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The importance of Macaulay

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Kenneth Ballhatchet
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Extract

In J.R.A.S. 1988/2 Robert E. Frykenberg assails what he calls the “myth” that Macaulay's minute on education in British India was the occasion for a radical change in policy which imposed English education on an unwilling people. He puts forward three main arguments. First, there was no radical change in policy, for the government continued to support “Oriental” education and scholarship as well as English education. Secondly, Macaulay's advocacy of English education was a recognition of the views of “forward-looking gentry in India”. Thirdly, his minute was “one more salvo in a long and running set of encounters in which the positions of some protagonists were often much more blurred than has been properly realised by later generations of historians”. What is new in all this?

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 122 , Issue 1 , January 1990 , pp. 91 - 94
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1990

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References

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