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Continuity and Discontinuity in Eighteenth-Century Indian Historiography

Toward the beginning of Ideology and Empire in Eighteenth-Century India, Robert Travers offers an excellent summary of the historiography of eighteenthcentury India. In the view of the old imperial historians, "India had descended into a dark age after the Mughals imposed only a fragile and temporary order on its diverse peoples" (10), and British colonizers such as Clive, Hastings, and Cornwallis brought back law and order. More recently, especially under the influence of Edward Said's Orientalism, these same colonizers were cast in a more sinister light as plunderers and exploiters of India. At this time, historians challenged the idea of post-Mughal decline in the eighteenth century. Today, Travers explains, there are two main approaches to the historiography of eighteenth-century India: one that emphasizes "'threads of continuity,' especially in the endurance of 'intermediary groups' of officials, merchants and land-holders" (12, with quotations from C. A. Bayly's Indian Society), between Mughal rule and the administration of the East