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Towards Independence
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich
8-week course Thursdays 11 October – 29 November
11.00 – 13.00
‘At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.’ Jawaharlal Nehru, 1947
The last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar II, presided over one of the great cultural renaissances of Indian history. Deprived of real political power by the East India Company, Zafar gave his blessing to an uprising in 1857 against British imperial rule now recognized as the first war of Indian independence. This saw the demise of the Mughal dynasty and cemented British rule in India until 1947. This eight-week course explores the history of political, social and cultural exchange between India and Britain, tracing a historical narrative from first encounter, trade and textiles to empire, photography, independence, partition and cinema. William Dalrymple opens the series.
11 October: The Last Mughal - William Dalrymple
18 October: The Trading World of the English East India Company - Professor Miles Ogborn
25 October: The Great Revolt 1857–58 - Dr Clare Anderson
1 November: The Chintz Revolution - Rosemary Crill
8 November: The High Noon of the Raj: India and Britain, 1859-1919 - Robert Blyth
15 November: A Glorious Galaxy of Monuments: Photography and Architecture in 19th-century India - John Falconer
22 November: Bollywood’s India: how Indian cinema sees India - Professor Rachel Dwyer
29 November: The Making of India and Pakistan - Dr Yasmin Khan
Course costs £40/£30
Individual lectures £7.50/£5.50
Bookings 020 8312 8560 or [log in to unmask]
www.nmm.ac.uk/learning