Princely prisons, state exhibitions, and Muslim industrial authority in colonial India

Bibliographic Data

ID12561854
AuthorsAgostino Lanzillo (0000-0003-1688-4413, Brunel University of London, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume34
Issue4
Pages799-820
Publication date2024-05-17
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of the Royal Asiatic Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1356-1863 • E-ISSN: 1474-0591
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s1356186324000063
OpenAlexW4397021825
LanguageEN
References cited10

This article analyses the prison industries and state industrial exhibitions of three Indian princely states in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, tracing how princely elites sought to develop distinct labouring and industrial cultures. Drawing on examples from three Muslim-led princely states, namely Rampur, Bhopal, and Hyderabad, the article argues that state elites distinguished their forms of cultural and religious authority from that of the British Raj by coercing and displaying new industrial practices. They aimed to cultivate an industrial modernity that could compete with colonial projects while also promoting what they characterised as Indian Muslim characteristics and courtly traditions for artisan labourers and their work. The article asks how princely elites worked to conscript their subjects—including marginalised subjects such as convict labourers—into visions of regional industrial authority. Princely visions of Muslim and courtly industrial futures in Rampur, Bhopal, and Hyderabad were rooted in the attempts of state administrators to fashion distinctive regional identities and assert authority in a context of circumscribed, quasi-colonial rulership. Industrial cultures associated with princely prisons and exhibitions ultimately exceeded the bounds of these projects, placing pressure on other state subjects to adopt new material practices and engage with state-defined regional craft traditions

Ancient history · Art history · Colonialism · Exhibition · Political science · State (computer science · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Islamic Studies and History · Law

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