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Viceroys - The Creation of the British (Paperback)
Loot Price: R249
Discovery Miles 2 490
You Save: R309
(55%)
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Viceroys - The Creation of the British (Paperback)
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List price R558
Loot Price R249
Discovery Miles 2 490
You Save R309 (55%)
Expected to ship within 10 - 15 working days
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Viceroys is the story of the British aristocracy sent to govern
India during the reigns of five British monarchs. It is also the
story of how the modern British identity was established. British
history from the Hundred Years War onwards gives an impression of
how the British were seen. It is a misconception or more kindly, a
British view. Until the nineteenth century the British did not have
an identity readily recognized throughout the world. Even the
Elizabethans were never established other than as great
individuals. From 1815, an image of Britain as the first superpower
was built that would make do until even the twenty first century.
Direct rule in the name of a long-lived queen and the consequential
superlatives of style and theatre of conquest had the whole world
believing that it knew the secret of that British identity. To be
white and British even at the lowest social level was enough to
command and to be white, British and aristocratic was enough to
rule. By the end of Victoria's reign a quarter of the world saluted
the authority of the British identity. It took until the second
half of the twentieth century for even the Americans to question
that authority. The token in that identity, the plumed viceroy
whose quarterings linked everyone who held that office to the
aristocracy that was the guardian of that image, is not just an
illusion. Viceroys is not a chronological biography of each viceroy
from Canning to Mountbatten. It is instead, the story of the
viceregal caste. It is the supreme view of the British in India,
describing the sort of people who went out and the sort of people
they were on their return. It is the story of utter power and what
men did with it. Viceroys will come to a conclusion as to what
created the international identity of the British that was
cherished well into the twentieth century. It was and is an
identity that has coloured in the worst pictures of the British
character and ambition as seen by modern radicalized people and
loyalties around the globe. Ironically, it is in part the answer to
how was it that such a small offshore European island people
believed themselves to have the right to sit at the highest
institutional tables and judge what is right and what is
unacceptable in other nations and institutions.
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