Thuggee Banditry and the British in Early Nineteenth-Century India [Hardcover]

Based largely on new material, this book examines thuggee as a type of banditry, emerging in a specific socio-economic and geographic context. The British usually described the thugs as fanatic assassins and Kali-worshippers, yet Wagner argues that the history of thuggee need no longer be limited to the study of its representation.Introduction Thuggee reassessed PART I Engaging the Colonial 'Archives of Repression' Thuggee in Pre-colonial India The Discovery of Thuggee, Etawah 1809 Thomas Perry and the First Arrests N.J. Halhed in Sindouse, Oct. 1812 PART II Sindouse The Practice of Thuggee The Itinerant Underworld The World of the Thugs PART III Halhed in Sindouse -?A Second Look Sindouse - The Aftermath Continued Measures Against Thugs The Operations Commence The Thuggee Campaign From Sindouse to Sagar Epilogue

Shortlisted for the 2008 History Today-Longman Book of the Year Award. See the History Today website for more information:

http://www.historytoday.com/Faq.aspx?m=408&amid=408

'This is a monograph by a young scholar which takes a notoriously difficult problem in 19th century colonial history the rumoured religious cult of Thuggee whereby travellers in a remote region of Uttar Pradesh, were randomly strangled and thrown down wells - and, with persistence and intelligence, dissects it, showing how much Thuggee really existed, and how much was a myth invented by the Englishmen who set out to extirpate it. Wagner convincingly answers this old problem, and succeeds against the odds in making his text readable and not getting bogged down in theory.'

- Committee of the 2008 History Today-Longman Book of the Year Award

'Thuggee, the supposed ritual murder of travellers on India's roads in the early-nineteenth century, has been a source of contention ever since among colonial officials, nationalists and postcolonial theorists. Kim Wagner has finally cracked the problem, providing the l3c