Europe Reconsidered: Perceptions of the West in Nineteenth-Century Bengal

This penetrating volume examines changing perceptions and attitudes in nineteenth-century Bengal that grew out of its social, cultural, and intellectual confrontation with the west. The author focuses his analysis on the ideas of three men—Bhudev Mukhopadhyay, Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, and Swami Vivekananda. Despite their very different perceptions of the west, these men, erudite and accomplished members of upper-class urban Bengal, were considered intellectual beacons, representing as well as shaping widely held opinions of the time. Nineteenth-century Bengali experience, of course, was part of a global phenomenon inasmuch as Bengal, like many other areas of Asia, was subject to the imperialism of the west. Bengal was thus ‘perhaps the earliest manifestation of the revolution in the mental world of Asia’s elite groups’. Nearer home, it represented the general experience of the Indian subcontinent as a whole, but at ‘its most complex and well-informed level’. As the author shows, it was this mental revolution that crucially influenced the course of change within the province. This second edition of Raychaudhuri’s classic work includes a new preface and appendix, both of which address recent historiographical debates. Winner of the 1989 Rabindra Smriti Puraskar, awarded by the government of West Bengal, this book will engage readers with an interest in intellectual, social and cultural history, postcolonial studies, and literary studies.