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The revolution that had entirely recast the East India Company’s position in India served only to foreshadow a much longer revolution in attitudes towards the new Empire of the East. Several distinct strands were evident within the broad patchwork of Indian issues brought before the British public after 1765, and in different ways they each illustrated the fact that the possession of a new territorial Empire represented much more than the uncomplicated extension of metropolitan influence into another sphere of overseas activity. By 1770, there was still widespread ignorance about many aspects of Indian society and culture, but informed opinion now recognized that the Company’s overseas possessions were no longer distant Imperial outposts that contributed little to the well-being of the mother country. By the beginning of the 1780s, other aspects of the British relationship with India were also being reassessed. The metropolitan uncertainties and anxieties about the Indian Empire that had been so evident during the 1770s and 1780s were gradually replaced by a general sense of optimism about the future.

This chapter examines the relations between Christian missions and the British Indian Empire or the British Raj. When missionaries gained access to East India their efforts brought counter-currents of religious renewal, social reform, and the eventual rise of nationalism. The Christian missions often attracted their greatest followings where their connection to imperial authority was least in evidence. Thus, dissenting and non-British Christian missions succeeded while missions that were closely associated with the Anglican establishment faltered.

This chapter describes the ambitions of Scottish élites in India. The fears of English contemporaries about a growing Scottish presence in the East India Company (EIC) and the royal forces in India have been fully supported by modern research. Mortality rates among the Company's men were often horrendous. The assumption behind Linda Colley's thesis that India posts were not attractive to the sons of the metropolitan élites is unfounded for the post-1770 period. From modern researches, a powerful link can be established between British politics in the post-union period and the increasing preferment of Scots to posts at the periphery of empire. It was that East India postings became the foundation for bringing more political stability to Scotland and forging a stronger union.

This chapter sets out to examine the interplay between the various official and nonofficial actors who produced knowledge on the East in the late Victorian period. It pays specific attention to the dissensions between the various imperial centers which shaped the understanding of the East and therefore question imperial core-periphery interrelations in that regard.It draws attention to how decision makers deployed the cartographic and geographical expertise available to them.It examines speculative, argumentative, and prospective manipulations of maps of the East and shows how mapmaking practices played their part in Britain’s conceptualizations of the area. It also emphasizes how Britain's grasp on the East was an intricate process in which counteraction, negotiation, and potential manipulation by local inhabitants participated in the shaping of Western knowledge.

This introductory chapter assesses state capacity in India. There is little question, as many boosters of India's rise have argued, that the Indian state has exhibited considerable ability to tackle diverse challenges since its emergence from the collapse of the British Indian Empire. It has, for the most part, successfully fended off external challenges to its territorial integrity; it has worn down a series of secessionist insurgencies and has managed to cope with the many fissiparous tendencies of ethnic, class, and religious cleavages that some analysts thought would tear the country apart in the 1960s. However, state capacity remains paradoxical in India. India does not possess a weak state, but neither does it have a strong state. Its state capacity falls in between the conventional weak-strong continuum. As a consequence, the Indian state manifests both strengths and weakness, sometimes simultaneously, sometimes intermittently.

This chapter examines the influence of the British military garrison at Fort Napier by tracing the history of the organization from whence the garrison came: the British Army. During the Victorian era, the British Army was a pillar of the established order. Its main function was to defend the realm in the United Kingdom, the Indian Empire, and the colonies, as well as the monarchy. In the period before the establishment of an organized police force, the army maintained internal stability in Britain and, even more significantly, in Ireland. The chapter first provides an overview of the administration and reform of the British Army before considering the “inherent” qualities that were inculcated into future army officers, along with the “other ranks” of the army. It shows that the Victorian-era army reflected and magnified the class structure of the society from whence it came, citing its emphasis on the concept of masculinity.