Thread by @dan_pericles

Opened this up and found it hard to put down. Packed with info well-framed for non-specialists about the roles of Hastings, Macaulay, and other figures in setting the standards of education in India, with refs, useful in other fields like classics, to discussion of 1/

https://twitter.com/dr_jehrlich/status/1131384793566916608

"orientalism" since David Kopf and Edward Said made it central. Useful quotes that may get others to read:
"... the Company’s changing legitimatory needs led it to deploy and redeploy ideas about knowledge."
"... the botanical gardens of Calcutta and Madras ... took on 2/

ever-greater functions in the early nineteenth century,... As microcosms of the territorial state and the terrestrial sphere alike, botanical gardens brought the great concerns of government and science within the scope of individual exertion."
3/

"Trevelyan had descried the final ideological bulwarks of the Company state: 'We have nothing to give to the Natives but our superior knowledge. Every thing else we take from them.'”

And so they did. "Education" mentioned 301 times here. NB the soaring literacy rate, esp. 4/

women, post-Independence.

A very informative piece of work. 5/