Notes

1. The canonical treatment of this misadventure remains Guha.

2. What I am describing here is not that distant from the notion of "traumatic nationalism" recently articulated by Berlant (1-4). I have also explored this issue in "The State of Things." For my discussion of the Tipu plays at Astley's and Sadler's Wells see Staging Governance, 312-48.

3. Cornwallis became Governor-General of Bengal in 1786.

4. See Wickwire for a detailed account of the place of prior American experience in Cornwallis's correspondence on Medows' failures in Mysore in 1790.

5. This account was first published in the Madras Courier and reprinted in Gentleman's Magazine. For thorough accounts of the discursive construction of this event and its significance for popular acceptance of British policy in India see Marshall, 71-2 and Teltscher, 248-51.

6. See Forrest, 347-50 for a discussion of the pictorial representations of Cornwallis's victory.

7. See Casid.

8. The World (Calcutta), 28 April 1792. Except where otherwise noted all newspaper accounts are from this issue.

9. The World (Calcutta), 28 April 1792.

10. Madras Courier, 17 May 1792.

11. This word is illegible.

12. The World (Calcutta), 28 April 1792.

13. The World (Calcutta), 28 April 1792.

14. See Barrell's reading of the Lyttleton prospect in “Spring,” English Literature in History, 56-61.

15. See Addison, ll. 145-8.

16. See Addison ll. 131-40.

17. For evidence of Cornwallis's fear of interracial relations see Wickwire, 110. As C.A. Bayly argues, "Cornwallis moved heavily against European revenue officers involved in Indian trade and tried to create a wall of regulations to separate the Indian and European worlds” (149). See Bayly (133-62) for wide-ranging account of the consolidation of racial and social hierarchies from the Governor-Generalship of Cornwallis. Beth Fowkes Tobin, in Picturing Imperial Power (117-8) also argues Cornwallis's reforms were designed not only to minimize the amount of intermingling between British and Indian subject in the realms of commerce and civil administration, but also to avert miscegenation. See Collingham, 51-89 for a detailed account the segregation policies which eventually infused nineteenth-century Anglo-Indian relations. See also Sen, 119-49 for a discussion of “the decline of intimacy" promulgated during the Raj.

18. See Reik, 304 for a discussion of the manipulation of “adverse incidents” in masochistic fantasy.

19. As P.J. Marshall notes, Sir George Hilario Barlow "was very closely concerned with the devising and implementing of the permanent settlement of Bengal revenue enacted by Cornwallis in 1793. He was given responsibility for drafting the judicial regulations, known as the Cornwallis code. Barlow's correspondence with Cornwallis shows his total commitment to the principles embodied in the permanent settlement: security of property and government accountable to law. Cornwallis was generous enough to say that his ‘system' had been based on ‘adopting and patronizing your suggestions.'"

20. For an extended discussion of this biopolitical turn in imperial performance see Staging Governance, 260-8.

21. See Stoler, 95-136 for a similar set of arguments regarding coloniality, biopolitics and governmentality.

22. See Wahrman, Bradley, Linda Colley, Britons, Clark, Miller, Wilson, Gould, Pocock, Virtue, Commerce and History and The Varieties of British Political Thought, 1500-1800 (246-282).

23. See Lyotard, 161-71.

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