British and Irish Modern History

Between 1894 and 1905 the question of the Chinese Empire's future development, its survival even, was the most pressing overseas problem facing the Great Powers. The China Question had the most profound implications for the Powers. Since China's defeat by Japan in 1894–5, the country's complete disintegration was widely anticipated. Fuelling imperial rivalries, a wider Great Power conflict in the event of China's implosion, seemed to be on the cards. At times, that prospect seemed very real. Crucially, the prospect of China's break-up and of large–scale international conflict in its wake altered the configuration among the Great Powers. Instability in the Far East had ramifications beyond the confines of the region; and, as this study shows, with the events of 1894–5 began a wider transformation of international politics. No Power was more affected by these changes than Britain. The ‘China Question’ provides an ideal prism for the study of the problems of late 19th-century British world policy. This study seeks to break new ground by adopting a deliberately global approach, emphasizing the connections between European and overseas developments, and by encompassing diplomatic, commercial, financial, and strategic factors as well as the politics of foreign policy. The notion of a British policy of ‘splendid isolation’, usually associated with the person of Lord Salisbury, Britain's prime minister and foreign secretary at the time, is the chief focus of this study. Controversially, the book concludes that, while ‘isolation’ was reaffirmed at the end of the Russo–Japanese War, this apparent success helped to undermine its continued justification.

This book offers a complete, archive-based account of the relationship between China and the British Left, from the rise of modern Chinese nationalism to the death of Mao Tse tung. Beginning with the ‘Hands Off China’ movement of the mid-1920s, the book charts the mobilisation of British opinion in defence of China against Japanese aggression, 1931–45, and the role of the British left in relations with the People's Republic of China after 1949. It shows how this relationship was placed under stress by the growing unpredictability of Communist China, above all by the Sino-Soviet dispute and the Cultural Revolution, which meant that by the 1960s China was actively supported only by a dwindling group of enthusiasts. The impact of the suppression of the student protests in Tiananmen Square (June 1989) is addressed as an epilogue. This book argues that the significance of the left's relationship with China has been unjustly overlooked. There were many occasions, such as the mid-1920s, the late 1930s and the early 1950s, when China demanded the full attention of the British left. The book also argues that there is nothing new in the current fascination with China's emergence as an economic power. Throughout these decades the British left was aware of the immense, unrealised potential of the Chinese economy, and of how China's economic growth could transform the world. In addition to analysing the role of the political parties and pressure groups of the left, the book sheds new light on the activities of many well-known figures in support of China, including intellectuals such as Bertrand Russell, R H Tawney and Joseph Needham. Many other interesting stories emerge, concerning less well-known figures, which show the complexity of personal links between Britain and China during the 20th century. The book is based on many fascinating new archival sources, as well as a close reading of the left-wing press.

South Asian History has enjoyed a remarkable renaissance over the past thirty years. Its historians are not only producing new ways of thinking about the imperial impact and legacy on South Asia, but also helping to reshape the study of imperial history in general. The chapters here address a number of these important developments, delineating not only the complicated interplay between imperial rulers and their subjects in India, but also illuminating the economic, political, environmental, social, cultural, ideological, and intellectual contexts which informed, and were in turn informed by, these interactions. Particular attention is paid to a cluster of binary oppositions that have hitherto framed South Asian history, namely colonizer/colonized, imperialism/nationalism, and modernity/tradition, and how new analytical frameworks are emerging which enable us to think beyond the constraints imposed by these binaries. Closer attention to regional dynamics as well as to wider global forces has enriched our understanding of the history of South Asia within a wider imperial matrix. Previous impressions of all-powerful imperialism, with the capacity to reshape all before it, for good or ill, are rejected in favour of a much more nuanced image of imperialism in India that acknowledges the impact as well as the intentions of colonialism, but within a much more complicated historical landscape where other processes are at work.

Sir William Jones (1746–94), poet, philologist, polymath, polyglot, and acknowledged legislator was the foremost Orientalist of his generation and one of the greatest intellectual navigators of all time. He re–drew the map of European thought. ‘Orientalist’ Jones was an extraordinary man and an intensely colourful figure. At the age of twenty–six, Jones was elected to Dr Johnson’s Literary Club, on terms of intimacy with the metropolitan luminaries of the day. The names of his friends in Britain and India presents a roll–call of late eighteenth–century glitterati: Johnson, Hester Thrale, Elizabeth Craven, Boswell, Reynolds, Georgiana, duchess of Devonshire, Elizabeth Vesey, Elizabeth Montagu, Franklin, Price, Priestley, Burke, Hastings, Zoffany, Gibbon, Goldsmith, Percy, Sheridan, Fox, Pitt, Wilkes, Warton, Garrick, etc.. In Bengal his Sanskrit researches marked the beginning of Indo–European comparative grammar, and modern comparative–historical linguistics, of Indology, and the disciplines of comparative literature, philology, mythology, and law. He did more than any other writer to destroy Eurocentric prejudice, reshaping Western perceptions of India and the Orient. Jones’s remarkable career embodies a reverse transculturation in suggesting that enlightened tolerance was Asia’s gift to Europe. His commitment to the translation of culture, a multiculturalism fascinated as much by similitude as difference, profoundly influenced European and British Romanticism, offering the West disconcerting new relationships and disorienting orientations. Jones’s translation of Śakuntalā (1789) accomplished Oriental renaissance in the West and cultural revolution in India. William Jones is remembered with great affection throughout the subcontinent as a man who facilitated India’s cultural assimilation into the modern world, helping to build India’s future on the immensity, sophistication, and pluralism of its past.