SOCIAL IMPERIALISM - and How It Was Applied in the Bombay Presidency 1895-1925
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SOCIAL IMPERIALISM - And how it was applied in the Bombay Presidency 1895-1925. Ph.D. thesis by Henrik Chetan Aspengren, Department of Politcis and International Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies. ABSTRACT This thesis traces how British imperialism, as an ideology of empire, developed a social dimension by the turn of the twentieth century. Drawing on archival sources, the thesis explores what motivated British social imperialism, how knowledge and political thought operated within it, and how it translated into local colonial policy in the Bombay Presidency, British India, between 1895-1925. The study uses Michel Foucault’s concept of bio-politics to engage the ways in which emerging social liberalism, and British sociology, enabled the conceptualisation and politicisation of a distinct social domain, and helped putting ‘the social’ into British imperialism. Sociology and social liberalism defined the social in vague terms. Yet, I will show, it was seen as key to stability and progress. It was perceived by contemporaries as contingent of, but not determined by, industrial capitalism and the emergence of modem industrial society. Liberalism, the thesis points out, had always been closely related to British imperialism in general, and the British administration of India in particular. The introduction of a social element in liberalism did not end that relationship; rather, it enabled a shift in preferred domain of intervention from the moral to the social. I outline what constituted social liberalism and how it influenced imperial thought. Sociology, in turn, delineated the social domain and made it known. I revisit turn of the twentieth-century debates within British sociology and trace how these debates informed the official introduction of sociological research into colonial India. The study examines various angles of how social imperialism translated into the Presidency. It shows how administrators began to frame interventions through social-political language, and how they utilised sociological methodology and research. It analyses actual social interventions of sanitation, education, and housing. I suggest that social interventions, evoked in the name of stability and progress, formed as measures to draw on and channel movements and tendencies within colonial society, while simultaneously promoting the state as vehicle for reform. Social interventions widened the scope of colonial state action, and so limited society- and market based approaches to conditions of life. ProQuest Number: 10731389 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10731389 Published by ProQuest LLC(2017). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 SOCIAL IMPERIALISM And how it was applied in the Bombay Presidency 1895-1925 Ph.D. dissertation by Henrik Chetan Aspengren Department of Politics and International Studies School of Oriental and African Studies University of London ABSTRACT This thesis traces how British imperialism, as an ideology of empire, developed a social dimension by the turn of the twentieth century. Drawing on archival sources, the thesis explores what motivated British social imperialism, how knowledge and political thought operated within it, and how it translated into local colonial policy in the Bombay Presidency, British India, between 1895-1925. The study uses Michel Foucault’s concept of bio-politics to engage the ways in which emerging social liberalism, and British sociology, enabled the conceptualisation and politicisation of a distinct social domain, and helped putting ‘the social’ into British imperialism. Sociology and social liberalism defined the social in vague terms. Yet, I will show, it was seen as key to stability and progress. It was perceived by contemporaries as contingent of, but not determined by, industrial capitalism and the emergence of modem industrial society. Liberalism, the thesis points out, had always been closely related to British imperialism in general, and the British administration of India in particular. The introduction of a social element in liberalism did not end that relationship; rather, it enabled a shift in preferred domain of intervention from the moral to the social. I outline what constituted social liberalism and how it influenced imperial thought. Sociology, in turn, delineated the social domain and made it known. I revisit turn of the twentieth- century debates within British sociology and trace how these debates informed the official introduction of sociological research into colonial India. The study examines various angles of how social imperialism translated into the Presidency. It shows how administrators began to frame interventions through social-political language, and how they utilised sociological methodology and research. It analyses actual social interventions of sanitation, education, and housing. I suggest that social interventions, invoked in the name of stability and progress, formed as measures to draw on and channel movements and tendencies within colonial society, while simultaneously promoting the state as vehicle for reform. Social interventions widened the scope of colonial state action, and so limited society- and market based approaches to conditions of life. 2 CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS................................................................................................. 5 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS............................................................................................6 PREFACE.............................................................................................................................7 1. INTRODUCTION: THE BIRTH OF BRITISH ‘SOCIAL’ IMPERIALISM 19 1.1. A nalytical fr a m ew o r k ................... 24 1.1.1. Organising concept: bio-politics..........................................................................................................28 1.1.2. Reception of Foucault in studies of empire................................................................................... 35 1.2. T he study : structure , m ethod , so urces ......................... ....38 2. EARLY REFORMIST IDEOLOGY UNDER THE BRITISH RAJ: A HISTORY........................ 46 2.1. Liberalism and early reformist ideology under the Raj ...................................................... 46 2.2. A pplication of early reformist ideology in B ritish In d ia ........... 50 2.2.1. Areas of application of early reforms............................................................................................... 53 2.3. T he preamble to social IMPERIALISM: returning to an interventionist idea l ................54 2.3.1. Late nineteenth-century interventions in Bombay....................................................................60 2.4. Conclusion ............................................. 64 3. SOCIAL IMPERIALISM AND LIBERAL THOUGHT, WITH REFERENCE TO COLONIAL BOMBAY............................................................................................66 3.1. T he invention of 'the social ' in liberalism .................... 68 3.1.1. The constitution of social liberalism: movement and milieu...............................................70 3.1.2. Early social liberal views .......................... 77 3.1.3. Social liberalism expands the bio-political concern of state...............................................80 3.2. Social liberals and th eir e m p ir e .......................................................................................... 87 3.2.1. Twentieth-century liberal critique of expansive imperialism............................................ 88 3.2.2. Social liberal views in imperialism.....................................................................................................89 3.2.3 Social liberals and India: E.S. Montagu's outline of a new imperial approach 95 3.3. Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................... 107 4. KNOWLEDGE IN SOCIAL IMPERIALISM: SOCIOLOGY IN COLONIAL BOMBAY..........................................................................................................................110 4.1. A pproaches w ith in early British sociology : constitutive d e b a t e s ...............11 4 4.2 New demands for social know ledge in colonial India ...................................................121 4.2.1. A short history of science in colonial India..................................................................................126 4.2.2. Initial proposals to establish sociology in India.......................................................................130 4.2.3. Establishing sociological research in the Bombay Presidency........................................133 4.2.4. Getting Patrick Geddes to Bombay ..................................................................................................137 4.2.5. The marginalisation of abstract sociology..................................................................................143 4.3. A