Bentinck's attitude towards his responsibilities as Govornor-general was conditioned to an important degree not only by the intellectual outlook he brought with him to India, but also by an emotional factor which originated with his dismissal by the Court of Directors from the Governorship of Madras in 1807. The son of a Whig politician, the third Duke of Portland, Bentinck had been in close touch with the political life of the late Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Centuries. His outlook was moulded, not by his father, but by the more imaginative of the Whigs - in particular by Burke and Charles James Fox, He was acquainted with the modes of thought inspired by Bentham and Adam Smith, both of whom could claim him as a disciple. His political sympathies, therefore, lay with the radicals. He was a doctrinnaire in the sense that he had a philosophical belief in progress, and considered the acceleration or initiation of change to be a primary duty of a statesman Bentinck was not in any way an originator of now ideas. His mind, while receptive to the impuluses of a new age, was not capable of originating or directing any of those impulses, It may be said of him, in fact, that his outlook was based more on scepticism towards conventional or traditional attitudes than on a perception of the spirit of liberalism.

This study focuses on the British wives of civil servants and army officers who lived in India from 1857 to 1939 to examine the translation of feminine discourses of bourgeois domesticity over imperial space. Three questions form the subject of this research. First, how were cultures of domesticity and imperialism intertwined in complex and often contradicatory ways over space? Second, did imperial rule, and the travel that it necessarily implied, challenge or reinforce the claim that 'there's no place like home'? Third, how and why were places both like and yet unlike 'home' produced by British women living in India? I start by examining the 'mutiny' of 1857-1858 as a period of domestic and imperial crisis, focusing on representations of and by British women at Cawnpore and Lucknow. Then, considering the place of British women in the post-'mutiny' reconstruction of imperial domesticity in India, I focus on two scales: first, home and empire-making on a household scale; and, second, seasonal travels by British women to hill stations in North India. In their travels both to and within India, British women embodied contested discourses of imperial domesticity. Throughout, I focus on the mobile, embodied subjectivities of memsahibs. While imperial histories have often neglected the roles played by British women in India, revisionist accounts have often reproduced stereotypical and / or celebratory accounts of memsahibs. In contrast, I examine the ambivalent basis of imperial and gendered stereotypes and conceptualise spatialised subjectivities in terms of embodiment, critical mobility, and material performativity. As members of an official elite, the British wives of civil servants and army officers came to embody many of the connections and tensions between domesticity and imperialism. Both during and after the 'mutiny,' the place of British women and British homes in India was contested. The place of British women and British homes in India reveal contradictions at the heart of imperial rule by reproducing and yet destabilizing imperial rule on a domestic scale

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Tufts University, 2003. / Director: Modhumita Roy. Submitted to the Dept. of English. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 260-280). Access restricted to members of the Tufts University community. Also available via the World Wide Web;

This study focuses on the British wives of civil servants and army officers who lived in India from 1857 to 1939 to examine the translation of feminine discourses of bourgeois domesticity over imperial space. Three questions form the subject of this research. First, how were cultures of domesticity and imperialism intertwined in complex and often contradicatory ways over space? Second, did imperial rule, and the travel that it necessarily implied, challenge or reinforce the claim that 'there's no place like home'? Third, how and why were places both like and yet unlike 'home' produced by British women living in India? I start by examining the 'mutiny' of 1857-1858 as a period of domestic and imperial crisis, focusing on representations of and by British women at Cawnpore and Lucknow. Then, considering the place of British women in the post-'mutiny' reconstruction of imperial domesticity in India, I focus on two scales: first, home and empire-making on a household scale; and, second, seasonal travels by British women to hill stations in North India. In their travels both to and within India, British women embodied contested discourses of imperial domesticity. Throughout, I focus on the mobile, embodied subjectivities of memsahibs. While imperial histories have often neglected the roles played by British women in India, revisionist accounts have often reproduced stereotypical and / or celebratory accounts of memsahibs. In contrast, I examine the ambivalent basis of imperial and gendered stereotypes and conceptualise spatialised subjectivities in terms of embodiment, critical mobility, and material performativity. As members of an official elite, the British wives of civil servants and army officers came to embody many of the connections and tensions between domesticity and imperialism. Both during and after the 'mutiny,' the place of British women and British homes in India was contested. The place of British women and British homes in India reveal contradictions at the heart of imperial rule by reproducing and yet destabilizing imperial rule on a domestic scale / Arts, Faculty of / Geography, Department of / Graduate

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The comparative experiences of the nineteenth-century British and American Army officer's wives add a central dimension to studies of empire. Sharing their husbands' sense of duty and mission, these women transferred, adopted, and adapted national values and customs, to fashion a new imperial sociability, influencing the course of empire by cutting across and restructuring gender, class, and racial borders. Stationed at isolated stations in British India and the American West, many officers' wives experienced homesickness and disorientation. They reimagined military architecture and connected into the military esprit de corps, to sketch a blueprint of female identity and purpose. On the physical journeys to join their husbands, and post arrival, the feminization of formal and informal military practices produced a new social reality and facilitated the development of an empowered sisterhood that sustained imperialist ambitions. This appropriation of symbols, processes, and rankings facilitated roles as social functionaries and ceremonial performers. Additionally, in utilizing dress, and home decor, military spouses drafted and projected an imperial identity that reflected, yet transformed upper and middle-class gender models. An examination of the social processes of calling and domestic rituals confirms the formation of a distinct and influential imperial female identity. The duty of protecting the social gateway to the imperial community, rested with a hostess?s ability to discriminate ? and convincingly reject parvenus. In focusing on the domestic site it becomes clear that the mistress-servant relationship both formulated and reproduced imperial ideologies. Within the home, the most intimate of inter-racial, inter-ethnic, and inter-class contact zones, the physiological trait of a white skin, and the exhibition of national artifacts signaled identity, status, and authority. Military spouses, then, generated social power as arbiters, promoters, and police officers of an imperial class, reaffirming internal confidence within the Anglo communities, and legitimizing external representations of the power and prestige of empire.

Thesis (M.A.)--Miami University, Dept. of History, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 76-85).

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