Eastern Figures: Orient and Empire in British Writing

Contents

Contents 1 Introduction 1 2 Hinterland 9 Hunter in the grass: A Kipling story 9 Something in a cave: A Passage to India 14 3 Conversions and Reversions 23 Kipling and the missionaries 23 Liberal and conservative ideas in British India 33 Kipling’s creed 46 4 Crowds 53 Outnumbering: Western individuals and Eastern crowds 53 Playing to the crowd: Lord Jim, performance and hypnotism 65 5 Nature and Some Naturalists 79 In the wilderness: Leonard Woolf and others 79 George Orwell and the natural history of Burma 102 The Borneo rhinoceros: Redmond O’Hanlon’s belated travels 114 6 Contacts and Transgressions 117 On the beach: Denationalization and Stevenson in the Pacific 117 In the bush: Clifford and going native 129 In touch: Gender and regeneration in Maud Diver’s romances 142 Contact and contagion: Nightrunners of Bengal 153 7 Travellers to War 159 China 1938: Auden and Isherwood 159 Indochina 1973–75: James Fenton 177 Pre05-06 08/4/23, 16:14 5 vi Contents 8 Figures of Rule 191 Anarchy in the East: Burgess and the Malayan trilogy 191 Law and order: The British and the rule of law 197 Other orders: Contesting local jurisdictions and practices 206 Hard cases: Conversations between ruler and ruled in Scott, 214 Coates, and Woolf 9 Not Knowing the Oriental 223 Useful ignorance: Orientalism and Cromer’s Modern Egypt 223 What Strickland knew: Kipling’s policeman and dangerous 230 knowledge Not knowing the oriental 237 Bibliography 241 Index 253 Pre05-06 08/4/23, 16:14 6 ...