnotions of 'tradition,'he tells that he has no evidence
of anybody in Nawabi society holding different views: Nawabi society is
presentedas culturallyhomogenousand without internalsocial conflict. However, it has to be asked how far he can have looked for counter-evidence.In
her wider investigation of many of the same Nawabi sources, Kumkum
Chatterjeefound evidence of both culturaland social tensions and of attempts
by the Nawabi nobility to cross cultural'frontiers'and establishdialogueswith
the Company'sofficials.She notes, in particular,how Nawabi discoursetended
to put the Company and the Hindu merchant-bankerin the same (despised)
bracket;and also how nobles and officials were engaged in a complex discussions not of 'the market,'but over the historicalnatureof the state."
These discussions focused on the issue of 'the Mogul Constitution,'which
dominatesthe Companydiscourseof this period far more obviously than does
any concernwith the marketplace.12Sen's isolation of the marketas an issue of
discourse reflects his own sense of significance of issues much more than that
of the historicalactors;and he appearsto turnit into an issue at all mainly by
stringing together random sets of remarks without taking due note of their
strategic context. What Companyofficials were most clearly concernedto do
was to take back undercentralcontrol powers over local markets,which they
believed had been usurped from the Mughal state by local notables. They
wanted to concentratepower over marketsin their own hands (in most cases,
undertheirown monopoly)ratherthan to 'free' them to the world.Talk of 'free
" KumkumChatterjee,Merchants,Politics and Society.
'Notions of ContestedSovereignty.'
- T.R. Travers,

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EIGHTEENTH-CENTURYISSUES IN SOUTH ASIA

379

trade' rarely lasted when questionsconcerningthe tradingrights of the French

and Dutch were raised;or those of rival 'private'merchantsin areas of central
interest,such as the cloth trade.
Sen's interpretationappearsguilty of startlinganachronism.Indeed,the idea
that the English East India Companyof the 1760s-1780s-a Crown chartered
monopolycorporation-was drivenby an ideology of free tradewould certainly
have startled Adam Smith, whose savage critique of its practices suggests a
very differentposition." Elsewhere,Sen insistently treats 'the GeorgianState'
as if it were alreadya species of modernstate, which runs directly counterto
the bulk of recent researchon it.'4 While pressuresto reform 'old corruption'
were no doubt increasing,it was to be anothergenerationbefore the slave trade
was abolished,anothertwo before the first (tepid) ReformAct was passed and,
according to Cain and Hopkins, another three before 'free trade' was fully
establishedeven in Britain.Equally,by focusing on its 'official' discourse,Sen
implicitly treatsthe Companyas if it were some kind of modem business corporationand, as in the case of Chaudhury,misses its significanceas a cover for
privateinterestsand franchises.
Sen's extraordinaryportraitof the 'free-trading'Companyis clearly meantas
a piece with Ranajit Guha's A Rule of Property for Bengal, which was written

forty years ago and (interestingly)has just been re-issued in the United States.
It attemptsto view the spreadof global capitalism in terms of the imposition
of a modernist,Westernideology on Bengal. The significanceof the conquest
of Bengal for the future of global capitalism can readily be accepted. But
whetherthat significancelay in the impositionof ideas, which few eighteenthcentury Britons can be thought to have possessed yet, is altogether another
matter.If the key debates about 'the Mogul Constitution'are examined, they
world of induspoint much less forwardto the nineteenth-and twentieth-century
trial capitalismthanbackwardsto the political strugglesof the seventeenthcentury: their principalreferentis the 'Anglo-SaxonConstitution'which defended
principlesof libertyand, above all, rights to property."5
If contemporaryunderstandingsof these rights are explored, it has to be
asked whether eighteenth-centuryBritons did not actually share the view of
Nawabi noblementhat they were deeply 'embedded'in social and politicalrelations-if not necessarilyexactly the same relations.If Sen had followed through
his investigationof the 'market'to consider how it was treatedas 'property,'

'~ Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations.

'" E.g., Paul Langford, A Polite and Commercial People.

'5 Travers,'Notions.'

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D.A. WASHBROOK

he might have been given cause to re-considerthe incipient modernityof the

Company's discourse. When the Company came around to confiscating the
rights to levy market fees and tolls previously enjoyed by local notables, it
offered compensationin lieu. This was in spite of the fact that it also claimed
that such fees and tolls had been levied 'illegally' and withoutthe authorityof
the Mughal state, whose powers it imagined itself to be recovering.But it also
held that, having levied them over time and in practice,local notableshad come
to establisha valid customarypropertyright in them,which had to be respected.
The rule of property(and the market)offered to Bengal in this periodwas based
on ideas of customaryand common law-very far, indeed, from the twentiethcenturycapitalist prescriptionsread into the context by Sen and Guha.'6
The last two books gatheredhere also suggest how far they may have been
engaged in a teleological exercise, foreshorteninghistory and emphasisingcultural differences and distinctionswhich as yet barely existed. Michael Fisher
edits an edition of The Travels of Dean Mahomet, which must go some way

to reducing propositionsabout the 'incommensurability'of Europeanand Indian cultures in the eighteenthcentury.Dean Mahometwas, or claimed to be,
an Indian boy who attached himself to a British officer, travelled the subcontinentwith him and followed him back to Britain.Later,he establishedhimmarriedan Irishwomanand becamea minor
self in Irelandas a surgeon-barber,
fashionable
of
on
the
society. Fisher's introductionneatly
celebrity
fringes
Dean
Mahomet's
the
of
adventures although it might have
context
places
dwelled a little more on the question of who, actually, wrote his book and
whether it constitutes fiction more than biography. But the text is of special
interestto students of eighteenth-centuryIndian society and British 'manners,'
where it supplies copious materialfor consideringthe complexity of relations
between gender, racial, class and regional identities. Whatever else, Dean
Mahometdid not live in a world where eastern and western culturesexisted in
different,hermetically-sealedspheres.
The second book relevant to this context is Matthew Edney's MappingAn
Empire-although, ostensibly,it might have been supposed(and might even be
read) to support Sen's (and Guha's) thesis. Edney examines that definitive
Enlightenmentproject, indicative of the new 'scientific' culture of eighteenthcenturyEurope:the projectto survey and map 'India.' He dwells heavily on the
ideology of the project,with its implied connectionbetween definition,possession and control, and properlyrelates it to later nineteenth-centurytheories
of imperialism and nationalism.But the way in which he relates it is quite

16

Jon Wilson, 'GoverningProperty.'

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381

fromSen.It is notthe existenceof tracesof thisideologyin the eightdifferent

drawshis attention.Judgingby the lengthof
eenthcentury,whichparticularly
the bizarreamateurism
timeit tookto 'map'the sub-continent,
of the earlyproof the Companywithregardto theentireproject,it
ceduresandthe parsimony
did not representan enterpriseto which the Company'sofficialsat the time
gave primesignificance.Nor does he representthe mapsas effectiveinstrumentsmakingpossibletheoriginal'conquest.'Indeed,he dwellsdelightfullyon
the bitterquarrelsbetweensurveyorson appropriate
techniquesand on local
which
rendered
the
forcesof resistance,
resultsinacfrequently
cartographical
curate,if not absurd.Rather,the greatestsignificancehe sees to lie in the
of the maps,whatevertheirscientificworth,aftertheyhad been
consequences
On
produced. the basis of the clearlydefinedpicturesof a territorial'India,'
whichtheycreated,all mannerof imaginingsof imperialpowerand incipient
couldarise.Historywas changedby the factof the map'scomplenation-hood
eccentricdecisionto undertake
tionfar morethanby the intellectually
it in the
firstplace-and changedin ways of whichthe firstmap-makers
of the eighteenthcenturycouldhavehadvery littleinkling.
The European'conquest'of Indiawas a remarkable
event.Therewere very
few Europeans,they possessedvery limited technologicaladvantagesover
Indiansandtheysharedmuchin commonwithIndianelites,amongwhomthey
hadalreadylivedfor nearlythreehundredyears.It is hardto explain'the conquest'plausiblyin ways which do not see it as a functionof re-alignments
withinan Indianpolityat leastas muchas of theexpansionof a Europepower,
whichat thistimewas largelyconfinedto the sea. But,on thebasisof the conquest,all cameto change.The sea-borneBritishnow had a platformof landbasedmilitarypower(thefirstoccasionsincethe RomanEmpirewhena single
at sea andon land),whichtheyusedto overawethe
powerenjoyeddominance
world,to createmarketsfor theirindustrialising
economyandto 'imagine'the
The
their
civilization.
of
of
conquest Indiawas a key historical
superiority
it
demonstrated
but
much
less
because
how a culture-supposedly
arisevent,
ing uniquelywithinEurope-couldtransformthe worldthanhow transformationswithinthe worldcouldcreatethe contextfor the emergenceof European
cultural(andpolitical)dominance.
In his celebratedOrientalism,EdwardSaid drew attentionto the way in
had constructed
whichEuropean
a 'scientific'historybasedon the
imperialism
of essentialEuropean'difference'and 'superiority,'
and he called
assumption
for new, non-Eurocentric
of
the
It
is
difficult
to see how
understandings
past.
canemergeif historyis readbackwards
thoseunderstandings
to imputecultural
differencesand distinctiveideologies,characteristic
of the heightof European
imperialism,to priorhistoricalcontexts--even if the notion of 'superiority'is
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D.A. WASHBROOK

(post-colonially)invertedto imply maliciousness.The essentialistcategories of

difference remain. If progress is to be made in meeting Said's challenge, it
seems necessary-much more-to attempt to treat culture as the product of
history, ratherthan vice versa.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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