The Stillbirth of Capital

Ahmed, Siraj Dean:
The Stillbirth of Capital : Enlightenment Writing and Colonial India / Siraj Ahmed. - Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, 2012. - X, 291 S.
ISBN 978-0-8047-7522-9
US$ 80,00 (Hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-8047-7523-6
US$ 24,95 (Paperback)
DDC: 820.9005

Beschreibung
This book targets one of the humanities' most widely held premises: namely, that the European Enlightenment laid the groundwork for modern imperialism. It argues instead that the Enlightenment's vision of empire calls our own historical and theoretical paradigms into question. While eighteenth-century British India has not received nearly the same attention as nineteenth- and twentieth-century empires, it is the place where colonial rule and Enlightenment reason first became entwined. The Stillbirth of Capital makes its case by examining every work about British India written by a major author from 1670 to 1815, a period that coincides not only with the Enlightenment but also with the institution of a global economy.
   In contrast to both Marxist and liberal scholars, figures such as Dryden, Defoe, Voltaire, Sterne, Smith, Bentham, Burke, Sheridan, and Scott locate modernity's roots not in the birth of capital but rather in the collusion of sovereign power and monopoly commerce, which used Indian Ocean wealth to finance the unfathomable costs of modern war. Ahmed reveals the pertinence of eighteenth-century writing to our own moment of danger, when the military alliance of hegemonic states and private corporations has become even more far-reaching than it was in centuries past. [Verlagsinformation]

Inhalt
Acknowledgments. ix
Introduction : the Enlightenment and colonial India. 1
PART I: COMMERCE (1670-1760)
   1. Sovereignty and monopoly in Dryden's Amboyna. 25
   2. Conversion and piracy in Defoe's Captain Singleton. 51
PART II: CONQUEST (1760-1790)
   3. Sentiment and debt: Sterne's Bramine's Journal and Foote's Nabob. 77
   4. Free trade and famine: The Wealth of Nations and Bentham's "Essay". 106
   5. Nation and addiction: Burke's and Sheridan's speeches in the Hastings impeachment. 134
PART III: PROGRESS (1790-1815)
   6. Orientalism and the permanent fix of war : Voltaire contra Sir William Jones. 161
   7. History, anachronism, violence: Morgan's Missionary and Scott's Guy Mannering. 189
Notes. 223
Bibliography. 253
Index. 281

Autor
SIRAJ AHMED is Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Lehman College, City University of New York. Faculty page.

Quellen: Stanford University Press; WorldCat; Google Books; Amazon