Dr Maria Misra

Dr Maria Misra
Associate Professor in Modern History and Fellow of Keble College
Keble College
01865 (2)74173
anna-maria.misra@keble.ox.ac.uk

My current research interests lie in the field of gender in a global context, and I am writing a single volume global history of gender. I have also written on many aspects of empire, nationalism and post-colonial identity in India and Britain, including the politic of race and business in the late colonial era, the martial culture of Gandhian nationalism and the place of the Raj in Indian memory 

 

See page on Keble College website

Research
  • Gender
  • Post-colonialism
  • South Asia

I began my research career with a cultural study of the role of race and identity in the relationship between British and Indian businessmen in late colonial India. I have since written a general history of India from the late nineteenth century to the present, and have published articles on several aspects of the cultural and intellectual development of Indian nationalism throughout the twentieth century. I am currently writing a global history of gender, taking a long historical perspective: I am interested synthesising insights from cultural studies, literary approaches and the social sciences to offer an integrated analysis of how gender has evolved over time and space in the long duree, and of the interconnections between colonial, colonised and post-colonial perspectives in shaping current debates and controversies over the global gender order. 

Publications

  • Gender: A Global History

    2020
    |
    Book

  • Indian Aristocrats, British Imperialists and ‘Conservative Modernization’ after the Great Rebellion

    2018
    |
    Chapter
    |
    Comparing Modern Empires: Imperial Rule and Decolonization in the Changing World Order

  • The Indian Machiavelli: The Reception of the Arthasastra in India, 1905-2012

    2015
    |
    Journal article
    |
    Past and Present: A Journal of Historical Studies

  • From Nehruvian Neglect to Bollywood Heroes: Memories of the Raj in Post-War India

    2015
    |
    Chapter
    |
    Imperial Sites of Memory

  • Sergeant-Major Gandhi: Indian Nationalism and Non-Violent “Martiality”

    2014
    |
    Journal article
    |
    Journal of Asian Studies
    This article takes issue with recent accounts of the evolution of Gandhian ideas that have stressed his importance as a global theorist of principled nonviolence. It suggests that throughout his life Gandhi's writings display a preoccupation with ideas of martial courage and fearlessness; his stance might best be defined as one of nonviolent “martiality” rather than nonviolence per se. His overriding goal was not to proselytize for global “ahimsa” (nonviolence) but to shape the Indian people into a nonviolent army that could wrest freedom from the colonizers. It explains this concern for both nonviolence and martial attitudes by arguing that Gandhi's thought has to be reassessed and placed within several important contexts: the widespread global popularity of militarism before 1914; an influential intellectual critique of Western “materialist” values; Asian nationalist efforts to develop “indigenous” forms of mobilizational politics in their struggles against imperialism; and Indian thinking about caste (varna), which was central to Gandhi's thought and has generally been neglected in the literature. These contexts help us to understand Gandhi's complex and sometimes contradictory thinking on the issue of violence.

  • Colonial officers and gentlemen: the British Empire and the globalization of ‘tradition’

    2008
    |
    Journal article
    |
    Journal of Global History

  • Vishnu's Crowded Temple: India Since the Great Rebellion

    2007
    |
    Book
    There can be few more discussed countries in the world today than India. In recent years it has shed its popular image as a poor, tradition-bound backwater to stand poised on the threshold of super-power status, rivalled only by China as the greatest winner in the post-Cold War world order. In Vishnu’s Crowded Temple Maria Misra has written the essential history to allow us to understand the fascinating historical trajectory of this emerging third-world super-state. The book dramatizes the dynamic counterpoint between the resilient Indian people and a succession of ambitious, if flawed visions of the nation. This is an extraordinary story and Misra tells it charismatically with wit and style. Vishnu’s Crowded Temple is the history of a wholly contemporary state, an India shaped both by western and eastern ideas, but the slave of neither – the harbinger of a resolutely post-modern democracy, at once wholly new and yet steeped in its past.
    History

  • Lessons of Empire: Britain and India

    2003
    |
    Journal article
    |
    SAIS Review
    Recent interest in nineteenth-century European colonialism as a model for promoting state-building and development in parts of the contemporary Third World has rehabilitated the idea of imperialism. Proponents of this imperialism as state-building idea have pointed to the British Raj in India as proof of empire's positive legacy. But the latest historical research does not support this view of the Raj as an agent of centralization, economic development, and secularism. Current research suggests that, if anything, the British promoted the "traditionalization" of India, halting many of the indigenous impulses toward modernization present in the late eighteenth century. Moreover, this legacy continues to play itself out in the political and economic problems of contemporary South Asia. In particular, the legacy of the colonial tendency to rigidify and, in some cases to create, a set of fragmented and competitive group identities has seriously impeded the achievement of an integrated state, full liberal democracy, and a successful economy. These problems were neither the result of specific conditions in India, nor of mere policy errors by the British, but are the likely consequence of any imperial relationship, making imperialism an inappropriate model for even the best-intentioned contemporary state-builder.

  • 'Business culture' and entrepreneurship in British India, 1860-1950

    2000
    |
    Journal article
    |
    Modern Asian Studies
    In the late nineteenth century British expatriate enterprise enjoyed extraordinary success. A few large firms effectively dominated the external trading sector and the modern industrial economy of Eastern India. Based in Calcutta, these firms have been credited with the introduction into India not only of modern industry, but also of modern corporate organization. However, having reached a peak of dominance in the early 1900s, British enterprise seemed to lose its dynamism and became increasingly associated with the old and declining sectors of the Indian industrial and trading economy.

  • Business, Race, and Politics in British India, c.1850-1960

    1999
    |
    Book
    This book is a study of the political and economic activities of an important group of British businessmen in India between 1850 and 1960. Though denounced by Indian nationalists as the economic arm of the British Raj, the firms of these ‘Managing Agents’ seemed unassailable before the First World War. However, during the inter-war period they rapidly lost their commanding position to both Indian and other foreign competitors. The author argues that the failure of these firms was, in part, the consequence of their particular (and ultimately self-defeating) attitudes towards business, politics, and race. She casts new light on British colonial society in India, and makes an important contribution to current debates on the nature of the British Empire and the causes of Britain’s relative economic decline.
    History
    • More
Teaching

Current DPhil Students

  • Brant Moscovitch
  • Zahra Shah
  • Taha Mahmood

I would like to hear from potential DPhil students regarding in all aspects of South Asian history (though especially intellectual and cultural history) of the C19 and C20; also topics in global history, especially gender and the history of ideas          

I currently teach:

Prelims: FHS:
Approaches to History

General History XVIII: Global & Imperial, 1750-1914
  History of the British Isles VII, 1924-present
  Further Subject, ‘Postcolonial Historiography: Writing the Indian Nation’
  Special Subject: ‘From Gandhi to the Green Revolution: India, Independence and Modernity’
  Disciplines of History 

 

In the Media

I wrote and presented a three part TV series of Channel Four in 2001: ‘An Indian Affair’

I was the principal academic contributor to the film: ‘Congo: White King, Red Rubber, Black Death’ (Dir. Peter Bate, 2003); and also to the recent documentary film ‘India’s Daughter’ (Dir. Leslie Udwin, 2015)

Link to review of ‘White King’: http://variety.com/2005/film/reviews/white-king-red-rubber-black-death-1200527154/ 

I contributed to numerous TV programmes including BBC’s ‘Question Time’ [1.2.01; 8.11.01; 26.6.03], Channel 4 News, ‘The British Empire in Colour’; I have also been a participant in Radio 4’s series ‘In Our Time’ several times, and was a consultant for Radio 4’s ‘New Elizabethans’ in 2012

http://www.channel4.com/news/was-the-mau-mau-settlement-the-right-thing-for-the-uk-video

I was a judge for the Samuel Johnson non-fiction prize in 2005, and have been on the judging panel for the Terence Reese prize for Imperial and Commonwealth history for several years.

I am a regular reviewer for the Financial Times and Prospect Magazine, and have written for The Times, The Guardian and The Independent