Research Proposal Introduction

How is it that through the annals of modern western history classical objects find themselves on the front of modern dialogues deciding issues of policy, politics, and moral governance? It seems there is a common theme throughout the many great empires of the West to draw upon Greco-Roman structures for guiding, predicting, and understanding the outcome of contemporary issues, despite how obscure or inaccurate the correlations may be. This was a common and encouraged attitude of administrators and officials within the Victorian era of the British Empire in regards to its position as a global superpower and the many responsibilities it held as a vast and reigning entity occupying many foreign territories of which it only possessed a vague understanding for. To put into sense the complexity of its position, the British Empire, through its many administrative officials and operations in these colonized territories, depended upon and referred to the guidance of classical objects for justifying, moralizing, and consolidating its power upon oppressed peoples who it deemed “inferior” and so appropriate as a subjects to the Imperialism of British rule. The ways in which the British utilized classical objects consist of multiple forms in the revitalization of Greek ideas regarding philosophical outlooks, such as Universalism (the idea of a single, unified populace under the provision of Greek supremacy by cosmological order, as believed to be executed in the campaigns and conquests of Alexander the Great) and the referencing of authoritative sources derived from antiquity, such as the Aeneid by Virgil and the delivered orations of Cicero and Tacitus alike. These were not the only ways in which the British Empire began to essentialize its authority and dominion over its territories in much of the Middle East and Africa, but a few examples. For much of its time at the apogee of its power, the British Empire sought crucially to continue its domination over not only the territories in which it colonized through imperialistic and coercive methods but also control the narrative and legacy of Greco-Roman history–more specifically the history of the Roman Empire. In doing this, the British Empire was able to convince its populace that its mission of imperialistic exploit was a process of civilizing and modernizing a forsaken and stagnant culture, captive to its own barbaric ways, but lost in the desolate ruins of its previous western imperial captors. In cultivating this outlook, the British Empire was able to assert its supremacy without question, displacing the anxieties of the empire’s decline upon the old guards of eurocentric perspective with the belief that internal administrative corruption and the downfall of the British empire would be a result of intermingling with these colonized territories and the influence of the east rather than the doing of British policy and perspective itself. Ultimately, the British sought to moralize their gross injustice against the many inhabitants of the regions they colonized, arguing that British despotism is more necessary, profound, and sacred than native rulership in the goal of achieving “civilization” within these colonized regions.

My research will be investigating the dialogues and literature of policy-makers, historians, and administrators of the Indian Civil Service, East India Company, and Parliament to provide examples for the context of which the British drew for themselves by citing classical objects as relevant answers to contemporary questions. I will illustrate the connections between the British Empire and Roman Empire, as the former believed themselves to be conjoined, along with the irony of this belief. I will also be investigating the classical objects of British dialogue and how they were re-interpreted to suit the status of the British Empire during particular moments of aggressive expansion, state calculation, and defensive posture. If able, I will also discuss the functioning government at the time of British imperialism within India during the Victorian era, and the interaction of British and native influences abound. By the end of this research, I hope to provide a better understanding to how classical objects are used in historic and modern dialogues to create imperialist frameworks that rest upon hegemonic interactions between dominant and subordinate powers. Through the terms and models utilized in this research, I hope that a more effective measure may be possible when evaluating the rhetoric of contemporary eurocentric perspectives in politics that draw upon the authority of classical influence so that a more polycentric perspective can be considered in comparison. I hope to display an effective argument against imperialist and eurocentric dogma and the manners of which these dogmatic properties emanate.