Good afternoon and welcome to this book at lunchtime event on Royals and Rebels, The Rise and Fall of the Sick Empire, written by Dr. Bria Atwell.
My name is Professor Wes Williams and I'm the director here at Torch Book.
At lunchtime, as regulars will know,
is Torture's flagship interdisciplinary event series taking the form of fortnightly bite sized book discussions with a range of commentators?
In different times, we would have been able to offer you lunch as well as food for thought.
But of course, one of the positives of these times is that we can gather together an online space from all around the world.
And in the various sessions this term, we will be travelling adventurously widely.
And I hope wisely, too. So do please, please take a look at our website, a newsletter for the full programme this term.
Today, I'm delighted to welcome Dr. Brightwell to speak about her book.
Also on the panel are Professor Polly O'Hanlan and Professor Faisal DSG, who'll be chairing the discussion in a moment.
I will hand over to Professor DSG, who will introduce both the book and the rest of the panel.
This will be followed by a brief reading by Prieur herself.
Afterwards, our commentators will present their thoughts on the book coming at it from their particular disciplines.
Will then give Prieur the chance to respond to some of the points raised before entering
into what promises to be a fascinating discussion for the last quarter of an hour or so.
The event will end, so the last quarter of an hour or so. But then conclude with questions from you, the audience.
All that's left for me to do then is to thank you for coming and to introduce our chair.
Professor Faces Dave Gee is a professor of Indian history and the director of the Asian Studies Centre here at Oxford.
His research focuses on political thought in modern South Asia and is more broadly concerned with ethics and violence in this globalised world.
He's the author of four books, most recently Muslim ion Pakistan as a Political Idea.
He's a fellow at New York University's Institute of Public Knowledge and was formerly Eve Automan,
chair at the Graduate Institute in Geneva, where an enormously delighted and privileged to have you here with us.
And I'd like to hand over to you now to share the rest of the session. I'll return for the questions towards the end.
Thank you. Thank you very much. Yes, it really is a pleasure to be here to celebrate this wonderful book, which is substantial not only in content,
but also has a rather handsome cover published by Hearst and Co. here in London.
Let me say a few words about Prieur and Polly and then turn over to Pride to tell us more about her book.
So Prieur Atwal is a historian of empire, monarchy and cultural politics across Britain and South Asia.
She's taught history at King's College, London and at Oxford, where she was also a student.
We remember her well not so long ago, I might add.
Her research has been featured in collaborative projects with historic royal palaces, amongst others.
And she makes regular broadcast appearances, most recently presenting BBC Radio four series Lies, My teacher told me.
I hope none of those lies were from here. A prayer.
And as as commentator, we have Professor Polly O'Hanlan, who is professor of Indian history and culture at Oxford,
and her research interests focus on the social and intellectual history of India.
A most recent book was at the Edges of Empire Essays and the Social and Intellectual History of India,
which explores new approaches to questions about caste, gender and religious cultures across a range of historical environments.
So with that perhaps a prayer, you can tell us something about your book.
And then, Pauline, I will return to discuss it with you.
Yeah. Thank you very much, Faisal, for that very kind introduction. I've got a copy of the book here, so I'll do a quick reading.
As promised, I hope everyone can hear me.
Okay. The book in front of me like this. So, yeah, I'll stop it.
I'm going to read a section from the conclusion. So here we go.
Well, many Punjabi families.
This little couplet has long been a folk favourites, Xia Raja exceed Orny don't know market custom Kahani translated into English.
This means once there was a king and a queen. They both died. End of story.
I could leave it that way because my but yeah. But I think Faizan Hollywood have been too happy.
That would be me. The whole thing. It's an irreverent quip that's most likely stems from the folk tales about fictional royalty that
have been passed down between generations throughout India over the course of many centuries.
My own dad never tired of repeating his jokes. My brother and me, while we were growing up, though,
it does get more interesting when you're a bit older and trying to write an actual book about words.
There is no doubt that we've seen a lot of kings, queens and princes dying during the course of this book.
Some under especially brutal and unforgettable circumstances. Just as good in on it.
Preach not even the most powerful and wealthy kings can cheat death. But their deaths only end their own stories.
What the preceding pages have taught us is that contrary to what has been assumed for so long,
while death alone did not end, the second is not even that the line is the job.
Renji. As a kingdom. The second empire was wiped off the map one hundred and seventy years ago.
But it left behind a significant legacy, not only in terms of shaping politics and culture in the region of Punjab,
but also as a lasting imprint on popular memory,
which of course has its most prominent resonance in Maharajah Ranjeet Singh's role as a national hero.
Many seek something dhobis to this day. Yet only by equally resurrection the story of both Raja and Aroni or more accurately than many Ronni's.
Can we truly and deeply understand the inner world of the Sikh empire?
It has been an exciting challenge to ask you critical questions and explore alternative sources about this extraordinary period and reign,
and to open up new perspectives on how the men,
women and children of the BJP reality went about constructing a new kingdom in the late 18th and 19th centuries,
whether it was Southern or helping out when Gizzi on the battlefield got Singh hugging the British in a diplomatic gesture.
Mind again commissioning works of art who have real apartments or non housing.
Getting married and having children to mention just a few aspects of their busy and colourful lives.
Historical footprints left behind by Ranjeet things parents, OG's uncles, in-laws,
wives, children and grandchildren deserve to take their place in history.
That history alone should not be limited to the story of one great modern moon. No matter how talented he might have been.
Beyond these dating figures are sings Dynasty, we have also uncovered the evolving dynamics of the wider real world around them,
particularly help with the actions of individual monarchs,
as well as ideas about kinship more generally ebbed and flowed with each passing generation of subjects.
Even when entire monarchies or dynasties are removed from the scene, the effortless and symbolic power of royal culture still lingers on.
Taking me forms in accordance with changing circumstances, an interest course.
Several centuries of Punjabi history. We have encountered in this book all sorts of debates around who could legitimately
rule and what it meant to be were from the revolutionary Buddhism of the COSA,
founded by group Borbon Singh and sixteen ninety nine to Morandi jump glass
bottles with Prince piercing over the rights of women to rule in 1840 and then
again in the new sort of colonial government and ceremonial world culture forced
upon Maharani jingled and young Benepe saying by the British occupation 46.
The process of looking in New York. Will curiosity at these characters and ideas in time compels us to come to a
very different understanding and appreciation of history repeating itself,
whether on the subject of the second plane or on the evolving role and status of words more generally.
We may never have all the answers about lingering questions or controversies in the history.
And of course,
I read your reflections on the past will always be coloured by our contemporary concerns and biases have about these questioning the hagiography,
misogyny, interventionism that having fused the dominant narratives about this fascinating kingdom and its society.
And by roughly how these are cut it off perception's, I think it's fair to say we not only feature more rich and more insightful
understanding of what really contributes to the rise and fall of this empire, but also in a broader sense,
we can more fully appreciate what this history has meant to generations of people interested in its fate,
as well as the continual evolution of the narratives constructed around it by the political by political culture.
It's going to be observers to this day. I'll leave it there and hand back over to face.
I'm fully. Thank you very much prayer.
I just thought I'd say a few words before I had to get over to Polly,
and I expect Polly will have a great deal to say about the substance of your argument,
because it falls centrally in her field of research, the sort of early years, if you will, of the East India Company.
But I want to begin at the end of your book, in a way, and think about the afterlife of the story of Sikh royalty that you are telling us.
And I'm reminded of a writer from the early 20th century, a British writer, Buckler,
who you and I have discussed before, Priya, who already the 1920s had this really interesting comparison to make.
He sees what's happening with the transfer of power, not the transfer of power in 1947, but the transfer of power in 1857,
1858 during the mutiny as being not simply that between India and Britain,
but also between a royal order on the one hand and a new corporate order run by the East India Company and.
Parliament and democracy, if you will, in England itself, and you will recall prio,
he makes this argument about how what happens in the mutiny, what happens in that penultimate moment of British conquest.
The conquest of India is that two royal orders are under threat by the company and all that.
It represents the new corporate industrial power linked to parliament and to democracy.
And in India, the Royal Houses, the Mughal empire in particular goal or subordinated totally.
Whereas in England the royal family and the royal house, which have also been more or less under attack,
notionally not physically by these corporate powers, is preserved to live another day in a kind of attenuated symbolic mode.
So I'm just interested in the parallelisms that your book sets up between, as it were, these two royal houses at the very end of your book.
Is it possible? I wanted to see a kind of curious alliance emerging between Indian royalty on the one hand, if we can't use that term at all.
And the British royal family on the other, given the afterlife of maharajah's the lip sync in England.
So, you know, that's one question that I have.
The other, of course, has to do with a really central subject in your book, that is to say, the role of women in these struggles.
And we tend often to think of as if we're matriarchal. Again, I use that word in heavy quotation marks.
The matriarchal forms of authority are older and fade away in modern times.
But both the story of the Sikh empire and morality and core in particular and the British Empire with Queen Victoria has its notional head.
Really the stories of the re-emergence in a completely new way of the power of women's, symbolic or otherwise.
So that's another question that I'd like you to perhaps address.
You know, how are these? What kind of link exists between a possible personal link between, as it were, these two mother figures,
a modern Indian called on the one hand and couldn't Victorio on the other with Mahara to the lip sync as the as it were,
the sun torn between them both. So now I know your book doesn't discuss Queen Victoria and that part of my larger belief, Singh's career.
But I thought it might be interesting for the audience to hear about sort of
the afterlife of the empire that you that you described so well in your book.
So with those few words, let me turn to Polly. Polly, if you have any comments to make.
Thank you very much, Feisal and Prieur.
Thank you so much for asking me to be part of this wonderful occasion.
Having followed the previous work now over many years, it's so very pleasing to see it emerging.
Is absolutely outstanding book. Well, there is so much here to fascinate.
To provoke. To enjoy and to look at.
And amongst the many achievements of the book, I mentioned just a few that I particularly clearly appreciated.
And first, I guess, is the expansion in our understanding of Mughal Persian eight Timrod models of kingship
as providing a model for emulation not just across India's lesser royal courts,
but also for major religious and sectarian traditions in the hybrid royal culture that was developed first by some of the Sikh gurus,
which blended then with the egalitarian Sikh emphases on the spiritual authority of the Khalsa.
There are many other in my own research,
I've come across many other precolonial sectarian traditions of which this was true leading sunglasses of 17th century Banaras and also held,
as it were, real courts.
And so I think this important in interplay between cultures of royalty and the realm of the spiritual is a wonderful new field for investigation,
and particularly because it brings in a whole set of other important issues.
Questions about the incorporation through roving questions about the body, the body politic, the body spiritual,
the body material, so that models of kingship, I think, is one really important contribution of the book.
Second, it's worth emphasising the book's contribution to a new global history of cultures of royalty and the imperial networks along which ideas,
practises and often aspirant local rulers travelled during the heyday of Empire travelled in order
to associate themselves with those cultures and the practises and relationships that sustained it.
We're used to thinking about global networks and the spread of political and anticolonial ideologies.
So it's very useful to be reminded that these were also pathways for the consolidation of institutions of royalty during the high noon of Empire.
There's also new light, of course,
on the importance of marriage and the household as key institutions at the heart of Indian political life so ably demonstrated by what Prieur has
done to recover the extraordinary degree of agency that elite women of the sea court were able to wield in the making of Ranjit Singh's empire.
And then to protect it against British attempts to isolate sick royal women and to kerb their power.
And it's what's remarkable, of course, and again,
so well illustrated in the book that this female agency extended beyond the negotiation of marriage alliances,
the management of the household extended and also to the management of key financial and military resources.
And perhaps the last thing I'd like to emphasise that this is so enjoyable about this book are
the illustrations Prieur has by hook or by crook using using methods we shouldn't enquire into.
Perhaps it has assembled a fat velis set of colour illustrations for the book.
Right back from the early illustrations that I certainly haven't seen before.
The early seegars, all the way through to images of the Sikh household and women in the middle and later part of the 19th century.
And what is to me so fascinating about these images is that the Sikh rural women in the sort of collective portraits of the women are individualised,
or at least they seem to me to be individualised in a way that isn't really very often
true of other depictions of of India and rural households where women are there,
but they're there just as it were, as female figures. And that attempt really made to individualise them.
Now, it would be very interesting to hear from prayer a little bit about how she went about assembling this extraordinary collection of images.
So really, there are many questions I'd like to ask, but perhaps one what one in particular I'd like to leave you with.
And that is about this question of female agency.
Does this degree of female agency develop really because of the unique circumstances of the late 18th century in north India,
that at this particular point in the history of Punjab,
marriage strategies offered a uniquely advantageous way forward in the consolidation of Suker Chaykin dynastic power?
Is it is female agency here to do with this particular period?
Or or. And should we also look at Sikh tradition with its very egalitarian emphases in its understanding of of men and women, Sikh devotees?
Are there things there that also provide a congenial environment for the female exercise of power?
Or and there's a third possibility. Have we simply under estimated the scope for oil agency in India's history?
India's history here often gets a bad press.
As a history which shows political institutions, family institutions as unsympathetic to the exercise of female power.
In fact, that's really not the case, that there may be many other minor, kin's and gen cars out there for us to discover.
In fact, India's cultures of gender were were.
And in a sense still are remarkably amenable to the exercise of female power.
But so long as that female power is contained within and directed towards the power of the family.
So those are some of the questions that came to mind as I as I read through this book and marvelled at how it's how it's developed and blossomed,
really since. Since I first saw it as an undergrad.
Your dissertation and all.
Congratulations for to create for her her stamina, her imagination, her sense, her vision, earthly vision of what this project could become.
So many congratulations to add to our good friend.
And I will hand back now to Feisal. Thank you very much, Polly Prieur, any initial responses?
And then we can have a little discussion. Yeah, plenty to go on there.
I mean, firstly, I just want to formally say a big thank you to both.
You face on pretty full. I mean, you've seen reference. I was your student and nothing but.
And I think just from the sheer richness of the questions that you just asked me and the comments that were raised,
we'll show just how great my supervision was all the way through through my studies and how that helped with the development of the book.
I mean, I have lots to say in response to the comments, but I mean, do you.
I don't know. We. Should I just keep going? That should be. Yes.
Because, like, I think there's a lot of overlap, actually, between what you said.
So I can briefly sum up some thoughts.
I just thought it would be easier questions, but I promise there was nothing dodgy that went on with my working relationship.
It was a combination of luck and kindness from other people.
Ready, too, come forward. I mean, the photographs of Sheik Werfel were a real boon and they were already published on a Web site.
Oriental Asian architecture dot com. Also known as Oriental objects.
And that could happen to some. Of course, there's the Google find. And then I got in touch with our Indonesia photographer.
And those are incredibly precious because now Sheck workforce is not accessible, hasn't been for many years.
And those beautiful frescoes of MINDGAMES Habibie, her apartments are now just crumbling away to the summer collection.
That was through some of a friend of mine purchasing bonds.
He's a collector. He introduced me to the summer family.
I had no idea prior to, you know, writing the first draught of the manuscript of the book.
Paintings even existed. I mean, I was aware of collections, of course, in the DNA of the Royal Collection and others.
And those were absolutely integral to my. Well, attempts to understand the will culture.
I mean,
that was something that Faisal and I talked about as I was developing the thesis that the visual aspects of this are going to be incredibly important.
And that obviously opens up a different side to the history of this period compared to what you get, for example,
in the Persian Chronicles or in the Sikh texts of that in the rest of the may well seek histories of that period.
The material culture really does show you how that world culture works.
And you see Reggie Singh depicted with a halo or with a shot three over his head and you see the Moranis, you know.
Giving know, acting as patrons and in a very, you know, little style over informally mogel.
So I think that really helped me to bring it to life, but that's what I think.
I mean, there's a point to be made here, actually, that there's a growing culture of collecting amongst Sikhs and Punjabis themselves.
And I think they're kind of almost resurrecting in some ways the practises that Ranjeet,
Singh and others would have followed themselves of trying to collect the manuscripts and trying to collect your work and even the objects.
And I hope that those collections are made more accessible and fairly open to scholars and students and everybody else going forward because.
You know, that helps you move away, actually,
from an overdependence on the particular colonial records of that period and what's in the British Library and that kind of thing.
And I think that hopefully that's going to continue to grow.
I mean, I'm going to connect up the other two questions, the big questions that you asked about.
Well, cultures. Based on what you recommend, Buchalter and.
The kind of models of kingship that you mentioned, Pully.
I mean, I think. What we.
I guess what we're trying. What I was trying to show is very much building on this growing historiography, an incredibly rich strophe.
That, of course, you've contributed to. That that actually takes these kind of real courts in the kingdom seriously.
And I mean, if anything, what Ranjeet thing does, then it's perhaps not that original in many respects.
He's building on so many layers of. Experiments that previous Indian monarchs had done and of course, is not to say that the muggles themselves.
He obviously heavily borrows from Google ideas, as the gurus have done, but plays with them.
But no, when experiments and I mean it's part and parcel of what the moguls themselves have done, of course, from Bobbers Time free to offer.
And beyond that, this was a continually fluid thing.
I don't think getting back to what people were saying is that is incredibly
powerful and incredibly rich political and cultural tradition that even post 1858.
You know, the company does itself take on some of these trappings of royalty.
And I think that was what I was trying to show in the diplomacy chapter of the book that,
you know, the company is somewhat out by it's not in the kinship networks.
It's not in the normal dynamics of Indian political culture and that same degree. But that is interesting how rejiggering tries to bring in waves,
tries to bring in new invention, canoodle and others and incorporate a narrative into this.
But as a blurb, you bought boundaries between, you know, how they were presenting themselves back in prison.
And as Buckley rightly points that out versus in India.
And I think the interesting point that you mentioned is can we actually talk about Indian royalty as a group?
I mean, let a situation when you have the Presti say something else.
I think British imperialism brings them all together into one cluster. It's not to say they were ever won in one judicial, one united group.
And of course, you don't see that explicitly in the rise of Renji thing.
And how he sides with the company, against the Moroccans and against these and all sorts of others, even other Punjabi rajas.
So I think there's a lot there that, you know, we tend to think.
But I think actually the presence of the company does help to.
Well, I think in in Ranjeet things time, it draws, you know, another player that's in the region and it's,
you know, and they're pitching against reducing allies with the company in order to boost his own rise.
But perhaps later on, I mean, the league saying himself in later on in his rebellion, I'm jumping ahead.
Actually, I know you were referencing Queen Victoria, but later on in his life, at the very end of his life,
he tries to hop back and he tries to build an alliance of Indian royals against the British
Raj and I mean even against Queen Victoria because he's upset with her by that point.
But he still maintains this royal identity goes to the tsar of Russia, where he goes to Victoria's daughter.
He was by then, you know, the queen of in in Prussia and it's of the growing German empire.
So he constantly looks and I think that's that's important to recognise that there is this royal identity that's entrenched,
but then it becomes increasingly fluid over time. And very briefly, on the Queen's.
I mean, he you asked me whether this was particularly about the 18th century.
I don't know if I gave a false impression in the book, and I think a lot of reading since will come out, the more I know it's you know,
I mean, even within the mogul dynasty, Bogard was relying on his mother and his mother, his mother, his in-law families,
his grandmother, his aunts, to to shore up his authority when he was in tricky straits himself and of course, an upward themselves,
all coming to the power at a very young age in very a similar way to run jinxing himself when he inherits the starship from his father.
And did he say when he inherits the throne or was placed on the throne in Enation Bush three.
So. There's nothing. I mean, I think that's that's the frustrating thing about the kind of gender history of this period, is that it's.
You know, you need to see women's roles agency being thoroughly tarnished by men like Henry,
Henry Lawrence and the East India Company and not understanding the role that women play,
but also a kind of a covering up with the fluidity of gender relations, as you as you rightly mentioned.
You know, I drew inspiration for the book that there weren't these hard and fast divides
between what men and women were supposed to do in terms of critical roles. And women could step in and take very important positions.
But I think, yes, it was there was a caveat that it had to be towards the family or towards the wife cause there were issues with women,
with holding power within their in their own right there instead.
And I think, yes, within the kind of more egalitarian culture of secu that good anon, it gives women equal status.
And then a golden thing, of course, equally enables women to be initiated within the cossa.
And you have female warriors like my blog and others that are, you know, very prominent in that kind of kosko, Tacloban's Singh era,
which, of course, sets the tone for women like the Gold or Gynt or to be leading armies and that kind of thing.
But do I think is something particular to that period really? No.
But then I think what you see Lincoln, back quickly to Faisal's question about the Victoria Jim, because,
you know, Duleep Singh Mother Triangle, which was the very beginnings of the thesis actually APHC.
I think what you see in. The kind of history writing or own in terms of political rhetoric that emerges when you take one mother,
figure out one queen, figure out the Indian one. And you put Victoria.
It is a kind of suppression, ray. Disintegration of what that female agency and what there's more, you know,
interesting gender relations in terms of politics and culture had represented.
And it's not to say that the company in any way was comfortable with Queen Victoria.
Yes, well, they didn't like her intervening and speaking up on behalf the and for example,
asking for a better political settlement or financial settlement for him after he loses his kingdom.
But Victoria. But they. So I think it all is all part and parcel of this puzzle of 90 female agents.
But Royal Agency and. Yeah, I'll leave it.
Now I want to respond. But there's so many things that I mean. Yeah, well, thanks, Chris.
You know, I just thought that I'm picking up on a police question about periodisation that, you know, you could write and,
you know, putting that question wrong with mind about, you know, how could you see this as a global story as well?
You know that there is a global story that is there to be told about.
Not necessarily gender history, but the way in which you can see here, too.
Or, you know, entirely masculinised narratives about power and dynasty completely differently.
When you look at them through the lens of gender and how those changes occur across the world, or at least in this case,
both in in in Western Europe and in in India, in northern India, would some connect filaments of connexion between the two.
Which is why the Queen Victoria urgent core thing. It becomes interesting.
But I also thought that from the you know, when you look at the last moment, if you will, the last gasp of Indian aristocratic power, the mutiny,
which I mentioned before, there you see this extraordinary efflorescence of women leaders as if we were back in the 18th century, if not earlier.
You have husband Mahal, of course, and you have the Rani of Jauncey. And these are famous characters in their own time.
They don't have to be recovered.
You know, they're since their time, they've been at the forefront of Indian and indeed British narratives about these events.
And I think that's, you know, the ambiguity there is actually really startling because, you know, going back to Polly,
it's like, do you see this as a kind of a moment of emergence or do you see this as a last gasp?
Would you see this as the moment of departure that, you know, there is a future in there as well?
A story that's being told in a way, you know, is that not also the problem?
You know, whether this is a starting point or an end point or a midpoint that can be told about the making of Sikh identity itself?
You know, as it transitions from, if you will, a Republican form to a monarchical form to something altogether different.
But carrying all that baggage with it, I don't know if you have any anything to add.
Well, I suppose what I was thinking was at the moment here for me is looking at these different cultures of gender amongst elite women,
amongst aristocratic houses in in 19th century.
The 1990s, early, not 19th century there. And it's not the case that.
So, you know, when we see this this kind of very strong patriarchal assertion and drive to control the power of Indian royal women,
which comes out across the board in India in the middle of the 19th century,
the idea that, you know,
Indian princes have to be sent away to boarding schools so they can be removed from the malign influence of this Anana and so on.
And I think it's I think that female agency there is not the casualty necessarily of British aristocratic culture,
because if you look at British aristocratic society at most periods in the 19th century, you will see similar forms of female agency, female agency.
There is really the casualty of empire.
It's the casualty of the fact that if you're looking at female agency within an aristocratic or royal household,
you can negotiate with it, you can control it, you can channel it, you can allow it some freedom of manoeuvre.
But but from the point of view of the East India Company and then later governments of India officials,
these forms of female power were nothing but malign because they couldn't be controlled.
They didn't have the the family connexions the cultural understanding, you know, or the shared political goals that operate.
And if you were looking at female agency with it within within the royal family.
So it's really empire rather than, as it were, aspects of British metropolitan culture that really,
I think, are they do so much to erode female agency in India in the high noon of empire.
That would be my sense of things. And. Uh.
Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, I couldn't agree more.
And I think you really see that. You really see that in the exchanges that Victoria has with.
You've been saying about his next steps of his life. And you see that in her interactions with Sarkozy.
You know that the last governor general of the East India Company, that there is, you know,
the royal see this as a fundamentally dynastic enterprise and that keeping a dynasty in that position is the
most important thing and keeping that over and above what's happening with the development of your country.
You know, as a democracy or as a nation state or as an empire or whatever is the most important thing.
And I think it's interesting, you know, when you when I read the nexus between Dalhousie and Victoria that is equally irked by her involvement,
her attempts to interfere and search ourselves within Indian politics and the reaching settlement as he was,
you know, too quickly, as quickly as possible, get rid of others. We'll get rid of the moguls and that kind of stuff.
And I think you can absolutely see this as part of the puzzle. And I think then the gender aspect is one important strand of all of this.
I mean, if you. I mean, it's a strand that's kind of been neglected for far too long.
I would say and end by leaving that out, you're actually missing an important dimension of how this place works, how this culture works.
And actually then you're right outside what's shared in a global sense.
So I think in terms of. It is the sick aspect of it.
It is complicated, I think. And that's what is trying to do in the first chapter of the book is to flesh out,
well, how much of this is sick ideology and how much of this is royal culture.
And actually, where do the two meet and kind of blend in this sort of fluid way, because that's something that could be ranging thing.
And then later on, you know, the other members of his family and then the leaping as a rebel maharajah,
later, they they they engage with the identity in a fluid way.
And it is sometimes quite convenient way to suit whatever their interests or opposition at the time.
And, you know, throughout the 19th century and.
I think that's something I had to come to terms with as a court, because you look at these figures as heroes, right?
That actually does does a lot more going on with this and that that contributes to
this or sick national mythology around these characters and what they represent,
too. So there's lots of strands, of course, sick identity undergoes all sorts of changes.
And again. And then how these figures are represented, of course, changes to.
Yes. I think you the end. You really see that with with what happens in believe things in education the last few
years of his reign that leading up to 80 percent year is an important turning point.
And then the position that Jindall occupies. Is in many ways that kind of last gasp of a female world power.
Could I pitch in with another question? Is it time? Yes. Poised to do that.
You talked prior about the degree to which, you know, these aspects of royal culture, a relatively neglected and of course,
in all kinds of ways, our perspectives these days on histories from below, support from studies, as it were, anticolonial movements and so on.
And that may be part of. So it's so kind of royal history is has been a kind of unfashionable area to do research.
And what I would like your thoughts on it really something to do with with something that's there in the book.
It's kind of lurking everywhere in the book. And that's just the theatre of loyalty.
Of course. You know, royalty, a royal court is a theatre. And theatres have audiences and audiences, not just amongst the courtiers,
but amongst wider communities of warriors, of petty sawdust and of their own dependents and networks of clients.
And I'm thinking of a historian I know in India at the moment who's researching the way in which images of
Queen Victoria informed the political radicalism of dull IT communities in in mid 19th century Bombay,
that, you know, that there were all of these conservative social and political hierarchies, whether on the British or the Indian side,
but that somewhere there was an untainted, beneficent principle of royalty,
which if only they could if only adults could could engage with that principle.
Many of their difficulties would find a solution.
And so I suppose what I would like to hear your thoughts on is how you can bring your history to engage
with with wider popular histories and particularly popular audiences for royalty in the colonial period.
I don't know whether that's something that I know. It's something that you think about.
But if you have anything you'd like to say, I think it's becoming an increasingly important question for me.
And I've also taken some inspiration from the work of someone like Melinda Balaji, for example.
Let's invest it the more two gods and the Bengali.
So in, you know, assimilation of ideas of monarchy and royal royal trappings in a way to assert their own sense of sovereignty and agency.
And I mean, you can see that in the Sikh tradition, of course, as well.
And what I talked about in the book about I mean, I wasn't that was my own research was the ideas of being funny.
But it's about critical big things. Revolutionary work isn't the idea that you're not, you know.
I'm not saying that Google was in any way predicting the rise of Ranjeet thing.
If anything was diffusing Royal Agency across the entire community.
And so I think that's what I was trying to make a point with the book, is that monarchy as a trope?
Well, as you said, a form of Setara, a performance power and as well of symbolism, if not an actual king,
is so imbued within the culture of the political culture of the subcontinent that you see it cropping up in so many ways.
And I mean, that's even behind the joke that, you know, the conclusion Nixey rejects.
You got, you know, that kind of story. It pops up in so many different angles and I think.
In terms of a conception of power. I think it's important that we do and that we all, you know,
I mean going but I've just been finished reading Richard Eatons, India's president, eight.
And that, of course, looks at how royal ideas of royals, united sovereignty are continually being adopted.
You know, in so many different contexts throughout the history of the subcontinent.
And so for that reason, I think it's helpful to make the study abroad to work again, to understand the terms of which that power operated.
And also then because it's not not entirely unique to India, of course, it again,
context, but this idea of global history that we've been talking about,
you know, Central Asian ideas and some of the Iranian and everything else there, all these different ideologies are constantly.
You know, wanting freedom of conscience. And when you bring the colonial stuff into it, the British East India Company adds another layer.
But of course, it's not to say the East India Company didn't. Succeed if they didn't succeed in entirely imposing a new order,
if they the Indian rural aspects very much fused with it or wasn't able to shift it entirely.
I think that's one side of the coin is just understanding this and looking at how it operates through time.
And of course, the compiling comes at a really important turning point in history.
The other side of it, I think he's thinking about. You know, in terms of today's popular culture and that kind of thing,
what do iconic figures like Ranjeet thing or Gynt or Duleep Singh mean in terms of more popular understandings of.
You know, reclaiming a history of an independent zie crutch.
I mean, today, you know, we're seeing lots of STK farmers protesting in Delhi and slogans about Kósa Raj and Sick Raj are constantly coming up.
And so, you know, it's interesting because then Ranjeet thing is a figure is sometimes a bit,
you know, if interest rates look like it in the first chapter.
Some six colours were uncomfortable with his position as a monarch, whereas others, of course,
uphold you must his hero that we we should never forget and that we should seek to reclaim and establish that cause Raj again.
So and that's why I wanted to get to the heart of, you know, actually putting that question out there.
Bucket readers to say, well, you know, why do we have such a messy, complicated understanding of what it meant to be a secret?
You know, I can't go into so much depth to that.
But I wanted to spare a debate about that, maybe particularly because I'm seeing,
you know, the names of Ranjeet thing go reporting being invoked more and more,
especially in the context of today's debates about decolonising and particularly in the diaspora,
that we maybe reclaim lost kingdoms, lost political entities as a way to, you know,
recover a more powerful history as opposed to the impact of British colonial rhetoric.
But there's only so far you can go with that as well. I mean, I'm talking about a Sikh empire as well.
It's not like this. Meetings on the on the border of Punjabi rule. We're happy about rejean thing taking off.
So where do you go with this? Right. And I think yes.
So if I were to investigate the veins and the meanings and the impacts of these histories,
I think more history actually means it's helpful to bring it back to the foreground so that we know we have a
deeper understanding of the times that we're using in today's debates about history and about power and empire.
That's the thing. Yes. And I think Empire, to emphasise that royalty always also has to do with Empire.
And to give our understandings of empire rather greater nuance than we have at the moment.
You know, when we think of empire at the moment, we think of very specific kinds of hugely exploitative, metropolitan centric European empires.
And of course, those were by no means, you know, those simply represented a particular model of empire that was an investment many ways,
not at all typical in the sort of long history of empire in over human history.
So so it's also a rescue of histories of empire as well as a rescue with histories of royalty, I think.
And I know I reference that exact in the book. I talk about predicting and his family engaging in a form of dynastic communism.
Yes, my my untenably went look at the time that I cried yet myself, but one that I borrowed from sort of global early modern European history.
So thinking about all of these things, you know, unlike Nexavar,
we've been talking about this thing that absolutely, you know, Empire had so many different meanings.
And it's just I'm hoping that the book can add to that conversation, which it does.
Yes. I'm reminded of this.
You know, my maternal grandmother used to at the time, I was embarrassed by this, referred to Queen Victoria Suppy as a sub Tehrani, you know, as a.
So I guess she meant she was referring to Prince Albert and the mourning for Prince Albert.
So there's a kind of indigenisation of the British monarchy. And I soon came to see that it was not uncommon because, of course, from 1858 onwards,
the Queen's Proclamation was referred to assiduously and insistently by Indians from all kinds of backgrounds as a charter of their freedom against
the British state so that their freedoms had to be claimed through the language of royalty and to the person of Queen Victoria who was seen as being,
as it were, their ally, or at least the author of this proclamation.
And, you know,
clearly the government of India never liked this because they didn't think that the Queen's Proclamation was had the force of law in that sense.
So there's the interesting story to be told,
how the figure of royalty and of sovereignty actually comes very early on to define Indian freedoms and not Indian, as it were, slavery.
And, you know, from what you and Polly have been saying, of course, it's sort of striking how well India does become independent.
How what the return simply by the fact of becoming a sovereign nation state.
The language of royalty comes back in these usages of the word Raj, for instance, and all kinds of ways.
And today, if you look at the Indian prime minister himself from a part of the country, which was a heavily infested,
if you will, by petty and not so petty royal houses, he's treated in Gujarat like a king.
And he's given the attributes of a team. He's got a side, which is what you would call a good Rathi prince, jollity monarch.
And people bowed to him, which brought Brodies, including the home minister, touch his feet, etc. And it doesn't strike.
Anyone is being curious, though, you would think that this is not the way that an elected head of government should,
you know, should be treated in a parliamentary democracy. So in a way, you do see the return of the language and theatre, as Polly was saying,
of royalty and not as a not as a kind of counterfactual and not in an ironic mode necessarily,
because it seems to gesture towards the sovereignty of the new nation state itself and doesn't
necessarily have anything to do with the Indian princely order of the colonial period.
Because certainly the Indian prime minister doesn't come from that kind of background.
So the democratisation of the language of royalties also really extraordinary here.
And I don't think I don't think one sees that I might be mistaken in Britain or in other European countries,
the democratisation of royalty and the attributes of royalty.
Maybe you see it in pop culture, you know, with rock, rock and roll singers and things like that and celebrity culture.
But so, you know, the tenacity of that, I think is really striking.
Definitely. I wonder if from the present darkness, I'll play my video and as well I might come back in again here just to help us,
along with a number of questions for the last five, ten minutes or so.
I'm really enormously enjoyed this discussion. And there are I've actually had wanted to question sent to me directly.
So people haven't just put them in the Q&A. But I'd like to start with by introducing I'm in French studies.
I'm an early modernist, but I thought I might introduce a little bit of French theory to the discussion and see where we go with it,
because it seems to me that one of the things that you've all variously been talking about is a combination of what the sector calls poaching,
where the subaltern kind of takes on the stuff, the theatre, the props of the more powerful,
and then repurpose them for their own, for their own liberation and all the consolidation of their own power.
So poaching on one hand and on the other hand, obviously,
there's the famous notion of bleak collage that the anthropologist Libby's cousin either came up with where,
again, you take various different parts of an existing possibly foreign culture and see where the connexions are with your own.
Am I being too French theorist here or is this connecting to what you've been doing here at all in your work?
No, definitely. I mean, avenges. No. I mean, he directly recruited French generals that they and I think leave your period wise, but I'm no diplomat,
former employees of Napoleon and had them in his army and then used that essentially to completely
revolutionise the whole US Six Sigma tradition that had been around since the time of good Gobin thing,
which was predominant cavalry warfare by guerrilla base to to help him build,
consolidate a state underneath him and then a state led, state controlled army.
And alongside, you know, taking inspiration from local history and literature that kerchiefs picking up
ideas from from company offices and sort of were European influences that are,
of course, well entrenched in this subcontinent by that time.
And actually creating a very cosmopolitan courts and a government and an administration that was not just led by SEC officers and,
you know, chiefs and that kind of thing.
But you had, of course, risen from the Bolton background backgrounds become like noble crossed over the course of the 18th century.
And to also encourage other types of US pay parvenu elites that he brought up through his own encouragement,
impassionate and that kind of stuff that came from, you know, Muslim intellectuals,
I mean, merchant families, but also Hindu trading classes and others.
Belgrad Raj from the different ethnic lines. So it really was a patchwork society and the Patrick administration in that respect.
Right. And that was one of its strengths, because, of course, the Punjab is a multi-ethnic multi-phase,
you know, massive, massively important region and culturally very diverse.
And and that was it. Reflectiveness, dynasty, marrying women from throughout the region.
And again, just faith and social backgrounds. And I don't think he was a unique doing that.
I think there were many other things that was bothering him, but it was interesting how particularly successful he was.
And how much that helped that network of people helped to stabilise this kingdom in otherwise turbulent periods.
Thank you. Another question has to do with what of the again guiding thread through your discussion,
which is the question of gender and the degree of agency that women had in this in this world.
And one question that I had been sent to me by by email, and I'm not sure why they did it like this, but anyway, they did, which is in poly.
In your response, you seem to have suggested that there are sort of new ways of thinking about what the last of your three things are,
agent centric culture, fit culture in particular.
And then thirdly, cultures of gender that there may be ways of rethinking the sort of history of gender here.
The question says. But do we always have to do it in relation to the family?
In other words, is women's agency only ever a function of a position in relation to a family in this period?
Is there any other I mean, there must be women in this time who are not related to families.
But do we have to think women's history in relation to the history, the family?
That's a question either properly over prayer or indeed professedly, if he has anything say on that matter.
And well, I mean, I think it's you know, I I think I appreciate the question behind it,
which is, you know, can we not be agents, you know, in their own right kind of thing.
And I wonder whether that's actually a very immediate, very useful question.
I mean, from my perspective. In the South Asian setting, the family.
So almost all women. Not all women. Almost all women.
The family is the terrain on which women have to negotiate their life, chances and access to resources, their access to key life stages,
the shaping of key life stages, and that that access to all sorts of other things like education and employment opportunities and so on.
So I don't think it's I don't think it's any diminution of women's ability to
act as agents to say that very often we have to situated within the family.
It's recognising that that is where women exercise their agency.
That is where they do it. To say that they do it within the family isn't to diminish that agency.
If anything, it's to emphasise the creativity, the imagination, the determination with which so many women, the historical women that we know about,
went about making lives for themselves and developing strategies of realising some degree of autonomy within the family.
And the other reason I think that the emphasis on the family is so important is
that it brings gender right back to the centre of the historical enterprise.
Because if you are to what once you appreciate how critical the family is to so many political social process, cultural processes in this period,
we then we then can't talk about politics or anything else without understanding, without seeing the connexion, the presence, that agenda.
So that's what the long answer for you. You have I, I couldn't have said it better myself.
I think that's it. I think it's crucial to to recognise just how important the family in a dynasty is as a political formation,
particularly in mother in South Asia or not, that yes,
it's a crucial tribute to the operation of politics and therefore to see women as leading players
within that and and how and how that in turn shapes the broader dynamics of other states.
You know that the family and the state are not separate entities, that they're totally connected.
And so, therefore, it's crucial that you understand how they operate.
And then what that means, essentially, you cannot divorced the gender aspect of the female aspect from this.
If you if you look at it in whole and complete terms. I'm sure there's not only to do with South Asia.
I mean, if we look at what's happening today in the U.S., there's one family living, for example.
So I think there is. Yeah. It's really not only about women and family, it's about politics and family.
As you say. But yeah. We've got time for one more question, if I may.
And that's another one that's come, which is prayer. This is the fruition of a long, ongoing project for you.
Now that it's found its final form.
Where's your research taking your next and does it build on royals' and rebels or if it goes somewhere entirely new?
Well, I had a little break recently, but I am starting to think about the next project and it's taking shape slowly.
It doesn't help the libraries and archives being closed right now, but I think it's going to be very much building one on the.
Second half my doctoral thesis,
which which looked at many of the things we were discussing today regarding the BBC and Queen Victoria and and really then taking this
question about the dynamics of royal power to Britain and looking at rebuilding in exile and what he represented as this iconic figure.
But also, you know, he's lived experiences.
And here's what we I guess what we can see through his story, standing on the shoulders and going into the, quote,
Queen Victoria, into British aristocratic society or into rebellion with him, kind of a window into the well and of how.
Monarchy and royal power and empire rule again evolving during the course of the second half of the 19th century.
And, you know, faith and I can discuss this from the 1857 as one last gasp by perhaps one you
beginning or indeed virtually all the way up to the beginnings of the 20th century.
Well, again, Wiltsie will take on another challenge with the switch to World War One.
And what that, you know, with the divisive republics and democratic nation states and, you know,
the ships, the British Empire that we went to leaps and gets involved in kind of anticolonial process.
So I'm kind of I'm thinking of a biography that would encapsulate so many strands that will
use this life as it as very much a window into all of that turbulence for the monarchy.
But also the lingering effects of, you know, they still haven't gone away.
Have they, the royal family or anybody else? So thinking about that through the lens of class and power and race and all those kind of aspects, too.
Hmm. Well, thank you for a full answer to that.
And hopefully in however many years it takes, we can invite you back again and re re rerun this discussion with with with the new book.
Thank you. All three of you for a really brilliant discussion. I think it's been enormously enjoyable and also enormously informative.
So much, much food for thought. Thank you, too. For those watching for those contributing questions and just joining in by listening,
please join us again at the same time in two weeks for our next book at lunchtime event.
On Wednesday, the 3rd of February, where we'll be discussing the political life of an epidemic.
Cholera crisis and citizenship in Zimbabwe by Professor Card to go to cheque the torture website to register for next week's event.
Once again, thank you to all three of you for today and goodbye.