Predatory Care: The Imperial Hunt in Mughal and British India

Taking the hunt as both metaphor of rule and political practice, this paper compares the predatory exercises of two imperial formations in India: the late British Raj and the sixteenth‐century Mughal empire. The British pursuit of man‐eaters confronted feline terror with sovereign might, securing th...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of historical sociology Vol. 14; no. 1; pp. 79 - 107
Main Author Pandian, Anand S.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Oxford, UK and Boston, USA Blackwell Publishers Ltd 01.03.2001
Subjects
Colonialism
Great Britain
Hunting
Imperialism
India
Political History
Sixteenth Century
Sovereignty
State Power
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:Taking the hunt as both metaphor of rule and political practice, this paper compares the predatory exercises of two imperial formations in India: the late British Raj and the sixteenth‐century Mughal empire. The British pursuit of man‐eaters confronted feline terror with sovereign might, securing the bodies and hearts of resistant subjects through spectacles of responsible force. The Mughal hunt, on the other hand, took unruly nobles and chieftains as the objects of its fearful care, winning their obedient submission through the exercise of a predatory sovereignty. Both instances of ‘predatory care’ shed light on the troubling intimacy of biopolitical cultivation and sovereign violence.
Bibliography:ark:/67375/WNG-G5SVXJCG-5
ArticleID:JOHS135
istex:C3BCE874CADFD529A955DD11B5996A794AD4EE38
ObjectType-Article-2
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-1
content type line 23
ObjectType-Article-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
ISSN:0952-1909
1467-6443
DOI:10.1111/1467-6443.00135