Siege Of Krishnapur Research Articles

Colonial Medicine and Cholera: Historicizing Victorian Medical Debates in J.G. Farrell’s <em>The Siege of Krishnapur</em>

The present paper examines the use and description of colonial medicine for cholera and its practices in J.G. Farrell’s historical novel, The Siege of Krishnapur (1973). The paper shows that by engaging the two doctors stationed at the British residency in Krishnapur in a debate, Farrell contextualises an episode in British medical history to foreground popular medical beliefs on the aetiology of cholera and its treatment prevalent in nineteenth century Britain. The paper then argues that Farrell’s critique of an outdated medicinal theory and welcoming of the scientific future of colonial medicine simultaneously is an attempt to reinstate the position of “civilised medicine” in colonial India. It further establishes a vital link between Farrell and cholera by bringing in contemporary contexts, and discusses how cholera served as a dual tool to not only satisfy his compulsive interest in disease and doctors but also his aspirations for historical creativeness.

“Bricks Are Undoubtedly an Essential Ingredient of Civilisation”: Layers of Reconstruction in J.G. Farrell’s The Siege of Krishnapur (1973)

This article aims at considering the various levels of reconstruction in J.G. Farrell’s The Siege of Krishnapur (1973), from the rewriting of a colonial event and of Victorian culture to critical appreciation of the latter. Yet, my contention is that the main re-construction at stake in the novel is the revival of the literary myth of the Raj, that is to say how the Raj is made into a commodified item to be consumed by modern-day readers.

Mongrel nation: animality and Empire in the novels of J.G. Farrell

The novels of J.G. Farrell (1935–79), reveal a writer preoccupied with the cultural representation of Britain in an era of post-imperial decline. Farrell's ‘Empire trilogy’ illustrates a national consciousness examining its chequered past through focus on Ireland in Troubles (1970), the Indian Rebellion of 1857 in The Siege of Krishnapur (1973) and the fall of Singapore in The Singapore Grip (1978). In doing so, Farrell's novels feature a notable proliferation of flora and fauna, particularly his use of dogs as representative of national character and the changeable state of British society under attack. This article argues that Farrell's novels explore the state of post-imperial Britain through a sustained focus on dogs and animality. In situations marked by degradation and decline, Farrell gradually collapses the boundaries of order and disorder, obedience and disobedience and man and beast, inviting comparisons between the animal instincts of the dogs that populate his novels and those of Britons fighting for survival.

'A great beneficial disease': colonial medicine and imperial authority in J.G. Farrell's The Siege of Krishnapur.

This article examines J. G. Farrell’s depictions of colonial medicine as a means of analysing the historical reception of the further past and argues that the end-of-Empire context of the 1970s in which Farrell was writing informed his reappraisal of Imperial authority with particular regard to the limits of medical knowledge and treatment. The article illustrates how in The Siege of Krishnapur (1973), Farrell repeatedly sought to challenge the authority of medical and colonial history by making direct use of period material in the construction of his fictional narrative; by using these sources with deliberate critical intent, Farrell directly engages with the received historical narrative of colonial India, that the British presence brought progress and development, particularly in matters relating to medicine and health. To support these assertions the paper examines how Farrell employed primary sources and period medical practices such as the nineteenth-century debate between miasma and waterborne Cholera transmission and the popularity of phrenology within his novels in order to cast doubt over and interrogate the British right to rule. Overall the paper will argue that Farrell’s critique of colonial medical practices, apparently based on science and reason, was shaped by the political context of the 1970s and used to question the wider moral position of Empire throughout his fiction.

Commentary: Cholera in Krishnapur

Some years ago, when I was writing my doctoral thesis on medicine in British India, my supervisor directed me towards J.G. Farrell’s remarkable novel about the Mutiny of 1857—The Siege of Krishnapur. I was glad that she did, for the book not only provides a compelling narrative of these tumultuous events but also offers deep insights into the murky waters of Victorian medical theory. Farrell succeeds brilliantly in bringing to life the panic induced by that great scourge of the British in India—cholera, as well the bitter factionalism revealed by medical debates over its causation and treatment. The subject matter of these disputes is rather abstruse but it is made to seem as relevant to the reader as it must have been to denizens of the besieged residencies during the Mutiny. For them, cholera was a reminder of fragility of British rule and many came to believe that the uprising had been timed deliberately to coincide with the cholera season. That was almost certainly untrue, but cholera stalked the British throughout the summer of 1857, adding to their miseries and compromizing their military response. The medical part of the story revolves around two characters: the dutiful Scotsman Dr McNab and the more flamboyant Dr Dunstaple. Both represent types that would have been familiar to contemporaries. Scottish doctors were exceedingly well represented in the medical services of the East India Company and the middle years of the 19th century marked the peak of their influence. They had a reputation for seriousness and high learning, albeit with dogmatic tendencies. Dunstaple represents a less serious type, more attracted to India by the prospect of sport and adventure than by the opportunity for original research. The besieged Residency at Krishnapur becomes the arena for a showdown between these two characters and the viewpoints they represent. One of their main points of contention was the water-borne theory of cholera as propounded in 1854 by the London physician, John Snow. McNab expertly defends Snow’s position, whereas Dunstaple represents what was then the dominant view of the Anglo-Indian medical establishment—that the disease was miasmatic in origin and spread atmospherically. Snow’s theory was still regarded as unproven—even in Britain— and was not finally accepted by the majority of the medical profession until the mid-1860s. In India, the controversy raged for several years afterwards and there was great antipathy to the idea that cholera could be transmitted on anything other than monsoonal air currents. This was the view that would become official doctrine following the appointment of Dr James McNab Cuningham as Sanitary Commissioner with the Government of India, in 1868. Remaining in office until 1884, Cuningham came to be identified with views which were the opposite of his fictional namesake’s, sometimes punishing those who dared to oppose him. The water-borne theory of cholera was ultimately accepted in India, but medical officials tried their best to downgrade the importance of the newly discovered cholera bacillus in the causation of disease. The row sparked by Robert Koch’s identification of the bacillus in a Calcutta reservoir in 1884 was just as bitter as that which preceded it. One of his greatest antagonists was the German hygienist Max von Pettenkofer, who was lauded by Anglo-Indian officials such as Cuningham. In an act of reckless selfconfidence, equalled only by Dr Dunstaple in Farrell’s novel, Pettenkofer consumed a ‘cocktail’ containing cholera germs obtained from Koch himself. Unlike Dr Dunstaple, however, he survived. But more was at stake here than professional reputations. The question of what caused cholera had implications for how best to protect the beleaguered residencies and the military columns sent to suppress the rebellion. In the wake of the Mutiny, the ravages of this disease also began to attract the attention of the government at home. In 1859 a Commission on the Sanitary State of the Army in India was appointed, with a similar brief to the one established a few years earlier after the debacle in the Crimea. Reporting in 1863, the Commission recommended sweeping reforms of military stations and their environs. The campaign to clean up these barracks—and India more generally—received the enthusiastic support of none other than Florence Nightingale, who made Indian sanitary reform the focus of much of her work after the Crimea. But the main reason for the Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Epidemiological Association

The Siege of Krishnapur by J. G. Farrell1

The Siege of Krishnapur by J. G. Farrell1

J. G. Farrell's Indian Works: His Majesty's Subjects?

. . . There had always been some corner of the Empire where His Majesty's subjects were causing trouble . . .J. G. Farrell, Troubles (London: Cape, 1990) p. 215.J. G. Farrell has, in common with Paul Scott, an admiration for Joseph Conrad (obvious in their use of symbolism, topographical and otherwise), a fascination with the decline of Empire as a subject for fiction; a reputation that rests on a series of historical novels on this subject. Farrell died at the age of 44 whereas Paul Scott did so at 58; therefore it is not fair to compare their overall achievement. Yet it is necessary to observe that, whereas Scott portrayed one country during a single short period in his major work, Farrell's view was global and spanned virtually a century, lighting upon three important crises in three different countries during three different periods: Troubles (1970), set in the context of the Irish disturbances of 1919-21; The Siege of Krishnapur (1973), located during the 1857 ‘Mutiny’ in India; The Singapore Grip (1978), focusing on the period leading up to the surrender of Singapore to the Japanese during the Second World War, the first signal defeat of the might of the British Empire by an Asian power.

Exhibiting Empire in J.G. Farrell's the Siege of Krishnapur

Exhibiting Empire in J.G. Farrell's the Siege of Krishnapur

The imprint of recorded events in the narrative form of J.G. Farrell'sthe siege of Krishnapur∗

Etude sur les sources historiques de J. G. Farrell et leur transformation parodique dans The Siege of Krishnapur