Europe S Indians

Europe’s Indians forces a rethinking of key assumptions regarding difference—particularly racial difference—and its centrality to contemporary social and political theory. Tracing shifts in European representations of two different colonial spaces, the New World and India, from the late fifteenth century through the late nineteenth, Vanita Seth demonstrates that the classification of humans into racial categories or binaries of self–other is a product of modernity. Part historical, part philosophical, and part a history of science, her account exposes the epistemic conditions that enabled the thinking of difference at distinct historical junctures. Seth’s examination of Renaissance, Classical Age, and nineteenth-century representations of difference reveals radically diverging forms of knowing, reasoning, organizing thought, and authorizing truth. It encompasses stories of monsters, new worlds, and ancient lands; the theories of individual agency expounded by Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau; and the physiological sciences of the nineteenth century. European knowledge, Seth argues, does not reflect a singular history of Reason, but rather multiple traditions of reasoning, of historically bounded and contingent forms of knowledge. Europe’s Indians shows that a history of colonialism and racism must also be an investigation into the historical production of subjectivity, agency, epistemology, and the body.

The books in the Florida and the Caribbean Open Books Series demonstrate the University Press of Florida’s long history of publishing Latin American and Caribbean studies titles that connect in and through Florida, highlighting the connections between the Sunshine State and its neighboring islands. Books in this series show how early explorers found and settled Florida and the Caribbean. They tell the tales of early pioneers, both foreign and domestic. They examine topics critical to the area such as travel, migration, economic opportunity, and tourism. They look at the growth of Florida and the Caribbean and the attendant pressures on the environment, culture, urban development, and the movement of peoples, both forced and voluntary. The Florida and the Caribbean Open Books Series gathers the rich data available in these architectural, archaeological, cultural, and historical works, as well as the travelogues and naturalists’ sketches of the area in prior to the twentieth century, making it accessible for scholars and the general public alike. The Florida and the Caribbean Open Books Series is made possible through a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, under the Humanities Open Books program.

This book explores the images and perceptions of the European Union (EU) in the eyes of one of the EU’s three strategic partners in Asia in the context of its own distinct policies and identity. It fills a major gap in existing studies on how Asians perceive the EU. The book examines the perception, representation and visibility of the EU in the Indian media, among the ‘elites’ and in public opinion. It explores whether the Union’s self-proclaimed representation as a global actor, a normative power and a leader in environmental negotiations conforms to how it is actually perceived in Third World countries. The book asks questions such as, How have Indian images of Europe/European Union been changing from the 1940s to the present? What new narratives have emerged or are emerging about the EU in India? What does the rise of China mean for EU-India relations? Is the image of the EU changing in India or do old representations still persist even though the Union is acquiring a new personality in the world politics? How does India perceive Poland?

The rise of Asia has been touted to be an extremely significant global phenomenon. The EU has sought convergence on global issues, regional security matters as well as regulatory policy and other economic issues with the countries in the region especially India. A close and consistent approach towards monitoring of EU-India relations is therefore called for particularly in the light of the long and enduring economic partnership and a serious and meaningful bilateral political dialogue. This book analyses the current trends of the EU-India relationship through content analysis. It shall seek to examine the various aspects of the EU-India equation which are giving it an upward thrust and also the factors which are proving to be a drag on the relationship. The most pertinent issues in the partnership that need to be effectively dealt with have been identified through analysis of the portrayal of EU in Indian newspapers i.e. The Economic Times, The Times of India and Dainik Jagran. The insight, outlook and the perception of the Indian elite belonging to the spheres of politics, business, civil society and media have been consolidated and analysed for the purpose of making recommendations for public policy and concrete policy outcomes. An attempt has been made to fathom the nuances of the EU-India engagement and predict the future trajectory of the relations.

Anglo-Indians are a mixed-race, Christian and Anglophone minority community which arose in South Asia during the long period of European colonialism. An often neglected part of the British Raj, their presence complicates the traditional binary through which British imperialism is viewed – of ruler and ruled, coloniser and colonised. The book analyses the processes of ethnic group formation and political organisation, beginning with petitions to the East India Company state, through the Raj’s constitutional communalism, to constitution-making for the new India. It details how Anglo-Indians sought to preserve protected areas of state and railway employment amidst the growing demands of Indian nationalism. Anglo-Indians both suffered and benefitted from colonial British prejudices, being expected to loyally serve the colonial state as a result of their ties of kinship and culture to the colonial power, whilst being the victims of racial and social discrimination. This mixed experience was embodied in their intermediate position in the Raj’s evolving socio-racial employment hierarchy. The question of why and how a numerically small group, who were privileged relative to the great majority of people in South Asia, were granted nominated representatives and reserved employment in the new Indian Constitution, amidst a general curtailment of minority group rights, is tackled directly. Based on a wide range of source materials from Indian and British archives, including the Anglo-Indian Review and the debates of the Constituent Assembly of India, the book illuminatingly foregrounds the issues facing the smaller minorities during the drawn out process of decolonisation in South Asia. It will be of interest to students and researchers of South Asia, Imperial and Global History, Politics, and Mixed Race Studies.

Why were Chinese and Indian ways of thinking excluded from European philosophy in early modern times? This is a study of what happened to the European understanding of China and India between the late 16th century and the first half of the 18th century. Investigating the description of these two Asian civilizations during a century and a half of histories of philosophy, this book accounts for the change of historiographical paradigms, from Neoplatonic philosophia perennis and Spinozistic atheism to German Eclecticism. Uncovering the reasons for inserting or excluding Chinese and Indian ways of thinking within the field of Philosophy in early modern times, it reveals the origin of the Eurocentric understanding of Philosophy as a Greek-European prerogative. By highlighting how this narrowing and exclusion of non-Western ways of thought was a result of conviction of superiority and religious prejudice, this book provides a new way of thinking about the place of Asian traditions among World philosophies.

The book analyzes some of the key issues confronted by European policy makers. These issues include effective multilateralism; common foreign and security policy; multiculturalism; climate change; security challenges; rise of populism; Brexit; the Ukrainian crisis; relations with Russia; standoff in Catalonia; as well as migration and the refugee crisis. The book is a unique attempt to understand these issues from an outside perspective by established scholars of European Studies in India.