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Mountstuart Elphinstone in South Asia: Pioneer of British Colonial Rule

Online ISBN:
9780190943066
Print ISBN:
9780190914400
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
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Mountstuart Elphinstone in South Asia: Pioneer of British Colonial Rule

Shah Mahmoud Hanifi
Shah Mahmoud Hanifi

Professor of History

James Madison University, Virginia
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Published online:
19 September 2019
Published in print:
15 July 2019
Online ISBN:
9780190943066
Print ISBN:
9780190914400
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

Mountstuart Elphinstone (1779-1859), Lowland Scottish traveller, East India Company civil servant and educator, was one of the principal intellectual architects of British colonial rule in South Asia. Imbued with liberal views, such that Bombay's wealthy founded Elphinstone College in his memory, he pioneered the scholarly, scientific and administrative foundations of imperialism in India.  Elphinstone's career was launched when he was picked to lead the inaugural British diplomatic mission to the Afghan court. His Account of the Kingdom of Caubul (1815) became the main source of British information about Afghanistan. He is best known for his periods as Resident at Poona and Governor of Bombay in the 1810s and 1820s, when he instituted innovative and lasting policies in administration and education while also conducting research for his extremely influential History of India (1841).  This volume examines Mountstuart Elphinstone's intellectual contributions and administrative career in their own right, in relation to prominent contemporaries including Charles Metcalfe and William Moorcroft, and in the context of later historical study of India, Afghanistan, British imperialism and its imperial frontiers.

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