Edward Said and the Cultural History of British Colonialism in India

This text discusses the role of culture in the history of European colonialism. It takes Said's notion of "Orientalism" as a starting point. It then discusses two very different books that have tried to make Said's notion useful for the study of concrete colonial situations: Christopher Bayly's "Empire and Information", and Nicholas Dirks' "Castes of Mind". Whereas Bayly's concept of an "information order" tries to undermine ideas about a European hegemony of knowledge, Dirks stresses the far-reaching influence European concepts had even on post-colonial notions of caste in India.