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Title: Recuperating Imperialism: the British civil service in George Otto Trevelyan’s The Competition Wallah

Where & When:  April 8, 2008
                           341 Eggers Hall
                           12.30 pm

Type of Activity: Speaker

Speaking: Tanushree Ghosh

Summary: George Otto Trevelyan left for India in 1862 to assist his father, Sir Charles Edward Trevelyan who was at the time the governor of Madras. From India, George Otto Trevelyan wrote a series of letters, under the pseudonym of H.M. Broughton, published in the Macmillan’s Magazine in 1863, under the title “Letters from a Competition Wallah. This paper examines how George Otto Trevelyan’s letters engaged with several critical questions pertaining to the British Empire and its administration in India.In the years following the 1857 mutiny, the character of the Empire had been the subject of an ongoing public discussion. Trevelyan’s letters participated in the debate by presenting the Indian Civil Service as a solution to the administrative crisis in post-mutiny India. What is even more interesting is that The Competition Wallah did not merely look back at the 1857 Mutiny but also responded to the Indigo revolts of 1859. It grappled constantly with the questions raised by the indigo disturbances regarding the “duty” of the empire. In my reading of Trevelyan’s letters I examine how they aim to recuperate the moral rhetoric of the Empire, which had been ruptured by the Mutiny, through the new British civil servant in India. 

 Sponsorship: The South Asia Center

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