Claiming India: French scholars and the preoccupation with India during the nineteenth century.

摘要

My dissertation examines the image of India which was created by the French academics of the nineteenth century. This image of India was distinct from the British image of India partly due to the different intellectual and political traditions in France, as well as Anglo-French national rivalry and the position of France in India as a subordinate or 'subaltern' colonizer. For instance, the French image of India was marked by its reliance on the spiritual and religious aspects of India, and its antiquity and 'Aryan' heritage, while the British described India primarily as a land of Oriental despotism and oppressed masses alleviated only by British colonial rule. I have examined the specifically French creation of India by French writers from the early modern to the early twentieth century to demonstrate the history of French interest in India. I have also looked at the interest of scholars in different nineteenth century disciplines like philology, anthropology, history, and religion in creating a specifically 'French' image of India in terms of race, caste and Hinduism.