HIS-20090 - Module Specification
School of Humanities and Social Sciences
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

Programme/Approved Electives for 2025/26

Available as a Free Standing Elective

Co-requisites

None

Prerequisites

N/A

Barred Combinations

None

Description for 2025/26

Who were the people who shaped and were shaped by the British Raj or British India? This module is about the people that lived through that experience , their lives and their encounters and their beliefs and identities. We will look at how British India became a place of opportunity, opening up career prospects for different types of Indian and British people and a site of political possibility where different types of nations and nationalism were envisaged. We will explore both biography and environment: looking at these themes through the life stories of Indians and British, and through the spaces that the Indians and British built together. The colonial encounter was based on inequality, but also collaboration and Indian ways of life and Indian people shaped British identity and policy in the east in almost every aspect of the encounter. By examining these formative moments this module will help us understand better the making and, eventually, the breaking, of the culture of the Raj.

To examine the experience of Indian and British people during the consolidation of British rule; to calibrate the responses of Indian people to British administration, justice, and military action; to characterise the range of British interventions in India, in political, social, economic and cultural terms; to evaluate the scope for meaningful contact between communities of British and Indian people.

Intended Learning Outcomes

recognise and account for the different levels of relationships between Indians and the British in nineteenth century India
: 1,2
explain the different forms of cultural production at work in the Raj and their varied nature (on a spectrum from collaborative/affectionate to conflicting/violent): 1,2
read critically and identify key issues for seminar discussion and essay writing: 1,2
deploy effective and relevant arguments in written and oral forms: 1,2
analyze different kinds primary evidence that relate to the history of nineteenth century India: 1,2
demonstrate sound knowledge of key concepts and historical debates on colonial India beyond recorded lecture content: 1,2
apply research to write effective argument based responses to timed examination questions that are based on key historical debates of the British Raj: 1,2

Study hours

12 hours = lectures
12 hours = seminars/workshops
28 hours = timed, unseen exam
40 hours = seminar preparation /reading
35 hours = commentary research, writing and preparation
23 hours = examination revision

School Rules

None

Description of Module Assessment