Same difference? Liberalism, modernity, and governance in the Indian Empire

This paper explores the intersection – and interconnectedness – of modernity and liberalism in imperial Britain. Taking liberalism principally as a rationality or technology of modern rule, the following examines how nominally liberal strategies of rule were adapted and evolved in colonial India. Much of what follows is concerned with the colonial city, which this essay suggests was integral to and expressive of novel forms of governance which developed from the mid-nineteenth century. However, whilst recent work in this field has done much to extend understandings of urbanisation and governance, the colonial city has only recently become the subject of significant scholarly investigation. The role of empire in animating liberal technologies of rule in the metropole, like the impacts of liberal rationalities in colonial cities, remains in need of further unpicking, as do the coterminous histories of empire, liberalism and modernity in Britain