Academic literature on the topic 'Elphinstone, mountstuart, 1779-1859'

Mountstuart Elphinstone (1779-1859), Lowland Scottish traveller, East India Company civil servant and educator, was one of the principal intellectual architects of British colonial rule in South Asia. Imbued with liberal views, such that Bombay's wealthy founded Elphinstone College in his memory, he pioneered the scholarly, scientific and administrative foundations of imperialism in India. Elphinstone's career was launched when he was picked to lead the inaugural British diplomatic mission to the Afghan court. His Account of the Kingdom of Caubul (1815) became the main source of British information about Afghanistan. He is best known for his periods as Resident at Poona and Governor of Bombay in the 1810s and 1820s, when he instituted innovative and lasting policies in administration and education while also conducting research for his extremely influential History of India (1841). This volume examines Mountstuart Elphinstone's intellectual contributions and administrative career in their own right, in relation to prominent contemporaries including Charles Metcalfe and William Moorcroft, and in the context of later historical study of India, Afghanistan, British imperialism and its imperial frontiers.

The Introduction describes the larger Elphinstone Project that contextualizes this book. It provides a brief biography of Mountstuart Elphinstone (1779-1859) and outlines his scholarly work and its enduring impact for both Afghanistan Studies and Indian Studies. Elphinstone's tenure as Governor of Bombay (1819-27) and his 1841 "The History of India" highlight the discussion of his prominent location in the field of British Indian and colonial studies. Elphinstone's 1815 "An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul" is discussed through contemporaneous book reviews and references to the book's current status as a canonical text in the field of Afghanistan Studies. Short summaries of each chapter conclude the Introduction.