Edge of Empire: Lives, Culture, and Conquest in the East, 1750?1850, by Maya Jasanoff andThe Ruling Caste: Imperial Lives in the Victorian Raj, by David Gilmore

Abstract

Reviewed by: Edge of Empire: Lives, Culture, and Conquest in the East, 1750–1850, and: The Ruling Caste: Imperial Lives in the Victorian Raj A. Martin Wainwright (bio) Edge of Empire: Lives, Culture, and Conquest in the East, 1750–1850, by Maya Jasanoff; pp. ix + 404. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005, $27.95. The Ruling Caste: Imperial Lives in the Victorian Raj, by David Gilmour; pp. xxviii + 381. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005, $27.00. These recent books call into question postcolonial critique, particularly when it adopts too stereotypical a view of Britons in their relationship with the societies of Asia and Africa. Both Maya Jasanoff and David Gilmour argue against such extremes of postcolonial scholarship, but the former does so more effectively and originally than the latter. [End Page 555] In Edge of Empire: Lives, Culture, and Conquest in the East, 1750–1850, Jasanoff focuses on "collecting" as a form of encounter between East and West. Much of her work is quite original, delving into a variety of government records, museum catalogs, diaries, and the collected artifacts themselves. Even more original, however, is her analysis of this process as a metaphor for the acquisition of territories. Beginning with the British East India Company's acquisition of Bengal, Jasanoff follows collectors' careers in the emerging Raj. As she approaches 1800, her focus shifts—along with the focus of Britain's wars with France—to Egypt. At first glance, this shift is a bit jarring. Why does Jasanoff move between India and Egypt in the middle of her book rather than focus exclusively on one country? This change of geographic focus makes sense, however, in the context of her theme of collection as a metaphor for imperialism. Central to this theme is Jasanoff's assertion that Britain's imperial expansion was not a "project" so much as a strategic response to the rivalry with France. The historical evidence for this claim is abundant, from François Dupleix's involvement in Hyderabad in the 1740s to Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798. For Jasanoff, imperial expansion was a more coherent affair than the "fit of absence of mind," described by J. R. Seeley. In fact, her view of this process is reminiscent of Ronald Robinson, John Gallagher, and Alice Denny's in Africa and the Victorians (1961), in marked contrast to postcolonial scholars who have often depicted imperialism as a concerted policy arising mainly out of racism, greed, or both. Just as Jasanoff rejects the notion of an "imperial project" in empire-building, so she does also in collecting. In this regard she draws a sharp distinction between her approach and the method that Edward Said pioneered in Orientalism (1978). Although most of her collectors were agents of imperial armies or bureaucracies, their primary purpose in collecting was often "[p]lain curiosity" (64) rather than imperial expansion. As children of the Enlightenment, their motives were often aesthetic and intellectual. For Jasanoff, evidence of such aesthetic priorities can be found even in the family of the conqueror of Bengal, Robert Clive, whose son, Edward, served as governor of Madras. Both men were avid collectors of material culture, but so were the women of Edward's family. Four of them, led by Lady Henrietta Clive, undertook a grand tour of southern India in 1800, collecting flora, fauna, weapons, and porcelain. Jasanoff's analysis of this episode is instructive because rather than emphasize disparities of power, she focuses on the personal. Lady Clive's pattern of collection reflected her class, as a member of the aristocracy; her political position, as the governor's wife; her gender, since the collection of plants and animals remained primarily the province of women at the time; and most of all it reflected her recent family history. This emphasis on personal, rather than political, motives follows Jasanoff's shift in focus to Egypt, perhaps the most famous site of British archaeological loot. Regarding the collecting rivalry between Henry Salt, the British consul in Egypt, and Bernardino Drovetti, the French vice-consul (of Italian birth and upbringing), the author explains: "For Henry Salt, collecting antiquities was to be a way of attaining social prominence in Britain; for...