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An Examination of Some Forces Affecting English Educational Policies in India: 1780–1850

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Nancy L. Adams
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin
Dennis M. Adams
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin

Extract

In England during the last thirty or forty years of the eighteenth century, a body of political theory was gradually developed in support of government action in the field of education. With the realization of the social consequences involved in the changes taking place in industrial life came a recognition of the obligations of the state to provide for the education of its citizens. Many political and religious leaders expressed themselves on the advantages of education, indicating that the improvement of the mind would bring men closer to the goals of perfection in which these leaders believed: continued progress, moral purity, stable government, and economy.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1971 History of Education Quarterly 

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References

Notes

1. Briggs, Asa, The Age of Improvement (London: Longmans, Green, 1959), p. 71.Google Scholar

2. McCully, Bruce, English Education and the Origins of Indian Nationalism (Gloucester, Mass.: P. Smith, 1966), pp. 1617.Google Scholar

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4. Briggs, , The Age of Improvement p. 17.Google Scholar

5. Macaulay, Thomas, Speeches on Politics and Literature (London: J. M. Dent & Co., 1909), pp. 350351.Google Scholar

6. Briggs, , The Age of Improvement p. 17.Google Scholar

8. The charter outlined the conditions of organization and ennumerated various rights and privileges. It had to be renewed by the granting government every so-many years, in this case, twenty.Google Scholar

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11. In the 1720s, the value of this trade was more than ten percent of the public revenue of Great Britain (Percival Spear, A History of India II [Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1965], 77).Google Scholar

12. Spear, , A History of India p. 86.Google Scholar

13. Hereafter I will refer to this government as the “Indian Government” rather than to “the Company's administration in India.”Google Scholar

14. McCully, , English Education p. 11.Google Scholar

15. [Hansard], Parliamentary Papers 1831–32 VIII. (734) (London: H.M.S.O., 1832), 61.Google Scholar

16. Ibid.Google Scholar

17. Ibid.Google Scholar

18. Ibid., p. 62.Google Scholar

19. McCully, , English Education p. 18.Google Scholar

20. Ibid.Google Scholar

21. Ibid., p. 22. (£10,000 was a great deal of money to be spent for this purpose; as late as 1833–-twenty years later–-government expenditures for education in England were only £30,000.)Google Scholar

22. Ibid., p. 18.Google Scholar

23. Ibid.Google Scholar

24. See Thompson, and Garratt, , British Rule bk. III; McCully, , English Education, chap. 1.Google Scholar

25. Quoted in Nurullah, Syed and Naik, J. P., A History of Education in India during the British Period 2d ed., rev. (Bombay: Macmillan & Co., 1951), p. 89.Google Scholar

26. By 1830, eight parliamentary acts had greatly reformed the English legal and penal codes: slavery and slave trade had been abolished; Catholics were allowed to hold political offices; military and factory reforms had been passed. Reform of Parliament itself was to come in 1832. Also, see the first section of this article.Google Scholar

27. Thompson, and Garratt, , British Rule p. 318.Google Scholar

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29. Ibid.Google Scholar

30. Quoted in Nurullah, and Naik, , Education in India p. 90.Google Scholar

31. Basu, A. N., ed., Indian Education in Parliamentary Papers pt. 1. (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1952), p. 1.Google Scholar

32. Ibid.Google Scholar

33. See McCully, , English Education pp. 6364; Thompson and Garratt, British Rule, p. 319; Nurullah, and Naik, , Education in India, pp. 196–97.Google Scholar

34. Parliamentary Papers, 1831–32, p. 25.Google Scholar

35. Ibid.Google Scholar

36. Bentinck saw in this resolution the solution to a problem immediately confronting him: the supply of competent and trustworthy native servants of the Company.Google Scholar

37. Parliamentary Debates, 1833–34, vol. XIX, p. 562–63.Google Scholar

38. Ibid.Google Scholar

39. See McCully, , English Education p. 72; Nurullah, and Naik, , Education in India, pp. 209–10.Google Scholar

40. See page 165, supra.Google Scholar

41. Quoted in McCully, , pp. 68–9; Nurullah and Naik, pp. 136–8.Google Scholar

42. Ibid.Google Scholar

43. Ibid.Google Scholar

44. Nurullah, and Naik, , Education in India p. 139.Google Scholar

45. Ibid.Google Scholar

46. Quoted in Anderson, George, British Administration in India 3d ed., rev. (London: Macmillan & Co., 1923), p. 144.Google Scholar

47. Nurullah, and Naik, , p. 156.Google Scholar

48. Many writers, Indians in particular, have sought to prove that the official acknowledgment of elitist education, coming at the same time as the orders for English education, shows definite political “machinations” of England to utterly control and colonize India. Despite emotional arguments on both sides, there is no direct evidence that the pressures of English instruction were planned, or based on a desire to unify power in the country for any particular purposes.Google Scholar

49. McCully, , English Education p. 85; Nurullah, and Naik, , Education in India, pp. 162–63; other sources.Google Scholar

50. McCully, , English Education p. 85.Google Scholar

51. Quoted in McCully, , English Education p. 91.Google Scholar