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Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India
Bernard Cohn's interest in the construction of Empire as an intellectual and cultural phenomenon has set the agenda for the academic study of modern Indian culture for over two decades. His earlier publications have shown how dramatic British innovations in India, including revenue and legal systems, led to fundamental structural changes in Indian social relations. This collection of his writings in the last fifteen years discusses areas in which the colonial impact has generally been overlooked. The essays form a multifaceted exploration of the ways in which the British discovery, collection, and codification of information about Indian society contributed to colonial cultural hegemony and political control.
Cohn argues that the British Orientalists' study of Indian languages was important to the colonial project of control and command. He also asserts that an arena of colonial power that seemed most benign and most susceptible to indigenous influences--mostly law--in fact became responsible for the institutional reactivation of peculiarly British notions about how to regulate a colonial society made up of "others." He shows how the very Orientalist imagination that led to brilliant antiquarian collections, archaeological finds, and photographic forays were in fact forms of constructing an India that could be better packaged, inferiorized, and ruled. A final essay on cloth suggests how clothes have been part of the history of both colonialism and anticolonialism.
Cohn argues that the British Orientalists' study of Indian languages was important to the colonial project of control and command. He also asserts that an arena of colonial power that seemed most benign and most susceptible to indigenous influences--mostly law--in fact became responsible for the institutional reactivation of peculiarly British notions about how to regulate a colonial society made up of "others." He shows how the very Orientalist imagination that led to brilliant antiquarian collections, archaeological finds, and photographic forays were in fact forms of constructing an India that could be better packaged, inferiorized, and ruled. A final essay on cloth suggests how clothes have been part of the history of both colonialism and anticolonialism.
216 pages, Hardcover
First published August 19, 1996
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
July 26, 2018
This is a fascinating collection of essays. It's a classic analysis of the ways in which colonial forms of knowledge were manifested. As another reviewer says, the essay on clothes is a revelation, especially what Cohn writes about clothes that were intended to ward off disease. The Indian climate, landscape, and air was dangerous to the British in a way analogous to the cultural danger. These are masterful.
October 10, 2011
simple reading for beginners like me.
January 31, 2023
(Academic read)
November 17, 2025
In Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge, Bernard Cohn explores the construction of the British Empire abroad in India through the lens of intellectual and cultural phenomena that has since defined modern Indian culture. Focusing primarily on British Orientalists’ study of local languages, Cohn explores how dramatic developments in finance, law, and even a transformation of traditional Indian social relations was made possible through the systematic exploration and discovery of the region. The manner in which the British collected data and information led to the codification of Indian society from a British perspective, which allowed them to wield absolute political control and enforce cultural hegemony within the Indian colony. Cohn argues that the studies of British Orientalists and the Indian languages was crucial to the command and control over India, and that the use of language, especially in terms of law, was the most pervasive and influential due to its institutionalization of a hierarchy that established Indians as the “others” in their own native land, and that the British were there to regulate this colonial society. According to Nicholas B. Dirks, an editor of this collection of essays and author of the foreword, “If Cohn’s early work was part of an effort to investigate the historical dimensions of Indian social relations, it led him also to reconceptualize the disciplines of anthropology and history as well as to rethink the relations between ‘culture,’ ‘society,’ and the ‘state’,” which is neatly examined in the series of essays compiled in this book (Cohn, xii).
In order to explain how British Orientalism deeply impacted colonial Indian society, Cohn’s essays have been neatly organized such that they address several important elements in Orientalists studies. In the introduction, Cohn explores the various modalities that were commonly utilized by the British in learning about the Indian subcontinent. Each modality had its own primary focus and academic intrigues, but they all shared the same general objective in that they all sought to answer the question of how to command and control the Indian population. Whether speaking of the historiographical, observational, survey, enumerative, museological, or the surveillance modality, each recorded specific elements of Indian culture, either in the past or present, such that the data collected by the British was used to fabricate an Indian social order and framework that enabled the British to efficiently and effectively rule over India. These modalities are important to understand and establish before reading into his following essays because they can easily be identified, and categorized, throughout the subsequent essays. Using these modalities as the foundation, Cohn delves into the significance of language in his essay “The Command of Language and the Language of Command,” which is research using official manuscript records from the National Archives of India as well as the India Office Library and Records. Language was not only vital for communications, but controlling the vast territory and its resources such that investments and industries that interested the East India Trading Company remained profitable. Trade manifests and records of accounts demonstrate how certain words were Anglicized so that traders could identify their products, their origins, their employees, and any specialized knowledge that accompanied those certain products. In the region, there were a variety of languages as well that took on special roles based on British knowledge and convenience such that Persian, for example, became the language of Indian politics, Sanskrit became the language of Indian law, history, and culture. Establishing certain languages for certain objectives creates a hierarchy of languages that not only defined the social order, but also the importance and relevance of a language to the new Indian myth, a British colonial invention of facts. This becomes even more clear in the following essays by Cohn, “Law and the Colonial State” and “The Transformation of Objects into Artifacts, Antiquities, and Art in Nineteenth-Century India,” where Cohn demonstrates how law became the means by which the British exerted their control and authority over the Indians, and enforced a social order of their own creation using Indian culture and history, spun very carefully into its own unique narrative. In doing so, India was not only made inferior and easier to rule, but relics and other forms of cultural expression were seized by the British to fill museums and further construct a British idea of India that was not necessarily representative of the region’s true history.
The most significant chapter in this series of essays by Cohn is undoubtedly “The Command of Language and the Language of Command” because, as Cohn argues, language is the foundation of Orientalist studies and exploration into British interpretations of Indian history such that it enabled contemporary colonizers to engage in specific studies using various modalities that ultimately contributed to the modern understanding of India. Cohn bluntly states:
“the tribute represented in print and manuscript is that of complicated and complex forms of knowledge created by the Indians, but codified and transmitted by the Europeans. The conquest of India was a conquest of knowledge. In these official sources we can trace the changes in forms of knowledge which the conquerors defined as useful for their own ends.” – (Cohn, 16)
This argument, although the foundation of this specific essay, is present in all the subsequent essays as well and identifies the most significant form of colonization, or regional identity alterations, was through a form of intellectual colonization. India had existed for millennia before European colonizers had arrived from Britain, and had developed their own institutions, religions, culture, governments, and customs. Through the use of language, the British were able to sift through centuries of knowledge, wisdom, and social commentary to establish an understanding of those who they had come in contact with, and effectively rewrote the historiographical narrative so they could inject their own values, customs, and culture into the Indian subcontinent in the pursuit of economic interests, prestige, and colonial control. The “classical” languages of India, as identified by British officials who were charged with governing the land, quickly started to learn Sanskrit, Persian, and Arabic, which became the language of high culture and the educated elite in India, despite being a relative minority in terms of most common languages spoken throughout India. These languages, nonetheless, created a “discursive formation, defined an epistemological space, created a discourse (Orientalism), and had the effect of converting Indians forms of knowledge into European objects” (Cohn, 21). Indian scholars worked with the British, supplying interpreters and experts in particular texts and studies, such that the British could reconstruct India in its own image, or desired image, so that it could be governed, ruled, and subjugated.
The later essay by Cohn, “The Transformation of Objects into Artifacts, Antiquities, and Art in Nineteenth-Century India,” was also fascinating because of the control over Indian culture that the British commanded at this time in history. According to Cohn:
“It was the British who, in the nineteenth century, defined in an authoritative and effective fashion how the value and meaning of the objects produced or found in India were determined. It was the patrons who created a system of classification which determined what was valuable, that which would be preserved as monuments of the past, that which was collected and placed in museums, that which could be bought and sold, that which would be taken from India as mementoes and souvenirs of their own relationship to India and Indians.” – (Cohn, 77)
Not only was Indian culture and history commercialized, or commodified, the value of the artifacts, their meaning, and their “protection” was determined by the Europeans who effectively stole these items from their native land. Even when Europeans arrived in India, they perceived the land as “exotic” and its peoples related to, if not actually, Satan, so they could reframe their relationship in a European manner of understanding. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the literature on India covered a wide variety of subjects and content, but there always remained one structural relationship that differentiated India and the West – “Europe was progressive and changing, India static” (Cohn, 79). The British entered into the Indic world during a period of decay, degeneration, and chaos, a period of time that was not unique to the region by any means, but this first impression led to a British understanding of backwardness, instability, and despotism, which became the basis of their comparison to the India of the past once they began to thoroughly study the region. Through surveys and travel, the British gathered information on India recorded what they saw in terms they could understand for themselves and for readership back in Europe. Ancient ruins and architecture were said to have had “Greek or rather Bactrian art,” and that the Romans had a particularly strong understanding of ancient India and substantially influenced the Indian people (Cohn, 95). Even more importantly, some contemporary colonizers believed that the Indians had become spoiled by European contact because of the wealth of knowledge they had been exposed to and that the “agency of this change was the idea that Indians could become the equals of the British through education in the European fashion,” a system which the British deemed impossible for the Indians to assimilate (Cohn, 95-96). The colonization of India operated in different modalities, such as the economic, extractive, social, geographical, and intellectual realms, because it denied India the ability to record their own history void of European influence, meddling, and comparison, the basis for Orientalist studies, which were invented, used, and abused by colonial authorities in the pursuit of imperial ambitions.
In order to explain how British Orientalism deeply impacted colonial Indian society, Cohn’s essays have been neatly organized such that they address several important elements in Orientalists studies. In the introduction, Cohn explores the various modalities that were commonly utilized by the British in learning about the Indian subcontinent. Each modality had its own primary focus and academic intrigues, but they all shared the same general objective in that they all sought to answer the question of how to command and control the Indian population. Whether speaking of the historiographical, observational, survey, enumerative, museological, or the surveillance modality, each recorded specific elements of Indian culture, either in the past or present, such that the data collected by the British was used to fabricate an Indian social order and framework that enabled the British to efficiently and effectively rule over India. These modalities are important to understand and establish before reading into his following essays because they can easily be identified, and categorized, throughout the subsequent essays. Using these modalities as the foundation, Cohn delves into the significance of language in his essay “The Command of Language and the Language of Command,” which is research using official manuscript records from the National Archives of India as well as the India Office Library and Records. Language was not only vital for communications, but controlling the vast territory and its resources such that investments and industries that interested the East India Trading Company remained profitable. Trade manifests and records of accounts demonstrate how certain words were Anglicized so that traders could identify their products, their origins, their employees, and any specialized knowledge that accompanied those certain products. In the region, there were a variety of languages as well that took on special roles based on British knowledge and convenience such that Persian, for example, became the language of Indian politics, Sanskrit became the language of Indian law, history, and culture. Establishing certain languages for certain objectives creates a hierarchy of languages that not only defined the social order, but also the importance and relevance of a language to the new Indian myth, a British colonial invention of facts. This becomes even more clear in the following essays by Cohn, “Law and the Colonial State” and “The Transformation of Objects into Artifacts, Antiquities, and Art in Nineteenth-Century India,” where Cohn demonstrates how law became the means by which the British exerted their control and authority over the Indians, and enforced a social order of their own creation using Indian culture and history, spun very carefully into its own unique narrative. In doing so, India was not only made inferior and easier to rule, but relics and other forms of cultural expression were seized by the British to fill museums and further construct a British idea of India that was not necessarily representative of the region’s true history.
The most significant chapter in this series of essays by Cohn is undoubtedly “The Command of Language and the Language of Command” because, as Cohn argues, language is the foundation of Orientalist studies and exploration into British interpretations of Indian history such that it enabled contemporary colonizers to engage in specific studies using various modalities that ultimately contributed to the modern understanding of India. Cohn bluntly states:
“the tribute represented in print and manuscript is that of complicated and complex forms of knowledge created by the Indians, but codified and transmitted by the Europeans. The conquest of India was a conquest of knowledge. In these official sources we can trace the changes in forms of knowledge which the conquerors defined as useful for their own ends.” – (Cohn, 16)
This argument, although the foundation of this specific essay, is present in all the subsequent essays as well and identifies the most significant form of colonization, or regional identity alterations, was through a form of intellectual colonization. India had existed for millennia before European colonizers had arrived from Britain, and had developed their own institutions, religions, culture, governments, and customs. Through the use of language, the British were able to sift through centuries of knowledge, wisdom, and social commentary to establish an understanding of those who they had come in contact with, and effectively rewrote the historiographical narrative so they could inject their own values, customs, and culture into the Indian subcontinent in the pursuit of economic interests, prestige, and colonial control. The “classical” languages of India, as identified by British officials who were charged with governing the land, quickly started to learn Sanskrit, Persian, and Arabic, which became the language of high culture and the educated elite in India, despite being a relative minority in terms of most common languages spoken throughout India. These languages, nonetheless, created a “discursive formation, defined an epistemological space, created a discourse (Orientalism), and had the effect of converting Indians forms of knowledge into European objects” (Cohn, 21). Indian scholars worked with the British, supplying interpreters and experts in particular texts and studies, such that the British could reconstruct India in its own image, or desired image, so that it could be governed, ruled, and subjugated.
The later essay by Cohn, “The Transformation of Objects into Artifacts, Antiquities, and Art in Nineteenth-Century India,” was also fascinating because of the control over Indian culture that the British commanded at this time in history. According to Cohn:
“It was the British who, in the nineteenth century, defined in an authoritative and effective fashion how the value and meaning of the objects produced or found in India were determined. It was the patrons who created a system of classification which determined what was valuable, that which would be preserved as monuments of the past, that which was collected and placed in museums, that which could be bought and sold, that which would be taken from India as mementoes and souvenirs of their own relationship to India and Indians.” – (Cohn, 77)
Not only was Indian culture and history commercialized, or commodified, the value of the artifacts, their meaning, and their “protection” was determined by the Europeans who effectively stole these items from their native land. Even when Europeans arrived in India, they perceived the land as “exotic” and its peoples related to, if not actually, Satan, so they could reframe their relationship in a European manner of understanding. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the literature on India covered a wide variety of subjects and content, but there always remained one structural relationship that differentiated India and the West – “Europe was progressive and changing, India static” (Cohn, 79). The British entered into the Indic world during a period of decay, degeneration, and chaos, a period of time that was not unique to the region by any means, but this first impression led to a British understanding of backwardness, instability, and despotism, which became the basis of their comparison to the India of the past once they began to thoroughly study the region. Through surveys and travel, the British gathered information on India recorded what they saw in terms they could understand for themselves and for readership back in Europe. Ancient ruins and architecture were said to have had “Greek or rather Bactrian art,” and that the Romans had a particularly strong understanding of ancient India and substantially influenced the Indian people (Cohn, 95). Even more importantly, some contemporary colonizers believed that the Indians had become spoiled by European contact because of the wealth of knowledge they had been exposed to and that the “agency of this change was the idea that Indians could become the equals of the British through education in the European fashion,” a system which the British deemed impossible for the Indians to assimilate (Cohn, 95-96). The colonization of India operated in different modalities, such as the economic, extractive, social, geographical, and intellectual realms, because it denied India the ability to record their own history void of European influence, meddling, and comparison, the basis for Orientalist studies, which were invented, used, and abused by colonial authorities in the pursuit of imperial ambitions.
December 28, 2013
A dense but definitely worthwhile read, chock-full of trenchant insights. Cohn deftly melds history and anthropology in a series of essays to show how the British, while ostensibly attempting to understand and describe the lands they had just conquered, really constructed an India to fit their Orientalist discourse. The legacy of their actions continues to be felt in post-colonial South Asia. With his dexterous use of the theories of Edward Said and Michel Foucault as well as his own penetrating analysis, Cohn helped pioneer the field of colonial knowledge.
September 18, 2008
While his theme of empire as a cultural phenomenon is fascinating, Bernard Cohn's book is painstakingly difficult to read. Cohn argues that the British took control of India by classifying space, codifying information, making separations between public and private spheres and standardizing languages. All of his main points are well supported, however he tends to rely too heavily on huge, clunky quotations.
August 8, 2022
Over the years, I've read bits and pieces of this wonderful collection of essays. They never disappoint, even if I haven't quite found the time to read them start to finish.
February 24, 2025
Tech and Empire #4: my favorite so far. I really enjoyed Ch 2 on language, translation, and command, but was a tad disappointed by the museology section. I def agree with the revisionist critiques that the role of indigenous knowledge systems is somewhat more complicated than in Cohn's approach here, but appreciated the sections on Col Mackenzie's assistants
February 25, 2025
This book introduces great information about the codifying of knowledge and use of language as a means of control but at the cost of a very difficult, hard to parse read. Best read in tandem with Said's Orientalism, but I would recommend this book to be read slowly so it can be properly absorbed, as the information within it is more than plentiful, but at times incredibly dry.
August 7, 2017
Truly excellent chapter on cloth and clothes.
August 15, 2020
Worthy introduction to colonialism and its capacity and need to know. But where are the informers?
March 28, 2023
Classic for a reason.
January 24, 2024
One of the most genuine work on colonialism. It digs deep into the colonial archive to explore the changing and constructing knowledge forms in India.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews