Peter Marshall | |
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Born | 1933 (age 89–90) |
Academic background | |
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Discipline | History |
Peter James Marshall CBE FRHistS FBA (born 1933) is a British historian known for his work on the British Empire,particularly the activities of British East India Company servants in 18th-century Bengal, [1] and also the history of British involvement in North America during the same period. [2] He is not to be confused with his contemporary,the other P. J. Marshall,who chronicled the history of public transport in the British Isles.
He was educated at Wellington College,Berkshire,and,following national service with the 7th (Kenya) Battalion,King's African Rifles,he took a first class honours degree in history at Wadham College,Oxford,from where he received a D.Phil. in 1962. [3]
Between 1959 and 1993,he taught in the history department at King's College London. He was appointed Rhodes Professor of Imperial History in 1980,in which post he remained until his retirement.
Between 1965 and 1978,he served as a Member of the Editorial Committee for The Correspondence of Edmund Burke,and between 1975 and 1981 he was Editor of The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History . [4] He sat on the History Working Group for National Curriculum in England in 1989 and 1990. In 1987 he was appointed Vice-President of the Royal Historical Society,serving as President between 1997 and 2001. He has been a notable benefactor to the Society.
He is an Emeritus Rhodes Professor of Imperial History at King's College London,where he continues to lecture.
Marshall presents a revisionist interpretation,rejecting the view that the prosperity of Mughal Bengal gave way to poverty and anarchy in the colonial period. He instead argues that the British takeover did not mark any sharp break with the past. After 1765,British control was delegated largely through regional rulers and was sustained by a generally prosperous economy for the rest of the 18th century. Marshall also notes that the British raised revenue through local tax administrators and kept the old Mughal rates of taxation. His interpretation of colonial Bengal,at least until c. 1820,is one in which the British were not in full control,but instead were actors in what was primarily an Indian play,and in which their ability to keep power depended upon excellent co-operation with Indian elites. Marshall admits that much of his interpretation is still contested by many historians. [5]
A Junior Research Fellowship bearing his name,and jointly administered by the Royal Historical Society and the Institute of Historical Research at the University of London,where he is an honorary Fellow, [9] is awarded annually to a doctoral student in history. [10]
The 18th century lasted from 1 January 1701 to 31 December 1800 (MDCCC). During the 18th century,elements of Enlightenment thinking culminated in the American,French,and Haitian Revolutions. During the century,slave trading and human trafficking expanded across the shores of the Atlantic,while declining in Russia,China,and Korea. Revolutions began to challenge the legitimacy of monarchical and aristocratic power structures,including the structures and beliefs that supported slavery. The Industrial Revolution began during mid-century,leading to radical changes in human society and the environment. The European colonization of the Americas and other parts of the world intensified and associated mass migrations of people grew in size as part of the Age of Sail.
Warren Hastings was a British colonial administrator,who served as the first Governor of the Presidency of Fort William (Bengal),the head of the Supreme Council of Bengal,and so the first Governor-General of Bengal in 1772–1785. He and Robert Clive are credited with laying the foundation of the British Empire in India. He was an energetic organizer and reformer. In 1779–1784 he led forces of the East India Company against a coalition of native states and the French. Finally,the well-organized British side held its own,while France lost influence in India. In 1787,he was accused of corruption and impeached,but after a long trial acquitted in 1795. He was made a Privy Councillor in 1814.
Sir John Robert Seeley, KCMG was an English Liberal historian and political essayist. A founder of British imperial history,he was a prominent advocate for the British Empire,promoting a concept of Greater Britain. This he expounded in his most widely known book The Expansion of England (1883). While he was an early advocate of the establishment of political science as a distinct academic discipline,he retained a theological approach in which this was embedded.
The Governor-General of India was the representative of the monarch of the United Kingdom in their capacity as the Emperor/Empress of India and after Indian independence in 1947,the representative of the Monarch of India. The office was created in 1773,with the title of Governor-General of the Presidency of Fort William. The officer had direct control only over his presidency but supervised other East India Company officials in India. Complete authority over all of British territory in the Indian subcontinent was granted in 1833,and the official came to be known as the "Governor-General of India".
Company rule in India was the rule of the British East India Company on the Indian subcontinent. This is variously taken to have commenced in 1757,after the Battle of Plassey,when the Nawab of Bengal Siraj ud-Daulah was defeated and replaced with Mir Jafar,who had the support of the East India Company;or in 1765,when the Company was granted the diwani,or the right to collect revenue,in Bengal and Bihar;or in 1773,when the Company abolished local rule (Nizamat) in Bengal and established a capital in Calcutta,appointed its first Governor-General,Warren Hastings,and became directly involved in governance. The Company ruled until 1858,when,after the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and the Government of India Act 1858,the India Office of the British government assumed the task of directly administering India in the new British Raj.
The Georgian era was a period in British history from 1714 to c. 1830–1837,named after the Hanoverian kings George I,George II,George III and George IV. The definition of the Georgian era is also often extended to include the relatively short reign of William IV,which ended with his death in 1837. The subperiod that is the Regency era is defined by the regency of George IV as Prince of Wales during the illness of his father George III. The transition to the Victorian era was characterized in religion,social values,and the arts by a shift in tone away from rationalism and toward romanticism and mysticism.
India was one of the largest economies in the world,for about two and a half millennia starting around the end of 1st millennium BC and ending around the beginning of British rule in India.
The provinces of India,earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier,presidency towns,were the administrative divisions of British governance on the Indian subcontinent. Collectively,they have been called British India. In one form or another,they existed between 1612 and 1947,conventionally divided into three historical periods:
The British Raj was the rule of the British Crown on the Indian subcontinent;it is also called Crown rule in India,or Direct rule in India,and lasted from 1858 to 1947. The region under British control was commonly called India in contemporaneous usage and included areas directly administered by the United Kingdom,which were collectively called British India,and areas ruled by indigenous rulers,but under British paramountcy,called the princely states. The region was sometimes called the Indian Empire,though not officially.
The role and scale of British imperial policy during the British Raj on India's relative decline in global GDP remains a topic of debate among economists,historians,and politicians. Some commentators argue the effect of British rule was negative,and that Britain engaged in a policy of deindustrialisation in India for the benefit of British exporters which left Indians relatively poorer than before British rule. Others argue that Britain's impact on India was either broadly neutral or positive,and that India's declining share of global GDP was due to other factors,such as new mass production technologies or internal ethnic conflict.
The historiography of the British Empire refers to the studies,sources,critical methods and interpretations used by scholars to develop a history of the British Empire. Historians and their ideas are the main focus here;specific lands and historical dates and episodes are covered in the article on the British Empire. Scholars have long studied the Empire,looking at the causes for its formation,its relations to the French and other empires,and the kinds of people who became imperialists or anti-imperialists,together with their mindsets. The history of the breakdown of the Empire has attracted scholars of the histories of the United States,the British Raj,and the African colonies. John Darwin (2013) identifies four imperial goals:colonising,civilising,converting,and commerce.
Phebe Gibbes was an 18th-century English novelist and early feminist. She authored twenty-two books between 1764 and 1790,and is best known for the novels The History of Mr. Francis Clive (1764),The Fruitless Repentance;or,the History of Miss Kitty Le Fever (1769),and The History of Miss Eliza Musgrove (1769). She received recent attention with the scholarly publication of Hartly House Calcutta (1789) in 2007.
The Mughal Empire was an early modern empire in South Asia. At its peak,the empire stretched from the outer fringes of the Indus River Basin in the west,northern Afghanistan in the northwest,and Kashmir in the north,to the highlands of present-day Assam and Bangladesh in the east,and the uplands of the Deccan Plateau in South India.
The impeachment of Warren Hastings,the first governor-general of the Bengal Presidency,was attempted between 1787 and 1795 in the Parliament of Great Britain. Hastings was accused of misconduct during his time in Calcutta,particularly relating to mismanagement and personal corruption. The impeachment prosecution was led by Edmund Burke and became a wider debate about the role of the East India Company and the expanding empire in India. According to historian Mithi Mukherjee,the impeachment trial became the site of a debate between two radically opposed visions of empire—one represented by Hastings,based on ideas of absolute power and conquest in pursuit of the exclusive national interests of the colonizer,versus one represented by Burke,of sovereignty based on a recognition of the rights of the colonized.
Austrian East India Company is a catchall term referring to a series of Austrian trading companies based in Ostend and Trieste. The Imperial Asiatic Company of Trieste and Antwerp and Asiatic Company of Trieste or the Trieste Company were founded by William Bolts in 1775 and wound up in 1785.
The New Cambridge History of India is a major multi-volume work of historical scholarship published by Cambridge University Press. It replaced The Cambridge History of India published between 1922 and 1937.
Sir William Dunkin was an Irish barrister and judge in Bengal.
Samuel Davis (1760–1819) was an English soldier turned diplomat who later became a director of the East India Company (EIC). He was the father of John Francis Davis,one time Chief Superintendent of British Trade in China and second governor of Hong Kong.
Sir William Bensley,1st Baronet was an English director of the East India Company.
John Strachey (1737–1818) was Archdeacon of Suffolk from 5 March 1781 until his death on 17 December 1818.