What is colonialism and what is a colonial state? Ranajit Guha points out that the colonial state in South Asia was fundamentally different from the metropolitan bourgeois state which sired it. The metropolitan state was hegemonic in character, and its claim to dominance was based on a power relatio...

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Bibliographic Details

Main Author:	Guha, Ranajit 1923-2023 (Author)
Format:	Book
Language:	English
Published:	Cambridge, Mass. [u.a.] Harvard Univ. Press 1997
Series:	Convergences : inventories of the present
Subjects:	Geschichte 1765-1947 Administration - Inde Fonction publique - Inde Kolonialisme Geschichte Politik Civil service > India Kolonialismus Inde - 1765-1947 (Occupation britannique) Inde - Histoire - 1765-1947 (Occupation britannique) Inde - Politique et gouvernement - 1765-1947 Indien India > History > British occupation, 1765-1947 India > Politics and government > 1765-1947
Summary:	What is colonialism and what is a colonial state? Ranajit Guha points out that the colonial state in South Asia was fundamentally different from the metropolitan bourgeois state which sired it. The metropolitan state was hegemonic in character, and its claim to dominance was based on a power relation in which persuasion outweighed coercion. Conversely, the colonial state was non-hegemonic, and in its structure of dominance coercion was paramount. Indeed, the originality of the South Asian colonial state lay precisely in this difference: a historical paradox, it was an autocracy set up and sustained in the East by the foremost democracy of the Western world. It was not possible for that non-hegemonic state to assimilate the civil society of the colonized to itself. Thus the colonial state, as Guha defines it in this closely argued work, was a paradox--a dominance without hegemony.
Physical Description:	XVII, 245 S.
ISBN:	067421482X 0674214838