Based largely on new material, this book examines thuggee as a type of banditry, emerging in a specific socio-economic and geographic context. The British usually described the thugs as fanatic assassins and Kali-worshippers, yet Wagner argues that the history of thuggee need no longer be limited to the study of its representation.

Keywords

Reviews

Shortlisted for the 2008 History Today-Longman Book of the Year Award. See the History Today website for more information:

http://www.historytoday.com/Faq.aspx?m=408&amid=408

'This is a monograph by a young scholar which takes a notoriously difficult problem in 19th century colonial history the rumoured religious cult of Thuggee whereby travellers in a remote region of Uttar Pradesh, were randomly strangled and thrown down wells - and, with persistence and intelligence, dissects it, showing how much Thuggee really existed, and how much was a myth invented by the Englishmen who set out to extirpate it. Wagner convincingly answers this old problem, and succeeds against the odds in making his text readable and not getting bogged down in theory.'

- Committee of the 2008 History Today-Longman Book of the Year Award

'Thuggee, the supposed ritual murder of travellers on India's roads in the early-nineteenth century, has been a source of contention ever since among colonial officials, nationalists and postcolonial theorists. Kim Wagner has finally cracked the problem, providing the most detailed and convincing analysis yet of its origin and nature.'

- C A Bayly, St Catharine's College, University of Cambridge, UK

'Reading colonial sources against the grain..Thuggee successfully demystifies a much misunderstood phenomenon.'

- David Hall-Matthews, Times Literary Supplement

'This excellent work brings together specific episodes with the general problem of understanding a past world, by writing a micro-history of the circumstances of the murder and disappearance of Lieutenant John Maunsell near Agra, India in 1812...Well-written, this book is also methodologically acute.'

- Jeremy Black, History Today

About the author

KIM A. WAGNER completed his PhD in History at the University of Cambridge, UK, in 2003. He is currently a Research Fellow at King's College Cambridge, and Associate Researcher at the University of Edinburgh. He works on banditry and the methodological use of trial records, as well as colonial fears of indigenous conspiracies.

Bibliographic Information

Book Title: Thuggee
Book Subtitle: Banditry and the British in Early Nineteenth-Century India
Authors: Kim A. Wagner
Series Title: Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230590205
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan London
eBook Packages: Palgrave History Collection, History (R0)
Copyright Information: Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2007
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-230-54717-9Published: 12 July 2007
Softcover ISBN: 978-1-349-36154-0Published: 01 January 2007
eBook ISBN: 978-0-230-59020-5Published: 12 July 2007
Series ISSN: 2635-1633
Series E-ISSN: 2635-1641
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XX, 281
Topics: Social History, Cultural History, Asian History, History of Britain and Ireland, European History, Modern History

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Authors:

Sections

Buy it now

Buying options

Other ways to access

Table of contents (17 chapters)

Front Matter

Introduction

Part I

Front Matter

Part II

Front Matter

Part III

Front Matter

About this book

Keywords

Reviews

About the author

Bibliographic Information

Publish with us

Buy it now

Buying options

Other ways to access

Search

Navigation