Edge of Empire

July 11, 2005
In her debut book, Jasanoff challenges the idea that the British Empire imposed its own culture on its colonies, arguing instead that the empire thrived because it was able to "find ways of accommodating difference." As evidence, she traces the history of objects collected in India and Egypt by "border-crossers": diplomats and soldiers, "aristocrats and Grand Tourists" who, by collecting artifacts, influenced the homeland's perception of colonized countries. As she explains how various collections were put together through theft, excavation and connoisseurship, she personalizes the history by profiling those who were fueled to collect by the need for reinvention and pursuit "of social status and wealth." Jasanoff's narrative is most notable for synthesizing the study of architecture, art and commerce, as well as military and cultural history, and for digging deeper than predecessors. For example, in addition to the East India Company's infamous Robert Clive, she also profiles Clive's virtually forgotten son Edward, a much more ambitious collector. In this intriguing and readable book, Jasanoff, an assistant professor of British history at the University of Virginia, creates fertile common ground between the dominant stories put forth by postcolonial critics such as Edward Said and boosters like Niall Ferguson. 48 b&w illus. Agent, Andrew Wylie
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August 15, 2005
In the Anglo-French rivalry for empire between 1750 and 1850, India and Egypt were the key prizes. Jasanoff (British history, Univ. of Virginia) shows how this rivalry revealed itself in the competition to grab antiquities from these countries. After establishing Robert Clive (in military service for the British East India Company and later governor of Bengal) as the key British imperialist figure, Jasanoff uses his gaining wealth, art, magnificent houses, and control of seats in Parliament to frame her study of acquisition as empire. Similarly, she examines the predilection of Frenchmen Antoine Polier, Benoit de Boigne, and Claude Martin for Sanskrit manuscripts and other antiquities, taken by them from the Indian city of Lucknow. Jasanoff identifies two chief points of collision -the 1799 British capture of the Muslim island fortress of Seringapatam in Mysore, India, and the 1801 French invasion of Egypt by Napoleon -which led to a sense of imperial validation and new European attitudes regarding the Orient. In graceful prose and with evocative illustrations, Jasanoff scores her points about conquest, collecting, and cultural crossing, offering a thoughtful and highly subtle study. This is her first book, and it's a very good one for all academic and research libraries. -John F. Riddick, Central Michigan Univ. Lib., Mt. Pleasant

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August 1, 2005
Unlike typical historical narratives of British imperialism, Jasanoff's story only tangentially touches on its military component. It encompasses a different aspect of the empire: collecting Indian and Egyptian antiquities. In this postcolonial cultural atmosphere, that practice may seem akin to looting, but during the period Jasanoff considers, it was viewed less disapprovingly, as shown in her richly descriptive accounts of several collectors. The actual items amassed are secondary to Jasanoff's primary focus: how collecting represented the lives of people such as Robert Clive, who extended British suzerainty from its foothold in Calcutta, or the flamboyant circus-performer-cum-collector Giambattista Belzoni, an early excavator of pharaonic monuments in the 1810s. In the collectors' trades and purchases from local potentates, Jasanoff encounters a complex of interactions irreducible to a narrative of colonial oppression, although she acknowledges that the encroaching influences of Anglo-French rivalry and warfare were the fundamental facilitators of the collecting craze. A sympathetic biographer, Jasanoff is also a supple appraiser of acquisitiveness as symbolic of ambition, taste, and a certain time.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)