Description
Book SynopsisTo Raise a Fallen People brings to light pioneering writing on international politics from nineteenth-century India. Drawing on extensive archival research, it unearths essays, speeches, and pamphlets that address fundamental questions about India’s place in the world.
Trade ReviewForeign observers are often puzzled and sometimes frustrated by what they see as India’s ambivalence about embracing the role of a classic great power. In this rich and original study, Rahul Sagar digs deep into the intellectual history of the nineteenth century to unearth the roots of contemporary debates on this issue. Essential reading for anyone interested in the past, present, and future of Indian foreign policy. -- Aaron L. Friedberg, author of
Getting China WrongThe essays in this volume shed light on a variety of approaches Indian intellectuals held on international issues prior to the independence struggle which started in earnest in the 1920s. It shows the connections between nineteenth and twentieth-century thinking, reflecting an evolutionary process in Indian views on world affairs. A must read for scholars and practitioners alike. -- T. V. Paul, James McGill Professor of International Relations, McGill University
A superb addition to the growing literature on global IR, Indian international thought, Indian foreign policy ideas, and Indian identity and nationalism. Sagar’s anthology is masterfully curated from a trove of writings going back to the nineteenth century and features a pitch-perfect introduction. -- Kanti Bajpai, Wilmar Professor of Asian Studies, National University of Singapore
This magnificent anthology is an indispensable resource for the ideas that shaped India's modernity. It is a product of brilliant, painstaking and innovative scholarship, that opens us so many new intellectual vistas. These judiciously selected pieces will unsettle assumptions about how Indians thought of themselves. -- Pratap Bhanu Mehta, author of
The Burden of DemocracyAn impressive and illuminating anthology. -- James Crabtree * Financial Times *
Sagar’s scholarship offers nothing short of a profound intellectual service to South Asianists, intellectual historians, and International Relations scholars. -- Martin J. Bayly, London School of Economics and Political Science * H-Diplo *
Table of ContentsPreface
Editorial Note
Introduction
Part I: Regaining Greatness1. English Education
2. Sea Voyages
Part II: Critiques3. The Great Game
4. The Eastern Question
5. Free Trade
6. Racism
7. The Opium Trade
Part III: The Great Debate8. To Learn from the West
9. To Teach the West
Further Reading
Index
