Kieran Hazzard

My research seeks to redefine our understanding of empire in India during the early nineteenth century. It does so by refocusing the debate upon the primacy of politics. Racial difference as a category of analysis is therefore subsumed within this perspective. 

Present historiography assumes far too much certainty in the development of British Indian policy and has overlooked structural as well as ideological difficulties and differences. British radicals who fought to have liberal constitutional principles applied to empire and continually sought a way reconcile empire and liberty, despite considerable setbacks. Further, it focusses upon conservative political philosophy as it approached India and the period's distinctive approach to problems of conquest and atonement. Ultimately it concludes that during the Reform Ministry’s tenure the last real opportunity to take an alternate path to a very different kind of empire was passed by with Macaulay’s embracing of ‘paternal despotism’. 

Methodologically, with regard to political culture, it takes seriously the ideas, concepts and worldviews held by political actors in Britain, while avoiding over-idealising their intentions. Where it departs from simple study of high politics, is its focus on understanding the broad nature of debate, across party lines and among parliamentary and extra-parliamentary politics. In particular it seeks to redirect the gaze of scholarship away from further analysis of liberalism in this period and onto the variety and uncertainty of political thought and to seriously explore the foundations of conservative imperialism.