Early British Rule and Social Classification in Lanka

Recent scholarship has put forward two distinct interpretations of the origins of modern national and communal identity in South Asia. One sees colonial modernity as a radical epistemological break and judges the content of pre-colonial pasts irrelevant for understanding modern politics. According t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Modern Asian studies 2004-07, Vol.38 (3), p.625-647
Main Author: ROGERS, JOHN D.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
British culture
British Empire
Buddhism
Caste identity
Christianity
Citizenship
Colonial history
Colonialism
Colonies & territories
Cultural history
Government Policy
Group Identity
History
Indian culture
Islam
Modernization
Muslims
National Identity
Politics
Regional studies
Social classes
Social stratification
South Asian culture
Sri Lanka
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Summary:Recent scholarship has put forward two distinct interpretations of the origins of modern national and communal identity in South Asia. One sees colonial modernity as a radical epistemological break and judges the content of pre-colonial pasts irrelevant for understanding modern politics. According to this view, modern identities are responses to colonial constructions of Asian ‘tradition’. The other approach sees continuities between the late pre-colonial and early colonial periods. For these writers, the origins of modern national and communal identities lie not only in colonial interventions, but also in non-colonial eighteenth-century social formations and in early colonial interaction between the British and South Asians.
ISSN:0026-749X
1469-8099
DOI:10.1017/S0026749X03001136