Political Perceptions in Early Anglo-Indian Relations

Abstract

English study of Indian government and laws began with the earliest visitors to the Mughal court. Throughout much of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this interest in Indian politics was dictated largely by the commercial ambitions of the East India Company. Only in the late eighteenth century did British attitudes assume the need for British rule in the subcontinent, setting off a debate on the nature of such empire. Conversely, Indian attitudes towards the English during these two centuries are marked by indifference. The first Indians to visit England and to study British government and laws do so only at the end of the eighteenth century.