This article examines the place of public philanthropy in enhancing the role of the Indian merchant in Bombay, India, during the first half of the 19th century. It supplements works that have stressed the indigenous elite’s attempts to contest and negotiate a significant place within the public culture of colonial India. Specifically, it emphasizes the opportunities and difficulties associated with Indian attempts to shape a colonial civic culture conducive to Indian requirements, by example of the establishment of the Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy Hospital in Bombay.
This paper examines the Indian response to the development of an honours system and imperial rites in India in the first half of the nineteenth century, and in particular the efforts by the Jejeebhoy family and its supporters to obtain the Indian businessman Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy a hereditary baronetcy prior to his death. It argues that the baronetcy scheme of Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy and the Indian response to honours in general marked the recognition of the important role of imperial ideology among Indians.
The article details the events and themes surrounding a strike and riot that transpired in colonial Bombay in 1832, led by a segment of the Parsi community and joined by other Indians, in reaction to the British cull of stray pariah dogs in the streets. The strike and riot demonstrated the commercial power of the Parsis to disrupt the daily routine of Bombay and exert their influence in hostility to colonial interference and incursions against Parsi (Indian) religious sensibilities. The Bombay dog riots of 1832 exposed the vulnerability of early British-Indian socio-political relations in Bombay and Western India in the face of popular disturbances against British authority and was in marked contrast to the state of Parsi-British relations that developed in the nineteenth century, as the Parsis led the process of Indian accommodation to British rule, tempered only by overt threats to their religious identity.
The article examines the role of the Parsis of India in the opium trade between China and India during the 18th and 19th centuries. It examines the significant role of a non-European group in the history of drugs. The Parsi involvement in the opium trade constituted an important component in the rise of Western capital in Asia, the development of the Indian and imperial economies, and the growth of Bombay and other colonial centers. Furthermore, the article examines the ability of drugs to serve the interests of non-Europeans under imperialism, as opium provided for the economic, social, and political development of the Parsi community. The article notes an episode in the history of both a community and a drug. The Parsis constitute one of the first and arguably most significant examples of the ability of drugs to positively transform the state of one of the world's smallest communities.
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