ENGLISH

The Imperial Security State: British Colonial Knowledge and Empire-Building in Asia

By James Hevia

Book information

Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Year
2012
ISBN
0521896088, 9780521896085
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
7 MB (7233398 bytes)
Series
Critical Perspectives on Empire
Pages
312\313
Topic
History
Time added
2012-12-23 12:54:53
Исторические дисциплины;История стран Европы и Аме

Description

The Imperial Security State explores an important but under-explored dimension of British imperialism - its information system and the close links between military knowledge and the maintenance of empire. James Hevia's innovative study focuses on route books and military reports produced by the British Indian Army military intelligence between 1880 and 1940. He shows that together these formed a renewable and authoritative archive that was used to train intelligence officers, to inform civilian policy makers and to provide vital information to commanders as they approached the battlefield. The strategic, geographical, political and ethnographical knowledge that was gathered not only framed imperial strategies towards colonised areas to the east but also produced the very object of intervention: Asia itself. Finally, the book addresses the long-term impact of the security regime, revealing how elements of British colonial knowledge have continued to influence contemporary tactics of counterinsurgency in twenty-first-century Iraq and Afghanistan.

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