Asian History Commons^™

“The Irishmen – Immigrants, Soldiers, And The Spark Of Revolutions”, Joshua Hanscheck

History Theses

The Irish, as a people and a revolutionary inspiration, have been the subject of research and discussion for much of the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries. A trope has emerged that the Irish could take over the world, if they were not so busy chasing the bottom of their pub glasses, but the trope – stereotypes about Irish drinking aside – is grounded in some truth. The diaspora encouraged many things: a revival in Gaelic culture, a general disdain among outsiders for the Irish as a people group, and, most importantly, a revolutionary fervor that seemed almost infectious. This fervor …

The Migration Of South Asians From India To Guyana: The Journey, Struggles In A New Land, Reasons For Changes Over Time And Their Cultivation Of A New Culture., Cynthia C. Harry

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Indians from different regions of India arrived in Guyana through indentureship in 1838. They were under a five-year contract and had to work on the sugar plantations for the duration of their indentureship. While they tried to persist their Indian culture, assimilation in their new environments and interaction with people of different cultures, allowed them to develop a culture unique to Indo Guyanese heritage.

This thesis focuses on the history of Indian diaspora in Guyana. It evokes the struggles they faced on the ships, and during and after indentureship. It also touches on the political and racial issues they had …

On The Promises And Failures Of Anticolonial Constitutionalism In India: A Review Of Sandipto Dasgupta’S Legalizing The Revolution, Shaunna Rodrigues

Socio-Legal Review

This review of Sandipto Dasgupta’s Legalizing the Revolution: India and the Constitution of the Postcolony (Cambridge University Press 2024) delves into the complex legacy of constitutionalism in postcolonial India. The book assesses constitutionalism in India as an instrument that translated the revolutionary aspirations of an anticolonial mass movement into a legal framework for societal transformation. Dasgupta illuminates constitutionalism’s dynamic mediation of conflicting visions from India’s diverse masses and its political leaders, demonstrating how it intertwined the promise of anticolonialism with enduring tensions of representation, legal interpretation, and bureaucratic planning. He critically analyses its role in the development discourse in India, …

Media And Internet Censorship In India: A Study Of Its History And Political-Economy, Ramesh Subramanian

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

The Indian Constitution, which came into force on January 26, 1950, guarantees various fundamental rights, such as the freedom of speech and expression, freedom of religion, rights to form association, as well as rights to privacy. Yet, since the adoption of the Constitution, the Indian citizen has been subject to varying degrees of media censorship and surveillance. This paper seeks to delve into the historical evolution of media and Internet censorship and surveillance in India. It shows how media censorship of varying types have existed since the British colonists introduced restrictive laws in order to expand and control the native …

Immigration, Diversity, Cultural Clash, And – Hopefully – Cultural Melding? A Review Of Mrs. Chatterjee Vs. Norway (2023), Raja Ramanathan

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

For migrating from 'developing’ countries, to relocate in the ‘advanced West’, a message that came through from the western society is clear: “Integrate.” The Norwegian official in the movie 'Mrs. Chatterjee vs. Norway" says this unequivocally and with impact: “Be like us if you want to live here or go back to where you came from.” The message of the western world – ever since they started colonizing the ‘native’ lands of Asia, Asia and the Americas – was that the natives had to be saved from themselves. That was “the white man’s burden” – a burden of “civilizing” the …

Tadaypaly Veeraragava Roy’S Gettysburg: A Reconstruction-Era Study, Vivek K. Rallabandi

Student Publications

One of the first international students that attended Pennsylvania College (now Gettysburg College) was Tadaypaly Veeraragava Roy, who was a student at the college for about a semester in 1876. Roy was a student from Guntur, a prominent city in what is now the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. Guntur was the center of the American Evangelical Lutheran Church's missionary operations in India, and there were many missionary schools and churches in the region. It is possible that Roy came into contact with Lutheran missionaries that may have made him aware of Pennsylvania College's existence. As one of the college's …

Your Country Needs You (And Also Your Resources) Britain And Her Colonies During And Shortly After Ww2, Anthony-Noel Cepe

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

No conflict has shaped the modern world more thoroughly than the Second World War. However, the retelling of this era, whether through mass media or more scholarly works such as books and journal articles, is one seen through a white, Eurocentric lens. This is strange; as the name implies, the Second World War was a truly global conflict, involving not only the major world powers at the time, but also their subjects. Great Britain was no exception; far from the popular image of it standing alone in the face of Nazi tyranny, the island nation drew vast amounts of men …

Hall Family Collection - Index To Appendix 1, "Letters From The Attic" And Appendix 2, Postcards, Kyle Ainsworth

Librarian and Staff Presentations

The Hall Family Collection can generally be described in two parts. The first part is Letters from the Attic, which are more than 5,000 documents that Andrena Hall Brunotte transcribed into 16 volumes. Brunotte’s transcription project established an “original order” to this part of the collection that the processing archivist does their best to adhere to. All of these materials were found in one large steamer trunk and organized by Brunotte in chronological order. Boxes 1 to 4 of the collection house the paper transcriptions (3,330 pages). Boxes 5 to 13 contain the documents, which are in chronological order. The …

Women Of The Dalit Unrest: Rewriting Bodies, Reinforcing Resistance, Suddhadeep Mukherjee

Tête à Tête: Journal of Francophone Studies

The paper aims to take the scholarship on corporeal feminism and Dalit Studies forward by focusing on the Dalit woman’s body. The body is not treated as an inert surface in this paper but is considered as a transformative medium that can alter its embedded codifications and significations through transgressive performances in the face of systemic and systematized caste violence. In doing so the gendered body not only challenges to rewrite the Dalit epistemology from the vantage of resistance but also initiates a rethinking of Indian feminism. The paper begins with a discursive discussion on the importance of the gender …

‘It All Comes From Me’: Bahu Begam And The Making Of The Awadh Nawabi, Circa 1765–1815, Nicholas J. Abbott

History Faculty Publications

This article examines the durable, yet largely overlooked, claims of Bahu Begam (1727–1815) to dynastic wealth and authority in the Awadh nawabi (1722–1856), a North Indian Mughal ‘successor state’ and an important client of the East India Company. Chief consort (khass mahal) to Nawab Shuja-ud-Daula (r. 1754–75) and mother to his successor Nawab Asaf-ud-Daula (r. 1775–97), Bahu Begam played a well-documented role in the regime’s tumultuous politics, particularly during Warren Hastings’s tenure as the Company’s governor-general (1773–85) and his later parliamentary impeachment. But despite her prominent political influence, little attention has been paid to the substance of her …

Textures Of The Ordinary: Doing Anthropology After Wittgenstein [Table Of Contents], Veena Das

Philosophy & Theory

Textures of the Ordinary: Doing Anthropology After Wittgenstein is an exploration of everyday life in which anthropology finds a companionship with philosophy. Based on two decades of ethnographic work among low-income urban families in India, Das shows how the notion of texture allows her to align her ethnography with stunning anthropological moments in Wittgenstein and Cavell as well as in literary texts from India. Das poses a compelling question – how might we speak of a human form of life when the very idea of the human has been put into question? The response to this question, Das argues, does …

Trickle Down Nationalism: Interactions Between Liberal Nationalism And Colonialism In The Raj And Nigeria, Aaryaman Sheoran

CMC Senior Theses

The combination of nationalism and colonialism has remained understudied in academia, despite the important interaction between the two phenomena. European ideas bled over into their colonial empires and began to fill the power vacuum created by colonial enterprises. This study analyzes the impact of British colonialism on the development of national identity in British India and Nigeria.

British influences included large scale economic disruption, cultural reform through ‘westernizing’ the population and abolishing local customs, and creating a new set of institutions to replace traditional power centers. Inevitably, these factors created a nationalist surge across both the Raj and Nigeria, as …

Alfred Russel Wallace Notes 9: The South Asian Connection, Charles H. Smith, Sahotra Sarkar, Nirmali Wijegoonawardana

Faculty/Staff Personal Papers

Alfred Russel Wallace (1823−1913) is best known for his natural history explorations and theoretical biology, but he was also a potent social critic on subjects ranging from land tenure and colonial policy to antivaccinationism and poverty. Here, one of his emphases in the latter domain is spotlighted: his interest in South Asian affairs. This extended to a variety of subjects in the areas of politics, economics, health, literature, sociology, etc., and to a degree that may have had some influence on the development of thought of some major South Asian figures, including Mahatma Gandhi and Ananda K. Coomaraswamy.

Creating Herstory: Female Rebellion In Arundhati Roy’S "The God Of Small Things" And "The Ministry Of Utmost Happiness", Priyanka Tewari

Theses and Dissertations

In The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness novels, the author Arundhati Roy is not only attempting to give feminist weight to the multiplicity of locations in which gender is articulated by recasting her female characters in their quest for selfhood, she is also focusing on women and women-identified characters as agents of history, thereby contributing to an ongoing project of feminist historiography.

The Indian Army In Historiographical And Instructional Perspective, Bianca Bakalar

History - Master of Arts in Teaching

I. Synthesis Essay……………………………….2

II. Primary Documents and Headnotes………..26

III. Textbook Critique……………………………...31

IV. New Textbook Entry…………………………..36

V. Bibliography………………………………….....42

Contributors To Indian Catholicism: Interventions And Imaginings, Mathew Schmalz

Journal of Global Catholicism

Contributors to Indian Catholicism: Interventions and Imaginings, the inaugural issue of the Journal of Global Catholicism.

The Unintended Legacy Of Hellenism: The Development And Dissemination Of The Buddha Image, Chukyi Kyaping

History Honors Papers

This paper traces the development and evolution of the Buddha image from the first century CE in Gandhara to the fifth century CE in Luoyang, China and discusses the circumstances that allowed the image to adapt to different cultural environments. The emergence of the Buddha image marked a significant shift in the perception of the Buddha himself, through which Buddhism had effectively transformed from a philosophy into a religion.

Due to the syncretic nature of the Gandhari region, the Buddha image incorporated elements from multiple cultures, most notably from the Hellenistic artistic tradition. The dissemination of the Buddha image, traced …

Reawakening In Bundelkhand: Cultural Identity In Orchha And The Effects Of Tourism On Its Creation, Preservation, And Loss, Brenton David Kalinowski

Black & Gold

The purpose of this study is to explore the roots of the cultural identity of the Indian town of Orchha today, and with that context in place, to analyze the influence tourism has had in Orchha in the past twenty years. In particular, how tourism has created new cultural identity, how it has influenced a movement towards the preservation of cultural identity, but also how it has threatened loss of cultural identity. The research was conducted using a combined historical and ethnographic approach, using both archival research and ethnographic techniques. Throughout the study, and as this paper shows, the medieval …

The Broad, Toiling Masses In All The Continents: Anticolonial Activists And The Atlantic Charter, Mark Reeves

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The 1941 Atlantic Charter’s references to self-determination galvanized anticolonial nationalists during the Second World War. These activists used the principles enumerated in the Atlantic Charter to frame their demands. This thesis examines three cases in the broader global context during the war, from vastly different colonial and wartime situations: British-ruled India, French-ruled Syria, and the U.S.- ruled Philippines. Across these different situations, anticolonial nationalists used the Atlantic Charter in an attempt to legitimate their own projects. This thesis shows that the elite nationalist movements examined here used a common rhetoric from the Charter, but in variable ways. Each case study …

Indira Gandhi: India’S Destined Leader, Josclyn C. Green

History Theses

This thesis explores the life and political career of Indira Nehru Gandhi and analyzes how the historical circumstances of her era shaped her character in a manner that made her uniquely prepared to confront the numerous political challenges that she faced during her tenure as India’s Prime Minister. Indira Nehru Gandhi was Prime Minister of India from 1966 until 1977, and again in 1980 up until her assassination in 1984. Indira Gandhi was seemingly destined to rule over India. She was born into a prominent family who led the way to Indian independence from Great Britain. She was also born …

Preserving Dance Forms In India Through Education And Performance: A Curriculum For Bollywood Dance, Kimberly Martin

Masters Theses

This project is a practical curriculum of Bollywood dance that can be used to assist in the preservation of dance forms in India through education and performance. The goal of this curriculum is to systematically equip dancers of all ages with the basic knowledge and experiences needed to excel as dancers and choreographers of Bollywood dance. This will be achieved through practical experience that is built from the basics of Bollywood dance and founded in classical tradition and theory as presented in Bharat Natyam. This curriculum is broken up into four sixteen-week semesters and covers a series of steps, basics …

The Origins Of Christian Society In Ancient India, Crista Nalani Anderson

Honors Scholar Theses

Approximately 2.4% of the Indian population identify themselves as Christians[1]. As the number of followers grows, it is only natural to question how this religion came to India. The Syrian Christians of Kerala have taken great pride for countless centuries in the fact that their church was personally founded by the apostle Thomas. However, does this legend accurately portray the historical reality? Numerous scholars claim that Christianity was brought to the continent by merchants, other evangelists, or Jewish settlers. This study seeks to identify the evidence behind these claims by comparing the existing primary source documents and observable …

Reading, Writing, And Religion: Institutions And Human Capital Formation, Latika Chaudhary, Jared Rubin

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

In this paper, we empirically test the role that religious and political institutions play in the accumulation of human capital. Using a new data set on literacy in colonial India, we find that Muslim literacy is negatively correlated with the proportion of Muslims in the district, although we find no similar result for Hindu literacy. We employ a theoretical model which suggests that districts which experienced a more recent collapse of Muslim political authority had more powerful and better funded religious authorities, who established religious schools which were less effective at promoting literacy on the margin than state schools. We …

The United States Information Agency And The "New Look": France And India, 1953-1961, Leanne Alicia Sutton

History Theses & Dissertations

This study examines the creation of the United States Information Agency (USIA) under the guidance of President Dwight D. Eisenhower and looks at the place of the Agency in the "New Look." The US Information Agency was an important "soft" tool in the American struggle with the Soviet Union for preponderant influence around the world and played a part in the American effort to maintain the balance between the Communist and Free worlds. This study takes a deeper look at the work of the Agency in two case studies, which examine the work of the USIA in France, a reluctant …

The (No) Work And (No) Leisure World Of Women In Assi, Banaras, Nita Kumar

CMC Faculty Publications and Research

In the riverside neighborhood (mohalla) of Assi, in the south of Banaras, families of the following professions are to be found: the preparation and retail of foods such as: milk, sweets, tea, paan, peanuts and snacks; clerical work in offices or shops; private professional work, such as priesthood, teaching, boating, cleaning toilets; and crafts, such as masonry, weaving, making and maintaining jacquard machines, carpentry, and goldsmithy. All this work is done by men in the public sphere. In Banaras, the observable and articulated sphere of activity called "work" (kam) largely exists for men only. Men are …

History At The Madrasas, Nita Kumar

CMC Faculty Publications and Research

Madrasas: In the archival records of the British colonial state, as well as in the private records of members of the Indian intelligentsia, the indigenous school of North India is referred to by the generic term 'madrasa'. There is no exclusive implication of this institution as Islamic. This is close to the literal meaning of 'madrasa' which is 'the place of dars': dars being teaching, instruction, a lesson, or lecture.

Mahatma Gandhi's Satyagraha And Nonviolent Resistance, David M. Traboulay

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Laubach In India: 1935 To 1970, S. Y. Shah

The Courier

Dr. Frank C. Laubach, missionary and adult educator, dedicated his life to the cause of literacy for development and world peace. During his travels to 103 countries, he worked toward helping some 60 to 100 million people become literate. In addition, he founded or helped found four literacy organizations, including Laubach Literacy International; wrote forty books on adult education, Christian religion, world politics, and culture; and co-authored literacy primers in more than 300 languages. He was awarded four honorary doctorates—one of them from Syracuse University.

Although Laubach worked in many other countries, it is said that his heart was always …

The Philosophy Of Ramdas, James Weldon Plaugher

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

The name "Ramdas," which will be used extensively throughout this paper to refer to the principal subject, is an example of the Indian custom of using only one name for great men. Usually it is the first name, or a name used after taking up "the new life." Another custom practiced is that of having the name carry religious connotations. In Ramdas' case, the first part, "Ram," stands for God, and the "das" stands for servant. Ramdas' name in his early life was Vittal Rao.

Mahatma Gandhi Letter, Mahatma Gandhi

Broadus R. Littlejohn, Jr. Manuscript and Ephemera Collection

Gandhi writes from Yeravda Prison in Poona, India in 1933 in apparent response to Harry Deutch, of the Bronx.