Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-sxzjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T04:26:15.963Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Hanoverians, Germans, and Europeans: Colonial Identity in Early British India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2010

Chen Tzoref-Ashkenazi
Chen Tzoref-Ashkenazi
Affiliation:
University of Heidelberg
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The natives here have great awe and respect for our entire Nordic nation. If this had not been the case, they could have easily become our masters. They regard us as the strongest and heartiest people as well as the best and most fortunate warriors, although together with this fear, they also despise us and hold themselves to be better. The English know very well how to keep their respect, although there is no slavery in their settlements here, while it does exist among the Dutch, the French, and the Portuguese. In the establishments of the English, on the other hand, more money circulates, there is more polity, the troops and servants are much better paid, and in this way the English gain much more respect and sympathy.1

Type
Articles
Information
Central European History , Volume 43 , Issue 2 , June 2010 , pp. 221 - 238
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 [Anonymous], Briefe auf einer Reise von Stade nach Madras in Ostindien und aus Ostindien geschrieben nach Stade. Von einem churhannöverschen Capitain der Infanterie (Bremen: Förster, 1789), 115.

2 Teltscher, Kate, India Inscribed: European and British Writing on India 1600–1800 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), 242Google Scholar.

3 Colley, Linda, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992), 128Google Scholar.

4 Colley, Linda, “Britishness and Otherness,” Journal of British Studies 31 (1992): 309–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 von Diebitsch, Viktor, “Die kurhannoverschen Truppen in Ostindien 1782–1792,” Hannoversche Geschichtsblätter 1 (1898): 67–68, 74–75Google Scholar, 82–83, 90–92, 98–99, 106–8, 114–16, 128; von Linsingen-Gestorff, B., Aus Hannovers militärischer Vergangenheit. Aus einigen Schlachten, Gefechten und Belagerungen; eine Erinnerung an die Althannoversche Armee von einem alten hannoverschen Officier (Hannover: Weichelt, 1880), 180–94Google Scholar; von dem Knesebeck, Ernst Julius, Geschichte der churhannoverschen Truppen in Gibraltar, Minorca und Ostindien (Hannover: Hellwing, 1845), 121–71Google Scholar.

6 Berman, Russell A., Enlightenment or Empire: Colonial Discourse in German Culture (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), 10Google Scholar; Dharampal-Frick, Gita, “Castigating Company Raj: Georg Forster and Matthias Sprengel on British Colonialism,” in Barrieren und Zugänge. Die Geschichte der europäischen Expansion: Festschrift für Eberhard Schmitt zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Beck, Thomas (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2004), 195–207Google Scholar.

7 Zantop, Susanne M., Colonial Fantasies: Conquest, Family, and Nation in Precolonial Germany, 1770–1870 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), 39–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Osterhammel, Jürgen, Die Entzauberung Asiens. Europa und die asiatischen Reiche im 18. Jahrhundert (Munich: Beck, 1998), 29–30Google Scholar.

9 Mann, Michael, “Indien ist eine Karriere. Biographische Skizzen deutscher Söldner, Ratsherren und Mediziner in Südasien, 1500–1800,” in Deutsche Eliten in Übersee, ed. Denzel, Markus A. (St. Katharinen: Scripta Mercaturae, 2006), 249–89Google Scholar.

10 Wehrs, G. F., “Etwas über Ostindien,” Hannoverisches Magazin 28 (1790), 177Google Scholar.

11 Hannoverisches Magazin 21 (1783): 593.

12 von Spittler, Ludwig Timotheus, Geschichte des Fürstenthums Hannover seit den Zeiten der Reformation bis zu Ende des siebenzehnten Jahrhunderts, vol. 2 (Hannover: Hahn, 1798)Google Scholar, unpaginated preface.

13 Briefe auf einer Reise, 208.

14 Colley, “Britishness and Otherness,” 316.

15 Hannoverisches Magazin 21 (1783): 306.

16 Ibid., 323–24.

17 Ibid., 923–24.

18 Hanauisches Magazin 5 (1782): 189.

19 Hannoverisches Magazin 21 (1783): 605.

20 Hanauisches Magazin 5 (1782): 180.

21 Hannoverisches Magazin 21 (1783): 347.

22 Ibid., 309.

23 Hanauisches Magazin 5 (1782): 340.

24 Hannoverisches Magazin 21 (1783): 349.

25 Ibid., 314, 319; Hanauisches Magazin 6 (1783): 259.

26 Hannoverisches Magazin 22 (1784): 531.

27 Hannoverisches Magazin 23 (1785): 532.

28 Hannoverisches Magazin 22 (1784): 533.

29 Bayly, C. A., Imperial Meridian: The British Empire and the World 1780–1830 (London: Longman, 1989), 132Google Scholar.

30 Politisches Journal 4 (1784): 787, 792.

31 Hannoverisches Magazin 22 (1784): 550.

32 Ibid., 533.

33 Politisches Journal 4 (1784): 787.

34 Neues Militärisches Journal 3 (1790): 266–67.

35 Hannoverisches Magazin 22 (1784): 548.

36 Ibid., 549.

37 Ibid., 543.

38 Briefe auf einer Reise, 108–9.

39 Colley, Britons, 13.

40 Ibid., 130.

41 Politisches Journal 4 (1784): 787.

42 Hannoverisches Magazin 23 (1785): 237.

43 Ibid., 31.

44 Hannoverisches Magazin 22 (1784): 549, 552.

45 Hannoverisches Magazin 23 (1785): 185.

46 Historisch-politisches Magazin, nebst litterarischen Nachrichten 3 (1788): 744.

47 Politisches Journal 10 (1790): 977.

48 Teltscher, India Inscribed, 231ff.

49 Dirks, Nicholas, The Scandal of Empire: India and the Creation of Imperial Britain (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Suleri, Sara, The Rhetoric of English India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50 Politisches Journal 4 (1784): 136; Politisches Journal 6 (1786): 1210.

51 Politisches Journal 6 (1786): 1208.

52 Gleig, Georg Robert, The Life of Major-General Sir Thomas Munro (London: Colburn & Bentley, 1830), vol. 1, 81Google Scholar.

53 Fullarton, William, A View of the English Interests in India, and an Account of the Military Operations in the Southern Parts of the Peninsula, during the Campaigns of 1782, 1783, and 1784, in 2 Letters (London: Cadell, 1788), 224Google Scholar.

54 Politisches Journal 11 (1791): 337.

55 Popkin, Jeremy, “Political Communication in the German Enlightenment: Gottlob Benedikt von Schirach's Politisches Journal,” Eighteenth Century Life 20, no. 1 (1996): 24–41Google Scholar.

56 Politisches Journal 4 (1784): 26–33.

57 Ibid., 134.

58 Hannoverisches Magazin 23 (1785): 230.

59 Fullarton, A View of the English Interests, 91–92.

60 Hannoverisches Magazin 23 (1785): 534.

61 Haase, Carl, “Bildung und Wissenschaft von der Reformation bis 1803,” in Geschichte Niedersachsens, vol. 3, pt. 2, Kirche und Kultur von der Reformation bis zum Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts, ed. Patze, Hans (Hildesheim: Lax, 1983), 335Google Scholar.

62 Feise, Wilhelm, Zur Geschichte der Einbecker Ratsschule, vol. 2 (Einbeck: Schroedter, 1911), 7–9Google Scholar.

63 Hannoverisches Magazin 23 (1785): 237.

64 Politisches Journal 4 (1784): 1209; Historisch-politisches Magazin, nebst litterarischen Nachrichten 3 (1788): 746.

65 Teltscher, India Inscribed, 146–7.

66 Politisches Journal 4 (1784): 133.

67 Ibid., 134.

68 Wickremesekera, Channa, “Best Black Troops in the World”: British Perceptions and the Making of the Sepoy, 1746–1805 (New Delhi: Manohar, 2002)Google Scholar; Bryant, G. J., “Indigenous Mercenaries in the Service of European Imperialists: The Case of the Sepoys in the early British Indian Army 1750–1800,” War in History 7, no. 1 (2000): 2–28Google Scholar.

69 Metcalf, Thomas, Ideologies of the Raj (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 7–9Google Scholar; Teltscher, India Inscribed, 112–5.

70 He wrote, “so that all the manufactures of cloth, for which India is so famous, derive more from the decency of their character; the luxurious taste of a rich and enervated people; and from the spirit of commerce, which has prevailed among them from time immemorial, than from wants they really felt; and if the manufacture of a piece of cloth was not the least laborious task in which a man can be employed in India, it is probable that the whole nation would at this day be as naked as their Gymnosophists.” Robert Orme, Historical Fragments of the Mogul Empire (New Delhi: Associated Publishing House, 1974), 306.

71 Hannoverisches Magazin 23 (1785): 227.

72 Mackenzie, Roderick, A Sketch of the War with Tippoo Sultaun, vol. 1 (Calcutta: n.p., 1793), 164Google Scholar; Teltscher, India Inscribed, 247.

73 Hannoverisches Magazin 23 (1785): 537.

74 Carl C. Best, Briefe über Ost-Indien, das Vorgebirge der guten Hoffnung und die Insel St. Helena (Leipzig: Göschen, 1807), 18.

75 Ibid., 100–101.

76 Ibid., 106.

77 Briefe auf einer Reise, 100.