Anthropologist and Imperialist

Sir Herbert Hope Risley (1851 - 1911) - 'H. H. Risley', as he always signed himself - was a member of the Indian Civil Service (ICS) from 1873 to 1910 who served in Bengal and became a senior administrator and policymaker in the colonial government, as well as the pre-eminent anthropologist in British India. He was also an imperialist, who was convinced of the rightness of 'civilising' British rule and its benefits for both India and Britain, and one of this book's objectives is to render his simultaneous commitment to anthropology and imperialism intelligible to present-day readers. More specifically, Anthropologist and Imperialist: H. H. Risley and British India, 18731911 documents the two sides of Risleys career, which is used as a case-study to investigate, first, the production and circulation of colonial knowledge, specifically anthropological knowledge, and secondly, its often loose and inconsistent connection with administration and policymaking, and with the government and state overall. Risley, like other officials engaged in anthropology in India, as well as the government itself, insisted that ethnography and anthropology had both administrative and scientific value; unlike previous works on Indian colonial anthropology, this book carefully examines its scientific contributions in relation to contemporary metropolitan anthropology. It does not attempt to reinvent greatman political or intellectual history, but does demonstrate the importance of studying the powerful officials who ruled British India, as well as the minor provincial politicians and subaltern subjects or the abstract forces, such as colonialism and resistance that have dominated recent historical scholarship. This book shows, too, that a detailed inquiry into Risleys career, and his ideas and actions, can open new perspectives on a variety of continuing debates, including those over the colonial construction of caste and race in traditional India, orientalism and forms of colonial knowledge, Victorian anthropologys close relationship with the British empire, and the modern disciplines uneasy links with its colonial past. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan)