British India and British Scotland, 1780-1830: Career-building, Empire-building, and a Scottish School of Thought on Indian Governance (International, Political, & Economic History)
At the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, three Scotsmen, Thomas Munro, John Malcolm, and Mountstuart Elphinstone, rose in the service of the East India Company to become respected and influential officials. Martha McLaren?s book, British India and British Scotland, explores connections between their career-building strategies and their development of a principled and ?improving? school of thought on Indian governance based on Scottish enlightenment conceptions of forms of government, religion, law, and political economy. Exploring the interwoven careers of the three men, McLaren presents a new perspective on their deliberate use of Indian language skills, Indian knowledge, and articulately written reports to gain promotion,revising the orthodox representation of their school of thought as largely pragmatic and conservative. This book provides a new argument about the way Munro, Malcolm, and Elphinstone pursued career objectives and, more important,...
