Description
Warrior Gentlemen
by Lionel Caplan
2003, pp. xx + 240
ISBN 99933 43 42 0
Of late, there has been a growing interest in how non-Western peoples have been and continue to be depicted in the literatures of the West. In anthropology, attention has focused on the range of literary devices employed in ethnographic texts to distance and exoticise the subjects of discourse, and ultimately contribute to their subordination. This study eschews the tendency to regard virtually all depictions of non-Western ‘others’ as amenable to the same kinds of ‘orientalist’ analysis, and argues that the portrayals found in such writings must be examined in their particular historical and political settings.
These themes are explored by analyzing the voluminous literature by military authors who have written and continue to write about the ‘Gurkhas,’ those legendary soldiers from Nepal who have served in Britain’s Imperial and post-Imperial armies for more than two centuries. The author discovers that, instead of exoticising them, the military writers find in their subjects the quintessential virtues of the European officers themselves: the Gurkhas appear as warriors and gentlemen. However, the author does not rest here: utilising a wealth of literary, historical, ethnographic sources and the results of his own fieldwork, he investigates the wider social and cultural contexts in which the European chroniclers of the Gurkhas have been nurtured.
This book will appeal to a wide readership, academic and non-academic, such as student of anthropology, literature, cultural studies, military and colonial history, South Asian studies and readers generally interested in militaria.
These themes are explored by analyzing the voluminous literature by military authors who have written and continue to write about the ‘Gurkhas,’ those legendary soldiers from Nepal who have served in Britain’s Imperial and post-Imperial armies for more than two centuries. The author discovers that, instead of exoticising them, the military writers find in their subjects the quintessential virtues of the European officers themselves: the Gurkhas appear as warriors and gentlemen. However, the author does not rest here: utilising a wealth of literary, historical, ethnographic sources and the results of his own fieldwork, he investigates the wider social and cultural contexts in which the European chroniclers of the Gurkhas have been nurtured.
This book will appeal to a wide readership, academic and non-academic, such as student of anthropology, literature, cultural studies, military and colonial history, South Asian studies and readers generally interested in militaria.
Lionel Caplan is Emeritus Professor of South Asian Anthropology and Professorial Research Associate in the University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies. He has maintained an ongoing research interest in Nepal since he first did field-work in the county in 1964-65. His other publications include Administration and Politics in a Nepalese Town: The Study of a District Capital and Its Environs and Land and Social Change in East Nepal: A Study of Hindu-tribal relations (also published by Himal Books). He has also done field work in and written about South India.
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