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HIST278: Sex and Violence in Imperial India, 1857-1919

How was British colonial authority in India justified? This course explores the everyday lives of those who lived and worked in India as part of the colonial regime: the houses they lived in, the clothes they wore, the company and society they kept, the food that they ate and their family lives. In particular, it considers the ways in which they attempted to embody the inequalities that were imagined to exist between Europeans and natives. Racial hierarchy in colonial India was rarely enunciated in legislation. Instead, it was articulated in a myriad of ways through the everyday lives of those who claimed, and were claimed for, the British right to rule. We explore the means by which racial hierarchies were expressed in social and sexual intimacy; through gender identities and child-rearing. The British regime in India considered itself to be founded upon the rule of law, not the exercise of violence. Yet acts of violence and the absolution of violence by the apparatus of colonial justice was common. This course considers how we can think about the relationship between governance, intimacy, violence and law.

For further information on HIST278 visit the Lancaster University Online Courses Handbook.

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