Download or read book The Black Hole of Empire written by Partha Chatterjee and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2012-04-08 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Siraj, the ruler of Bengal, overran the British settlement of Calcutta in 1756, he allegedly jailed 146 European prisoners overnight in a cramped prison. Of the group, 123 died of suffocation. While this episode was never independently confirmed, the story of "the black hole of Calcutta" was widely circulated and seen by the British public as an atrocity committed by savage colonial subjects. The Black Hole of Empire follows the ever-changing representations of this historical event and founding myth of the British Empire in India, from the eighteenth century to the present. Partha Chatterjee explores how a supposed tragedy paved the ideological foundations for the "civilizing" force of British imperial rule and territorial control in India. Chatterjee takes a close look at the justifications of modern empire by liberal thinkers, international lawyers, and conservative traditionalists, and examines the intellectual and political responses of the colonized, including those of Bengali nationalists. The two sides of empire's entwined history are brought together in the story of the Black Hole memorial: set up in Calcutta in 1760, demolished in 1821, restored by Lord Curzon in 1902, and removed in 1940 to a neglected churchyard. Challenging conventional truisms of imperial history, nationalist scholarship, and liberal visions of globalization, Chatterjee argues that empire is a necessary and continuing part of the history of the modern state.
Download or read book The Black Hole of Calcutta written by Noel Barber and published by . This book was released on 2000-09 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It was a bare, low-ceilinged dungeon, stench-ridden and stifling in the murderous summer heat of India. Measuring only abouteighteen feet long and fourteen feet wide, with twosmall barred air-holes, the cell known as the Black Hole prison, in the British East India Company's seemingly impregnable Fort William on the Hoogly River of Calcutta, was intended to hold at most a couple of prisoners. But on the terrible night of June 20, 1756, at the end of a four-day battle of astonishing ferocity which saw a vast Indian horde overwhelm the Fort's great outnumbered defenders, one hundred and forty-five men, and one woman, were cruelly herded into the Black Hole, and what they suffered during the ten horrific hours of their confinement - well, suffice it to say that only twenty-three survived till their release at dawn. The siege of Calcutta (for the British, an incredible saga of blundering and bad luck, poisoned by egregious instances of cowardice and treachery), and the night of the Black Hole, together comprise one of the most dramatic episodes of British Imperial history.
Download or read book The Black Hole of Calcutta written by Noel Barber and published by London, Collins. This book was released on 1965 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since 1600 the English East India Company traded with the Indian sub-continent and tried to avoid becoming involved in internal Indian politics. However, one event was crucial in converting English influential opinion to an interventionist policy - the infamous Black Hole of Calcutta, when on the night of June 21, 1756, 123 English prisoners suffocated to death on the orders of Siraj-ud-Daula, Nawab (ruler) of Bengal. Thenceforth England regarded Indian rulers as savages like Siraj, and considered that they were unfit to govern India. From this it was but a short step to the establishment of partial and eventually complete English political control over the areas in which the English Company traded. But what is the truth of the Black Hole? Did 123 die? Did Siraj-ud-Daula deliberately order their deaths, or indeed did the Black Hole happen at all? Noel Barber sheds light on this unfortunate episode.
Download or read book The Other Side of Morning written by Stephen Goss and published by FriesenPress. This book was released on 2022-01-13 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is Sunday, June 20, 1756, in Calcutta. Fort William has been overtaken, and most of its occupants have fled or been killed. Only 145 denizens remain, and nothing could prepare them for the horrors that await them in the Black Hole, a minuscule military prison in which they will be crammed for the night. Only twenty-two will survive, emerging from the mass of dead bodies in the stifling Calcutta dawn. During this dark episode in British–Indian relations, one resolute and enigmatic man rose to the forefront of the struggle and toiled to save as many lives as possible. Stephen Goss makes this man, John Zephaniah Holwell, come alive in a dynamic novelization of his exploits. Holwell was a doctor, a scientist, a military surgeon, a mayor, a magistrate, and a governor, as well as a devoted husband and father. The Other Side of Morning imagines Holwell’s beginnings in his British homeland and his quest for adventure as a young man. In this scintillating portrayal of his life and work, we follow him as he studies smallpox, becomes a proponent of cutting-edge medical methods, falls in love, travels to India as a surgeon for the East India Company, and plays a complex and pivotal role in Indian-British relations in the first half of the eighteenth century. This is a story of personal triumph and tragedy, political nuance, and the power of one man’s indomitable will. The Other Side of Morning is an immersive journey into pre-colonial India. In an illuminative blend of history and fiction, Goss transports readers to eighteenth-century Calcutta.
Download or read book The Black Hole written by Jan Dalley and published by Penguin Group(CA). This book was released on 2007 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of the Black Hole of Calcutta was once drilled into every British schoolchild: how in 1756 the Nawab of Bengal attacked Fort William and locked the survivors in a tiny cell, where over a hundred souls died in insufferable heat. British retribution was swift and merciless, and led to much of India falling completely under colonial dominion. The Black Holeis the story of the propogation of a myth that arose as the British Empire came into being: a myth about the barbarism of a people the colonials sought to rule, and how that myth - based on improbable exaggeration and half-truth - helped justify the march of empire for two hundred years.
Download or read book Mapping the Heavens written by Priyamvada Natarajan and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-28 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A theoretical astrophysicist explores the ideas that transformed our knowledge of the universe over the past century. The cosmos, once understood as a stagnant place, filled with the ordinary, is now a universe that is expanding at an accelerating pace, propelled by dark energy and structured by dark matter. Priyamvada Natarajan, our guide to these ideas, is someone at the forefront of the research—an astrophysicist who literally creates maps of invisible matter in the universe. She not only explains for a wide audience the science behind these essential ideas but also provides an understanding of how radical scientific theories gain acceptance. The formation and growth of black holes, dark matter halos, the accelerating expansion of the universe, the echo of the big bang, the discovery of exoplanets, and the possibility of other universes—these are some of the puzzling cosmological topics of the early twenty-first century. Natarajan discusses why the acceptance of new ideas about the universe and our place in it has never been linear and always contested even within the scientific community. And she affirms that, shifting and incomplete as science always must be, it offers the best path we have toward making sense of our wondrous, mysterious universe. “Part history, part science, all illuminating. If you want to understand the greatest ideas that shaped our current cosmic cartography, read this book.”—Adam G. Riess, Nobel Laureate in Physics, 2011 “A highly readable, insider’s view of recent discoveries in astronomy with unusual attention to the instruments used and the human drama of the scientists.”—Alan Lightman, author of The Accidental Universe and Einstein's Dream
Download or read book Echoes from Old Calcutta written by Henry Elmsley Busteed and published by . This book was released on 1908 with total page 522 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Inner Life of Empires written by Emma Rothschild and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2012-11-25 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The birth of the modern world as told through the remarkable story of one eighteenth-century family They were abolitionists, speculators, slave owners, government officials, and occasional politicians. They were observers of the anxieties and dramas of empire. And they were from one family. The Inner Life of Empires tells the intimate history of the Johnstones--four sisters and seven brothers who lived in Scotland and around the globe in the fast-changing eighteenth century. Piecing together their voyages, marriages, debts, and lawsuits, and examining their ideas, sentiments, and values, renowned historian Emma Rothschild illuminates a tumultuous period that created the modern economy, the British Empire, and the philosophical Enlightenment. One of the sisters joined a rebel army, was imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle, and escaped in disguise in 1746. Her younger brother was a close friend of Adam Smith and David Hume. Another brother was fluent in Persian and Bengali, and married to a celebrated poet. He was the owner of a slave known only as "Bell or Belinda," who journeyed from Calcutta to Virginia, was accused in Scotland of infanticide, and was the last person judged to be a slave by a court in the British isles. In Grenada, India, Jamaica, and Florida, the Johnstones embodied the connections between European, American, and Asian empires. Their family history offers insights into a time when distinctions between the public and private, home and overseas, and slavery and servitude were in constant flux. Based on multiple archives, documents, and letters, The Inner Life of Empires looks at one family's complex story to describe the origins of the modern political, economic, and intellectual world.
Download or read book A Princely Impostor written by Partha Chatterjee and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2002-03-24 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1921 a traveling religious man appeared in eastern British Bengal. Soon residents began to identify this half-naked and ash-smeared sannyasi as none other than the Second Kumar of Bhawal--a man believed to have died twelve years earlier, at the age of twenty-six. So began one of the most extraordinary legal cases in Indian history. The case would rivet popular attention for several decades as it unwound in courts from Dhaka and Calcutta to London. This narrative history tells an incredible story replete with courtroom drama, sexual debauchery, family intrigue, and squandered wealth. With a novelist's eye for interesting detail, Partha Chatterjee sifts through evidence found in official archives, popular songs, and backstreet Bangladeshi bookshops. He evaluates the case of the man claiming, with the support of legions of tenants and relatives, to be the long-lost Kumar. And he considers the position of the sannyasi's detractors, including the colonial government and the Kumar's young widow, who resolutely refused to meet the man she denounced as an impostor. Along the way, Chatterjee introduces us to a fascinating range of human character, gleans insights into the nature of human identity, and examines the relation between scientific evidence, legal truth, and cultural practice. The story he tells unfolds alongside decades of Indian history. Its plot is shaped by changing gender and class relations and punctuated by critical historical events, including the onset of World War II, the Bengal famine of 1943, and the Great Calcutta Killings. And by identifying the earliest erosion of colonialism and the growth of nationalist thinking within the organs of colonial power, Chatterjee also gives us a secret history of Indian nationalism.
Download or read book India Tracts written by John Zephaniah Holwell and published by . This book was released on 1764 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Midnight at Malabar House written by Vaseem Khan and published by Hodder & Stoughton. This book was released on 2020-08-20 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *** WINNER OF THE CWA SAPERE BOOKS HISTORICAL DAGGER 2021 *** 'The leading character is the deftly drawn Persis Wadia, the country's first female detective. She's a wonderful creation and this is a hugely enjoyable book' ANN CLEEVES 'This is historical crime fiction at its best - a compelling mix of social insight and complex plotting with a thoroughly engaging heroine. A highly promising new series'Mail on Sunday Bombay, New Year's Eve, 1949 As India celebrates the arrival of a momentous new decade, Inspector Persis Wadia stands vigil in the basement of Malabar House, home to the city's most unwanted unit of police officers. Six months after joining the force she remains India's first female police detective, mistrusted, sidelined and now consigned to the midnight shift. And so, when the phone rings to report the murder of prominent English diplomat Sir James Herriot, the country's most sensational case falls into her lap. As 1950 dawns and India prepares to become the world's largest republic, Persis, accompanied by Scotland Yard criminalist Archie Blackfinch, finds herself investigating a case that is becoming more political by the second. Navigating a country and society in turmoil, Persis, smart, stubborn and untested in the crucible of male hostility that surrounds her, must find a way to solve the murder - whatever the cost.
Download or read book Calcutta Past and Present written by Kathleen Blechynden and published by . This book was released on 1905 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Prisons of Light written by Kitty Ferguson and published by Random House. This book was released on 2013-01-31 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is a black hole? Could we survive a visit to one? Perhaps even venture inside? What would we find? Have we yet discovered any real black holes? And what do black holes teach us about what physicist John Archibald Wheeler called “the deep, happy, mysteries of the universe”? These are just a few of the tantalizing questions examined in this jargon-free review of one of the most fascinating topics in modern science. In search of the answers, we trace a star from its birth to its death throes, take a fabulous hypothetical journey to the border of a black hole and beyond, spend time with some of the world’s leading theoretical physicists and observational astronomers scanning the cosmos for evidence of real black holes, and take a whimsical look at some of the wild ideas black holes have inspired.
Download or read book A History of the British Army Vol II 1714 1763 written by Sir John William Fortescue and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2013-02-18 with total page 511 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sir John Fortescue holds a pre-eminent place amongst British military historians, his enduring fame and legacy resting mainly on his life’s work “The History of the British Army”, issued in 20 volumes, which took him some 30 years to complete. In scope and breadth it is such that no modern scholar has attempted to cover such a large and diverse subject in its entirety; but Sir John did so and with aplomb, leading to a readable and comprehensive study. According to Professor Emeritus of Military History at King’s College, Brian Bond, the work was “the product of indefatigable research in original documents, a determination to present a clear, accurate, and readable narrative of military operations, and a close personal knowledge of the battlefields, which enabled him to elucidate his account with excellent maps. Most important, however, was his motivation: namely, a lifelong affection for the old, long-service, pre-Cardwell army, the spirit of the regiments of which it largely consisted, and the value of its traditions to the nation. An important part of his task was to distil and inculcate these soldierly virtues which, in his conservative view, contrasted sharply with the unedifying character of politicians who habitually meddled in military matters.” ODNB. This second volume covers the period from 1713 to 1763, including the Jacobite rebellion of 1715, the wars of Austrian Succession, and British expansion into America and India and the enduring struggle with France for Imperial power. A MUST READ for any military enthusiast. Author — Fortescue, J. W. Sir, 1859-1933. Text taken, whole and complete, from the second edition published in 1910, London, by Macmillan and Co. Original Page Count – xxii and 606 pages. Illustrations — Numerous maps and plans
Download or read book The Black Hole written by Iris Macfarlane and published by Allen & Unwin Australia. This book was released on 1975-01-01 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In This Book The Story Of The Colonialisation Of India Is Told From The Arrival Of The First Merchants Until The Incident Of The Calcutta Black Hole, To Show How India Was Reduced To Subjection. The Black Hole Incident Itself Is Invistigated In Great Depth To Extract The Facts That Can Be Proved And To Set Them Up Beside The Legend.
Download or read book The History of Bengal written by Ramesh Chandra Majumdar and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 552 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Midnight s Children written by Salman Rushdie and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2010-12-31 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Booker prize and twice winner of the Booker of Bookers, Midnight's Children is "one of the most important books to come out of the English-speaking world in this generation" (New York Review of Books). Reissued for the 40th anniversary of the original publication--with a new introduction from the author--Salman Rushdie's widely acclaimed novel is a masterpiece in literature. Saleem Sinai is born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the very moment of India’s independence. Greeted by fireworks displays, cheering crowds, and Prime Minister Nehru himself, Saleem grows up to learn the ominous consequences of this coincidence. His every act is mirrored and magnified in events that sway the course of national affairs; his health and well-being are inextricably bound to those of his nation; his life is inseparable, at times indistinguishable, from the history of his country. Perhaps most remarkable are the telepathic powers linking him with India’s 1,000 other “midnight’s children,” all born in that initial hour and endowed with magical gifts. This novel is at once a fascinating family saga and an astonishing evocation of a vast land and its people–a brilliant incarnation of the universal human comedy. Midnight’s Children stands apart as both an epochal work of fiction and a brilliant performance by one of the great literary voices of our time.
