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Nicholas B. Dirks (born 1950) is an American historian and anthropologist, professor at Columbia University in the United States, and a specialist in the history of South Asia, mainly India. In addition to the work presented here, he is the author of two monographs and more than forty articles,


Cambridge (Mass.): The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006. 389 p., il.

Nicholas B. Dirks. Scandal of the Empire. India and the creation of Imperial Britain. Cambridge (Mass): Harvard University Press, 2006. 389 p. The book was kindly provided to me by E. Y. Karachkova, senior researcher at the Center for Indian Studies of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, head of the seminar "Cultural Anthropology", who personally knew the author of the monograph.

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covering a wide range of topics from the history and anthropology of South Asia to problems of social and cultural theory, the history of imperialism, and historiography 1.

Dirks belongs to the group of Oriental scholars whose works relate to postcolonial studies, a relatively new field of science that emerged in the late 1970s at the intersection of several humanities disciplines: history, anthropology, sociology, and philology. One of the first works in this direction was the work of E. Said "Orientalism" (St. Petersburg, 2006; 1st ed. 1978). Orientalism, which emerged in the era of colonial conquests, as a colonial Orientalism, was a special system of representation of the East and Eastern people by the West and for the West, in which the West ("we") was compared with the rest of the world - the East ("they, others") and opposed to it, and in this duel the latter always lost. Postcolonial studies are characterized by attempts to go beyond the traditional concepts of relations between metropolises and colonies, scientists of this direction consider " the colonizer and his subjects, the metropolis and the colony in a single analytical field "(Karachkova E. Y. Ethnohistory as a method of historical reconstructions / / Indian Studies in the CIS countries. Moscow, 2007, p. 141), and they see one of their tasks as an attempt to dismantle Orientalist ideas, images, constructs of the East, created and continuing to be created consciously or unconsciously by the Western world, and, as a rule, inconsistent with the real state of affairs. It is in this vein that Dirks ' previous book, Imaginary Castes: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India, was written.

In his third monograph, which is in the center of our attention, Dirks addresses the study of the inherent project of orientalism called "empire", which implies the practice of enslaving"others". He explores this phenomenon using the example of the English conquest of India. The author proceeds from the fact that the flip side of creating a certain image of the East, in our case - India, was the simultaneous creation of a false image of the West, in particular Great Britain and its colonial policy, and the history of empire is nothing more than a self-representation of imperialism, both for" others "in the East and for "others" in the West.their" in the West.

In fact, the entire imperial historiography, starting from the end of the XVIII century, the author believes, was aimed at ennobling and embellishing the image of the empire. As a result, by the beginning of the 19th century, and as time went on, the empire was perceived as a legitimate and civilized form of political, economic and other relations between different countries. Meanwhile, the establishment of British rule in India in the second half of the XVIII century was carried out in extremely unseemly ways, involving robbery, military violence, deception, corruption on the part of the East India Company, i.e. it was based on a scandal. It is especially important for Dirks to emphasize that the last third of the eighteenth century was, in fact, the only period in the history of the British Empire in India when the activities of company employees in the colony were perceived and regarded by their compatriots as nothing but scandalous and condemned. Dirks refers to this period as " focusing on the scandal and its representation ... it means rediscovering the history of Britain in the eighteenth century and redefining the fundamental role of empire in modern history " (p. 28).

The book under review consists of a prologue, 9 chapters, notes, and an index. Unfortunately, it does not have a bibliography section, which does not allow you to cover the entire volume of literature used in general and makes it difficult to find references to specific books. The work is replete with rich factual material, which helps to create a vivid and detailed picture of the events described.

The plot focuses on the impeachment trial of the Governor-General of India, W. Hastings, in connection with his abuses in India. The main prosecutor at the trial was E. Burke, a prominent English political and public figure, philosopher, and representative of the English enlightenment. The trial lasted from 1786 to 1795 and ended with the acquittal of Hastings. Dirks himself states at the beginning of the book that this is a good thing


1 Main works of N. Dirks: The Hollow Crown: Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom. Cambridge University Press, 1987, (2-ое издание 1993); Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India. Princeton University Press, 2001; Colonialism and Culture / Ed. by N. B. Dirks. University of Michigan Press, 1992; Culture/Power/History: A Reader in Contemporary Social Theory / Ed. by N. B. Dirks. Princeton University Press, 1994; In Near Ruins: Cultural Theory at the End of the Century / Ed. by N. B. Dirks. University of Minnesota Press, 1999.

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a well-known episode of English history, which has already been repeatedly addressed by researchers. Therefore, we will find neither new factual material nor new sources here. The reader is interested in the very interpretation of this event, the place that Dirks assigns to it in the history of the British Empire, as well as the resulting concept of understanding the empire as such and its role in modern history, which I will try to describe here.

The description of the trial itself (chapter" Performance") is preceded by a detailed account of the activities of the British in India during the governorships of R. Clive and W. Hastings (50-80s of the XVIII century), presented in such a way as to demonstrate the high degree of corruption of the company's employees, show the ways and mechanisms of acquiring huge fortunes and lands by private individuals as well as the political influence of the East India Company (chapter "Corruption"). At the end of the 18th century, after the loss of 13 colonies in the West Indies, the task of strengthening the imperial position in the East Indies became a priority for the British authorities. They were particularly interested in gaining direct access to India by limiting the power of the East India Company, which had become a poorly controlled state within a state with the right to wage wars, administer justice, mint coins, and collect taxes in Indian territories. Legally, the participation of the British state in the administration of India was formalized by a corresponding act of Parliament (the Pitt Act of 1784), but no less important was the need to provide a moral and ideological basis for the redistribution of power. The East India Company not only tarnished its reputation in India, but also called into question the reputation of the entire English nation, whose representatives have always prided themselves on their ancient constitution, political institutions, civil liberties, the rule of law, their inherent loyalty to duty, honor, and other virtues. Before sharing the responsibility of managing India with the company, it was necessary to dissociate oneself from the crimes of the British in this country, to purge oneself of former sins. And in this respect, the judicial process has played a decisive role. By bringing the scandalous activities of East Indian employees to the forefront of public attention, E. Burke provided the basis for replacing the company's board with an imperial board.

During the trial, it was not the empire itself that was condemned, but the East India Company in the person of specific people, in particular, U. Hastings, who turned out to be a bad manager, which made it possible to justify the need for state control over Indian affairs. The irony of the situation was that the abuse of U.S.S.R. Hastings ' operations in India were significantly smaller than those of his predecessor, R. Clive; his activities were business as usual, which allowed the East India Company not only to gain a foothold in India for trade operations, but also to seize land and gain political power. According to Dirks, the case of W. Hastings is notable mainly because it was a measure that made it possible to legitimize this line of behavior of the British, i.e. legitimize the empire as a form of relations between the mother country and the colony (scandalous in its essence, but necessary to ensure the continued stay of the British in India). In the chapter" Scandal", Dirks discusses the nature and essence of public scandals: "In most cases, public scandals become ritual moments, during which the sacrifice of the reputation of one or more people allows many others to continue on the same path" (p. 30). The author draws attention to the fact that after the Hastings trial, the actions of the British in India were almost no different from what the company did there in the second half of the XVIII century. Nevertheless, these actions were no longer considered criminal by contemporaries, but rather perceived as justified and legitimate. Dirks argues with P. Маршаллом (The Impeachment of Warren Hastings. Oxford University Press, 1965), who regarded the process as a fraud that had little effect on either Britain or India. Dirks, on the other hand, believes that in the historical perspective, the process seems to be a victory, since it created the conditions for further strengthening the empire.

During the trial, an ideology was born that became dominant over the next century and a half. The accusation that India was a country of all sorts of vices, excesses and barbaric customs (which caused the degradation of British laws and law in the East, the destruction of the British character, which explained the ugly behavior of the British in India) and at the same time sympathy for the destitute colonized people, sounded in the speeches of E. Burke, eventually served the same purpose. the goal is to justify the imperial mission of the British. The impeachment case contributed to the " transformation of the empire into a stalemate-

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a patriotic enterprise "(p. 125), creating the basis for the idea of the sacred responsibility and heavy burden of governing a barbaric people that England has shouldered. Dirks argues that the scandal was a fundamental element for the empire, and that "without the scandal, perhaps the empire would not have become the dominant force in the history of the XIX-XX centuries" (p.31).

A stable image of India as a barbaric country and a related one! With this, the idea of the British civilizing mission played a crucial role in making it generally accepted that imperialism had a huge impact (in this case, it doesn't matter whether it was negative or positive) on the colonized world. One of the most important points of this monograph is that along with this, the role of empire in the historical destinies of the metropolises and the formation of modernity as such was unduly underestimated, which is one of the main distortions of imperial self-representation. Dirks puts it this way: "Europe was built on the riches of its vast overseas possessions. The forced withdrawal of these resources urgently required the mystification of the empire, which began to take shape and become rigid in the last years of the XVIII century. First, Europe became itself as a result of imperial conquest, and then it hid its dependence on the outside world by legitimizing and naturalizing the empire, presenting it as a burden and heavy responsibility" (p.331).

According to the author, the empire played a fundamental role in the history of modern Europe. In addition to the fact that it had a huge impact on its economic flourishing, the formation of such fundamental concepts for European modernity as nationalism, sovereignty, economic freedom, statehood, tradition, social virtue, corruption, was largely the result of the" imperial encounter " (pp. 29, 32, 330). The existence of colonial territories and the need to manage and use them influenced the development of these concepts, filling them with new content. In this respect, Dirks agrees with the idea of the chief apologist of the British Empire, J. R. R. Tolkien. Seeley says that the history of England in the eighteenth century was created not in England, but in America and Asia (p. 315). These ideas are developed and grounded in concrete examples* in the chapters "Economy", "Sovereignty", "State", "History", "Tradition". However, as Dirks points out, the fact that modern Britain is a product of imperial power is still missing from works on the history of England and the British Empire. He complains that the history of England in the eighteenth century. It is still written as if India and the East India Company had nothing to do with the main events of that time. Thus, another "scandal of the empire", in the author's terminology, is that its decisive role in the formation of European modernity was erased from the history of European states. The author insists on the need to consider the empire as a " laboratory of modernity "(p.314), noting that this approach is typical for postcolonial studies.

In the final chapter, "Empire," Dirks analyzes how the image of empire artificially created by the British changed with the help of certain rhetoric that found a place in the pages of historical texts and research. He examines, in particular, how the activities of Clive and Hastings, as well as the trial of the latter, were subsequently interpreted in imperial historiography from the second half of the XVIII century to the present. Thus, he draws attention to the works of R. Orme, A. Dow, W. Bolts and G. Verelst on contemporary events in India. Created in the 1760s and 1770s, these works are an example of a sharply critical attitude towards the activities of the East India Company. However, after the famous "transformation" of the empire from a criminal enterprise to a legitimate one during the Hastings trial, it became clear that the imperial activities of the British could no longer be associated with a scandal, and therefore events that looked like shameful spots on the imperial past of England had to be erased from the annals of history. The rest of the historiography of the early nineteenth century shows how the description and assessment of events in India during the Clive and Hastings era gradually turns from critical to laudatory. Confirming this idea, Dirks cites the works of J. Mill, T. Macaulay, G. Gleig, F. Stephen, J. Strachey, J. Seeley and the six-volume Cambridge History of India (edited by H. Dodwell).

The main pathos of Dirks ' criticism is connected with the fact that today imperial history is still written in the interests of the empire and from the position of European superiority. Referring to the Oxford History of the British Empire (edited by W. Louis), published in 1998-1999, the authors of which stated that among the works that seem to be the most important for this publication-

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There was a book by J. R. R. Tolkien. In J. Seeley's Expansion of England (1883), Dirks argues that W. Louis Seeley's portrayal of the empire as a progressive historical figure in terms of its origins and governance means that he accepts the position of most imperial historians that "the empire, no matter what the benefits or consequences of the empire may be." it has brought harm to colonizers and colonized people, but it is a legitimate form of relations between countries " (p. 329).

Today, when the passions of the anti-colonial struggle have subsided and there is no need to take sides, the history of the colonial period, according to Dirks, is written as if the task of the historian is to achieve a balance in calculating the advantages and losses of the empire. For the author himself, such a "neutral" position is impossible. He resents how despotism and the creation of empires continue to be acceptable to scientists in the extra-European space, while this position is unacceptable for them in their assessment of fascist regimes and imperial construction in Europe. According to Dirks, the empire, being scandalous in form and essence, has no right to exist and should be condemned on a par with slavery and fascism. This position is primarily due to the fact that the empire continues to function successfully today, having transformed into new forms of global power. A particularly dangerous symptom, he believes, was the American campaign in Iraq, which was an example of how the methods and methods of imperial construction inherent in the era of classical colonialism were used. The prevailing "neutrality" and "objectivity" in the assessment of imperial regimes according to Dirks in scientific research today only contributes to the new perception of them as the norm.

The very concept of "scandal", included in the title of the work, is filled with different content and meaning as the narrative develops. Actually, Dirks is talking about various hypostases and manifestations of the imperial scandal in the course of the historical process. Today, Dirks sums up, the most important and final scandal of the empire is that the empire is still not forgotten and has not become the property of history.

Such an unambiguous attitude to the empire, the unacceptability of neutral assessments, shows not only the author's scientific, but also an active civic position, which gives the work an unusually bright emotional coloring and allows us to call it, following the definition given at the time by the author of the afterword to Said's book "Orientalism" D. Krylov, "scientific pamphlet". Dirks ' monograph is relevant not only because the author draws parallels with modern events in the world, but most importantly because he offers his assessment of the current state of historical science in the study of such a phenomenon as empire. The author builds up the logic of his narrative by identifying with like-minded people and polemicizing with opponents, stating their positions and points of view in some detail. In this respect, the monograph is also of great interest as a historiographical study.

In conclusion, I would like to draw your attention to one more, in my opinion, remarkable fact. The story of Clive and Hastings, which is considered a classic plot of English history, this time found itself in the center of attention of an Oriental scholar. And this is no coincidence. Postcolonial studies are characterized by the desire to overcome the narrow framework of national histories of individual countries, which is especially relevant for the history of the colonial period of those regions that were involved in the project called "empire". It is quite natural that against the background of criticism of the existing Orientalist ideas about the East, there was a need to revise no less well-established views on the empire. Thus, in the last third of the last century, it was Orientalists who initiated the revision of imperial history. Dirks writes so: "postcolonial studies were born as a reaction to an older imperial history" (p. 343).

However, the practice of dividing research fields between Western historians, whose field of interest traditionally included imperial history, and those who study the rest of the world still prevails. According to the author, the zealous attitude towards any kind of invasion of their field by "non-specialists", outsiders, is manifested in the fact that imperial history continues to adhere to the old views to this day, completely ignoring "the explosion of revisionist publications that subject most imperial histories to withering criticism" (p.27). Nevertheless, postcolonial studies, including the problems of empire in their range of topics, became an integral part of imperial historiography. Dirks himself

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defines the place of this trend in it as follows: in the second half of the XVIII century, there was a critical assessment of the imperial past, expressed in the mentioned works of Dow and Orme, and then it was revived in the framework of postcolonial studies.

In my opinion, the reviewed work turned out to be unjustifiably Anglophobic, and the author's categorical criticism of imperial historiography seems controversial. Probably, the monograph may cause a number of objections or comments from both Western and Oriental scholars. But it is interesting because it offers new approaches to the problems of imperial history, opens up broad prospects for further research within the framework of the proposed approaches, and most importantly - invites representatives of two research fields to joint reflections.


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