{"product_id":"document-raj-bhavani-raman-9780226703275","title":"Document Raj: Writing and Scribes in Early Colonial South India","description":"\u003cp\u003eHistorians of British colonial rule in India have noted both the place of military might and the imposition of new cultural categories in the making of Empire, but Bhavani Raman, in \u003ci\u003eDocument Raj\u003c\/i\u003e, uncovers a lesser-known story of power: the power of bureaucracy. Drawing on extensive archival research in the files of the East India Company's administrative offices in Madras, she tells the story of a bureaucracy gone awry in a fever of documentation practices that grew ever more abstract--and the power, both economic and cultural, this created. In order to assert its legitimacy and value within the British Empire, the East India Company was diligent about record keeping. Raman shows, however, that the sheer volume of their document production allowed colonial managers to subtly but substantively manipulate records for their own ends, increasingly drawing the real and the recorded further apart. While this administrative sleight of hand increased the company's reach and power within the Empire, it also bolstered profoundly new orientations to language, writing, memory, and pedagogy for the officers and Indian subordinates involved. Immersed in a subterranean world of delinquent scribes, translators, village accountants, and entrepreneurial fixers, \u003ci\u003eDocument Raj\u003c\/i\u003e maps the shifting boundaries of the legible and illegible, the legal and illegitimate, that would usher India into the modern world.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Bhavani Raman\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0226703274\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780226703275\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e University of Chicago Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 11\/07\/2012\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 296\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.10lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.10h x 6.10w x 1.10d","brand":"Bhavani Raman","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":48086423339263,"sku":"9780226703275","price":56.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_96c3922c-2635-4f16-85e4-facd54048d61.jpg?v=1769094592","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/document-raj-bhavani-raman-9780226703275","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}