Round Table Conference geographies

• Verfasst von: Legg, Stephen [VerfasserIn]
• Titel: Round Table Conference geographies
• Titelzusatz: constituting Colonial India in interwar London
• Verf.angabe: Stephen Legg
• Verlagsort: Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY
• Verlag: Cambridge University Press
• Jahr: 2023
• Umfang: xvi, 397 Seiten
• Illustrationen: Illustrationen
• Fussnoten: Literaturverzeichnis: Seite 369-385 und Index
• ISBN: 978-1-009-21531-2
• Schlagwörter: (g)Indien / (s)Unabhängigkeit / (g)London / (s)Round-Table-Konferenz / (z)Geschichte 1930-1932
• Sprache: eng
• Bibliogr. Hinweis: Erscheint auch als : Online-Ausgabe: Legg, Stephen: Round Table Conference geographies. - Cambridge, United Kingdom : Cambridge University Press, 2022 |(DLC)2022038086
• Sach-SW: HISTORY / Asia / South / General
• Sach-SW: Asian history
• Sach-SW: Asiatische Geschichte
• Sach-SW: HISTORY / Asia / India & South Asia
• Sach-SW: Historical geography
• Sach-SW: Historische Geographie
• Geograph. SW: India
• Geograph. SW: Indien
• K10plus-PPN: 1815043040

Abstract

"The Round Table Conference (RTC) met over three sessions in London between 1930-1932, its aim being to sketch out the next stage of India's constitutional advance within the British empire. Although it led directly to the Government of India Act of 1935, the conference is unanimously read as a failure. It failed to win over the Indian National Congress, it failed to reconcile communal demands, and it failed to entice the Princely States into immediate federation. As such, the RTC features in neither histories of imperial nor international conferences, nor is it acknowledged as a predecessor of the wave of decolonial conferences that began in the 1950s. This book argues that the RTC demands serious attention as a vital site of Indian and imperial politics in the interwar years. It explores four conference geographies, which balance an attention to imperial governmentality with evidence of "diplomatic subaltern" labour. The role of dominion, dyarchy and community are explored as "imaginary geographies". The conference method, staff and its palace locations expose conference "infrastructures". Spaces of official hospitality, socialising and domestic networking highlight London as a "conference city". And, finally, the "representational spaces" of the conference are read through petitions and protests, and the ways in which the conference was represented as a failure. The book concludes by asking who gained through this representation and by showing what we gain through exploring the conference as a teeming political, social and material space"--

Abstract

Round Table Conference Geographies explores a major international conference in 1930s London which determined India's constitutional future in the British Empire. Pre-dating the decolonising conferences of the 1950s-60s, the Round Table Conference laid the blueprint for India's future federal constitution. Despite this the conference is unanimously read as a failure, for not having comprehensively reconciled the competing demands of liberal and Indian National Congress politicians, of Hindus and Muslims, and of British versus Princely India. This book argues that the conference's three sessions were vital sites of Indian and imperial politics that demand serious attention. It explores the spatial politics of the conference in terms of its imaginary geographies, infrastructures, host city, and how the conference was contested and represented. The book concludes by asking who gained through representing the conference as a failure and explores it, instead, as a teeming political, social and material space