Bibliographic Data: Hevia, James L. The Imperial Security State: British Colonial Knowledge and Empire-Building in Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Main Argument: Hevia states at the beginning that "the Indian Army Intelligence Branch, and the forms of knowledge it produced, is the focus of this study. The records of the Branch, its library, archives and correspondence, make quite clear the scope and depth of the epistemological project at the core of British imperialism" (2). Hevia argues "that military intelligence was a product of the new mechanisms of state formation, the disciplinary and regulatory regimes, to use Michel Foucault's terms, that transformed European states in the second half of the nineteenth century into militarized polities" (5). Hevia argues that studying the imperial intelligence apparatus leads one to appreciate "the role of the military in initiation, influencing, and implementing policy" (16). Also, "military intelligence not only framed imperial strategies vis-a-vis colonized areas to the east, but produced the very object of intervention: Asia itself" (ibid).
( Imperial security )
Critical assessment: James Hevia's English Lessons is easily one of the best books I've read in graduate school, and I'm not surprised to be saying that this is another excellent study, although somewhat more restricted in scope. But the final chapter in particular brings it all home brilliantly--how empire perpetuates itself after its death, how colonial processes are turned on the metropole and vice versa, how no knowledge is ever neutral or apolitical and how history has real consequences. Brilliant.
Further reading: Hevia, English Lessons; Kipling, Kim; Mitchell, Rule of Experts; Charles Callwell, Small Wars
Meta notes: In the current phase of this story, we should all be very clear that we in the metropole are not the British Army intelligence officers, but rather the Chinese--and the subjects of these regimes in Asia and elsewhere are still subject to them, in an evolved form.
Main Argument: Hevia states at the beginning that "the Indian Army Intelligence Branch, and the forms of knowledge it produced, is the focus of this study. The records of the Branch, its library, archives and correspondence, make quite clear the scope and depth of the epistemological project at the core of British imperialism" (2). Hevia argues "that military intelligence was a product of the new mechanisms of state formation, the disciplinary and regulatory regimes, to use Michel Foucault's terms, that transformed European states in the second half of the nineteenth century into militarized polities" (5). Hevia argues that studying the imperial intelligence apparatus leads one to appreciate "the role of the military in initiation, influencing, and implementing policy" (16). Also, "military intelligence not only framed imperial strategies vis-a-vis colonized areas to the east, but produced the very object of intervention: Asia itself" (ibid).
( Imperial security )
Critical assessment: James Hevia's English Lessons is easily one of the best books I've read in graduate school, and I'm not surprised to be saying that this is another excellent study, although somewhat more restricted in scope. But the final chapter in particular brings it all home brilliantly--how empire perpetuates itself after its death, how colonial processes are turned on the metropole and vice versa, how no knowledge is ever neutral or apolitical and how history has real consequences. Brilliant.
Further reading: Hevia, English Lessons; Kipling, Kim; Mitchell, Rule of Experts; Charles Callwell, Small Wars
Meta notes: In the current phase of this story, we should all be very clear that we in the metropole are not the British Army intelligence officers, but rather the Chinese--and the subjects of these regimes in Asia and elsewhere are still subject to them, in an evolved form.