Romanticism, Liberal Imperialism, and Technology in Early British India: “The all-changing power of steam” (2024)

By: Daniel E. White

Sign Up Now! Already a Member? Log In
You must be logged into UK education collection to access this title. Learn about membership options, or view our freely available titles.

Synopsis: Considering metropolitan and colonial cultural production as a “unitary field of analysis,” this book shows how tensions in the 1830s between utilitarian and Romantic perspectives on steam power marked meaningful divisions within the pervasive liberal imperialism of the period and generated divergent speculative fantasies, set in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, about the future of Indian nationalism. Poetry and fiction in Britain and Bengal engage with a Romantic strain of thought and sentiment according to which steam technology represents an anti-utilitarian humanization of nature. Within and against that frame and in uneven and different ways, writers in British India map a constellation of liberal values onto their hopes and fears concerning a future powered by steam.

Book Quality:: Publisher Quality
ISBN-13:: 9783031607059
Related ISBNs:: 9783031607042
Publisher:: Springer Nature Switzerland
Date of Addition:: 08/15/24
Copyrighted By:: The Editor
Adult content:: No
Language:: English
Has Image Descriptions:: No
Categories:: History, Nonfiction, Science, Literature and Fiction, Language Arts, Politics and Government
Submitted By:: Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:: This is a copyrighted book.