Classics and the British Empire in India, with Phiroze Vasunia

Abstract

Classical Greece and Rome have long been intertwined with colonialism. India was known to the ancient Greeks and Romans, and there were extensive trade and cultural contacts between South Asia and the Mediterranean region. When British colonial rule began in India, one of the frames through which Britons viewed the region was that of Greek and Roman antiquity: they imagined themselves following in the footsteps of Alexander the Great or legendary Roman conquerors. In this episode, Shivaike Shah speaks to Professor Phiroze Vasunia from University College London about the rich and fascinating connections between antiquity, Britain and India in the era of modern colonialism. Their discussions range from Macaulay’s ‘Minute’ on Indian education, to Gandhi’s interest in Greek philosophy and the British scholarly obsession with Indian cultures.

Bibliography

open-source

Phiroze Vasunia, ‘Barbarism and Civilization: Political Writing, History, and Empire’, in Norman Vance & Jennifer Wallace (eds.), The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature, Volume 4: 1790-1880 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 131-158

Phiroze Vasunia, ‘Gandhi and Socrates’, African Studies 74.2 (2015), 175-185

Phiroze Vasunia, ‘How Gandhi Used Socrates’, NDTV (2015)

Phiroze Vasunia, ‘Ethiopia and India: Fusion and Confusion in British Orientalism’, Les Cahiers d’Afrique de l’Est / The East African Review 51 (2016), 21-43

Phiroze Vasunia, ‘Dear Britain, How Much Nostalgia Does An Empire Need?’, NDTV (2016)

Phiroze Vasunia, ‘What Boris Johnson's Book Reveals About The New PM And Brexit’, NDTV (2019)

A short video on Gandhi and Socrates

paywalled

Richard Alston, Edith Hall & Justine McConnell (eds.), Ancient Slavery and Abolition: From Hobbes to Hollywood (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011)

Mark Bradley (ed.), Classics and Imperialism in the British Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)

Barbara Goff (ed.), Classics and Colonialism (London: Duckworth, 2005)

Barbara Goff, ‘Your Secret Language’: Classics in the British Colonies of West Africa (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013)

Barbara Goff & Michael Simpson, Crossroads in the Black Aegean: Oedipus, Antigone, and Dramas of the African Diaspora (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)

Anthony Grafton, Glenn W. Most & Salvatore Settis (eds.), The Classical Tradition (Cambridge, MA & London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010)

Emily Greenwood, Afro-Greeks: Dialogues between Anglophone Caribbean Literature and Classics in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)

Christopher Hagerman, Britain's Imperial Muse: The Classics, Imperialism, and the Indian Empire, 1784-1914 (2013)

Edith Hall & Phiroze Vasunia (eds.), ‘India, Greece, and Rome, 1757 to 2007’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies Supplements 108 (2010)

Lorna Hardwick & Carol Gillespie (eds.), Classics in Post-Colonial Worlds (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)

Lorna Hardwick & Christopher Stray (eds.), A Companion to Classical Receptions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008)

John Hilton & Anne Gosling, Alma Parens Originalis? Classical Receptions in South Africa, Cuba, and Europe (Bern: Peter Lang, 2007)

Justine McConnell, Black Odysseys: The Homeric Odyssey in the African Diaspora since 1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)

Daniel Orrells, Gurminder K. Bhambra & Tessa Roynon (eds.), African Athena: New Agendas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011)

Himanshu Prabha Ray & Daniel T. Potts (eds.), Memory as History: The Legacy of Alexander in Asia (New Delhi: Aryan Books International, 2007)

Phiroze Vasunia, The Classics and Colonial India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)

Phiroze Vasunia, ‘Memories of Empire: Literature and Art, Nostalgia and Trauma’, in Peter Fibiger Bang, C. A. Bayly & Walter Scheidel (eds.), The Oxford World History of Empire, vol. 1: The Imperial Experience (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020), 497-522

Transcript

You can find a full transcript of the episode here.