For enthusiasts of all matters Indian in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries this book is an absolute delight. It delves into great detail that
will be new to many and its 260 pages of densely-packed information is
often quite fascinating. There are ten contributors, including BACSA
members Anne Buddie, Henry Noltie, and Avril Powell. It is skilfully
edited by the knowledgeable Roger Jeffery, professor of Sociology of
South Asia at the Edinburgh India Institute. The big names of British
Indian history like Robert Clive get just two passing mentions and the
British military heroes receive only two pages, but the East India Company
features often as a contributor to so much of the material. The imbalance
of the normal narrative of the India-returned’ featuring the fabulously
wealthy in fact only really happened in the decades between 1780 to 1830,
and the periods both before and afterwards get proper and detailed
treatment here.
There are two standout contributions: Anne Buddie describes the
remarkable holdings of the National Galleries of Scotland in her chapter
‘From Tipu to the Trenches and Simla to Surrealism’ and Henry Noltie
provides a masterly account of the roller-coaster 350 years story of the
Royal Edinburgh Botanic Garden’s collections of living plants, herbarium
specimens and printed botanical items. ‘The Skull Room: Craniological
past of Edinburgh and India’ by Jeffery and Ian Harper attempts to explain to a modern readership the bizarre science of skull collection. In 1899
Professor Sir William Turner (1832-1916) published the first in a
series of four articles in the Transactions of the Royal Society of
Edinburgh, charting the craniological characteristics of the ‘People of
the Empire of India’. Turner was a distinguished anatomist and
scientist, and for 36 years the professor of anatomy at the University of
Edinburgh. He wrote in his first article ‘For a number of years I have
been collecting specimens and conducting an investigation into the
craniological characters of the native inhabitants of our great Indian
Empire, and several hundred skulls have now been under examination,
and almost all have been measured.’ Modern anthropology does well to
escape some of its strange past!
Edinburgh’s schools have many connections with India and the great
expansion of secondary education in the nineteenth century explains the
contribution made by Scots to modernising India. The University of
Edinburgh in particular features often in this book and its long rivalry with
the University of Aberdeen is almost comical. There are stories of traders,
merchants, planters, foresters, doctors, policemen, engineers, civil servants.
Judges, lawyers, local officers, and of course missionaries - that bane of the
ICS (Indian Civil Service) known as ‘the heaven-born’. The wealth
brought from India to Edinburgh explains the imperial architectural style of
Scotland’s capital. The Afterword to the book is a fitting conclusion - a
thoughtful and elegant contribution by Bashabi Fraser, poet, writer and
academic who has lived in Edinburgh for over 20 years. Recommended.
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