Colonial historiography
Also called: Orientalist historiography, James Mill's periodisation · Topic: Studying Indian History: Sources, Dating and Historiography · NCERT: Beyond NCERT
Meaning
Colonial historiography means the history of India written by British officials and European scholars, mainly in the late 18th and 19th centuries. Historiography means the study of how history is written: who writes it, how, and why. These writers often divided India's past by the religion of its rulers. They also tended to show Indian society as unchanging and in need of British rule. Many groups later accepted this religion-based way of dividing the past, and it fed communal readings of Indian history.
Example
In The History of British India (1817), James Mill split India's past into three periods: Hindu, Muslim and British. He called the Indian past backward and presented British rule as a step towards progress. Mill never visited India.
Don't confuse with
- Orientalist scholarship: Orientalists such as William Jones, who founded the Asiatic Society in Calcutta in 1784, admired ancient Indian languages and texts and studied them closely. Mill openly looked down on India's past. Both were colonial, but their attitudes were opposite.
- Nationalist historiography: this was written later by Indian historians. It answered colonial writing by praising the glory of India's past, and it sometimes exaggerated that glory.