Overview

This often gruelling text examines the lunatic asylums set up by the British in 19th-century India. The author asserts that there was a growth in asylums following the Indian Mutiny, fuelled by the fear of itinerant and dangerous individuals, which existed primarily in the British imagination. Once established though, these asylums, which were staffed and populated by Indians, quickly became arenas in which the designs of the British were contested and confronted. Mills argues that power is everywhere and is behind every action; colonial power is therefore just another way to assert control over the less powerful. This social history draws on archives and documents based in Scotland, England and India.

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9780333793343

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Reviews

'...the book benefits from its sophisticated examination of knowledge, power and agency.' - Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History

Author Information

JAMES MILLS is Lecturer in Modern History at University College Northampton. He is the author of a range of scholarly articles on the social history of medicine in colonial contexts. In 1999 he was awarded a British Academy post-doctoral grant and began work in India at the invitation of the University of Delhi on a new project on the Indian experience of shell-shock in WWI.

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