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This thesis explores how colonial encounters shaped patterns of charitable giving and voluntary service in metropolitan Britain and colonial India before 1914. It has long been recognised that societies in the nineteenth-century British world were imbued with a strong moral earnestness which found an outlet in voluntary social service. Men and women in Britain shared a hegemonic set of assumptions regarding duty and personal service while educationists placed strong emphasis on the value of education through service. The thesis argues that this ideal of service was made in part through encounters with traditions of voluntary action found in British colonies, particularly India, and thereby attempts to revise conventional histories of social service by locating service firmly within an imperial context. Most histories of British voluntary action have failed to set domestic developments in colonial context and therefore scholars have rarely been in a position to ask whether it was because a service ideal was learnt in empire that models of voluntary action took the form they did in Britain or in societies colonised by Britain. The thesis addresses four key questions. First, it explores the empire's contribution to the development of volunteering and voluntary action in Britain. Second, I examine the dialogical nature of the philanthropic connections forged between Britain and India before the First World War. Third, it discusses the extent to which voluntary social service was framed by concerns around citizenship and nation building in Britain and India. Finally, I consider the legacies of the imperial ideal of service, linking the historical work to contemporary debates on voluntary service and citizenship. Through discussion of all these questions, the thesis aims to make a contribution to what is a relatively new field of scholarship on imperial benevolence and its legacies.

In my thesis I will argue that the most important context of the writings of Rammohun Roy (1772/3(?)-1833) was making the political power of the East India Company accountable to an ethical Bengali public. Rammohun’s political thought was concerned with three distinct but related themes: 1) the restructuring of the Company’s administration from a distant and invisible government at London to Calcutta; 2) the importance of ethical practice in Bengali society; and 3) the legal and ethical obligation of the Company to be accountable to its subjects. Contrary to current scholarship, I argue that a unity of thought can be identified in Rammohun’s writings. The thesis will show that, throughout his career as a native intellectual (1803-32), Rammohun consistently stressed the importance of societal ethics and highlighted the consequences of the distance between London and Bengal on governmental accountability. The title, ‘Ethics, Distance and Accountability’ articulates this argument by focusing on the core concerns of his political thought. Rammohun’s political thought was influenced by philosophy of ak̲h̲lāq, the Dharmaśāstras, as well as by his association with the Company’s district administration (1804-14). Rammohun intended his work to be widely read by the Bengali public (sarvvasadharan lok), Company officials and the native elite and referred to a diversity of traditions (the Purāṇas, Liberal philosophy, British history, Persian poetry and the Upaniṣads) to explain his ideas to his intended audience.

This thesis focuses on the role of district officers in the Indian Civil Service (ICS) in Bengal from 1850 to 1905. Existing historiography incorrectly portrays the ICS as a passive coherent institution. This has limited our understanding of the significant role of district administration in the governance of British India. This thesis demonstrates that an imagined and practised idealised district official influenced policy and was integral in the reciprocal production of the practices of colonial government. This thesis establishes that this model persona existed outside of the Punjab, and had a specific realisation in Bengal. This idealised district officer was envisioned as an autonomous man-on-the-spot who could act as a decision maker. However, this discretionary capacity conflicted with an increasingly codified, professional and bureaucratic ICS. These contradictions were not only between idea and reality but existed within the idealisation of the district officer. The tensions produced by the imagined and practised district officer shaped debates about governance, the rule of law, and bureaucracy. This thesis demonstrates that despite the expansion of bureaucratic control over the practices of local administration, the district officer continued to be an autonomous decision maker. Through examining key moments of construction and contestation this thesis charts the working life-cycle of the idealised district officer. Using a discursive methodology this thesis interrogates an underutilised source group, the ‘governing literature’ of British India. These manuals, guides and handbooks were instrumental in the crafting of an idealised role. This model district officer was integrated into the policies and practices of government. By following the idealised district officer as imagined in texts, as a candidate for the examinations, as a revenue official, as Magistrate and Judge, in his failures and in his final days, this thesis asserts that this model persona had a significant influence on the governance of Bengal.