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‘British India on trial’: Brighton military Hhospitals and the politics of empire in World War I
During the early years of the First World War, wounded Indian soldiers were treated at hospitals in southern England. Focussing especially on the hospital created within the Royal Pavilion complex in Brighton, this article examines the implications of an episode in which thousands of colonised subjects were located and managed within a metropolitan province. We show how the Indian hospitals became sites of concentrated imperial anxiety, with the potential to destabilise British rule in India itself as well as the English localities in which they were created. In particular, we argue that the agency expressed in Indian soldiers’ letters home generated an acute consciousness among British officials of the need to bear in mind subaltern subjects’ own networks when managing those hegemonic imperial networks that come more readily to historians’ attention.
History
Publication status
- Published
Journal
Journal of Historical GeographyISSN
0305-7488Publisher
ElsevierExternal DOI
Issue
1Volume
38Page range
18-34Department affiliated with
- Geography Publications
Full text available
- No
Peer reviewed?
- Yes