The birth of 'semi-educated natives' and the language, education and bureaucratic recruitment policies in British Bengal

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 25770271
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: History of Europe and America
• Research Institution: Doshisha University
• Principal Investigator: Mizutani Satoshi 同志社大学, グローバル地域文化学部, 教授 (90411074)
• Project Period (FY): 2013-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: 英語教育 / インド / イギリス帝国 / 官僚制 / 植民地主義

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This research has demonstrated that, in Bengal under British rule, 'English education'--a mechanism designed to procure a steady supply of native public servants--unwittingly ended up creating a number of 'drop-outs' or 'failures' by the end of the 1870s. Colonial rulers increasingly worried that the sense of discount shared among these young men might turn into seditious sentiments. It was in this context that a specific kind of colonial racism arose, labelling the majority of aspiring native youth as 'semi-educated', implying their alleged unfitness as public servants. By foregrounding the colonialist intervention into the question of the semi-educated, this research has pointed to a structural dilemma that British rule in India inevitably faced, whilst shedding light on the widespread existence of a lesser-known sort of colonial racism, which is different from the well-studied sort that derived from of the imperial anxieties over the increasing power of 'educated natives'.

Free Research Field

歴史学