Under Western Eyes

Spanning nearly two and a half centuries of English literature about India, "Under Western Eyes" traces the development of an imperial discourse that governed the English view of India well into the twentieth century. Narrating this history from its Reformation beginnings to its Victorian consolidation, Balachandra Rajan tracks this imperial presence through a wide range of literary and ideological sites. In so doing, he explores from a postcolonial vantage point collusions of gender, commerce, and empire-while revealing the tensions, self deceptions, and conflicts at work within the English imperial design.An underlying comparison between English regard for its actions in India - as a matter of commerce, not conquest - and its contemporaneous discourse toward, and treatment of, Ireland locates the roots of many contradictions that Rajan exposes to show the English construction of a subaltern India in a new light. Giving postcolonial thought a historical dimension, "Under Western Eyes" also places literary history in new perspective through postcolonial readings. It will interest scholars of cultural history, particularly British imperial history, and those engaged with postcolonial, literary, subaltern, South Asian, and cultural studies.