READING THE PERSONAL IN IMPERIAL KNOWLEDGE-MAKING: SIR WILLIAM JONES AND WALTER WILLIAM SKEAT

Abstract

The prevalence of conflict of interest policies in major contemporary public and private institutions, academic and otherwise, suggests serious concerns that the conditions of our private lives have the potential to heavily influence our professional duties. However, these concerns are rarely incorporated into the crafting of historical narratives on the lives of Imperial knowledge-producers of the British Empire, where there invariably appears to be a separation between the personal lives of these Imperial servants and their professional duties. A close reading of the works and deeds of said Imperial servants, however, throws up points of disjuncture, where the apparently independent professional actions of these individuals seem to collide with their variegated personal intents. This thesis aims to provide a means of approaching the works of Imperial knowledge-producers that emphasises the private circumstances of their lives during the time they spent crafting their landmark works. I provide two case studies, Sir William Jones of 1780s British Bengal and Walter William Skeat, who wrote about specific groups on the Malay Peninsula in the 1890s. Referencing personal biographies that examine the private circumstances these scholars contended with even as they conducted their professional duties allows for a better understanding of the individual behind the work. In turn, better explanatory narratives can be offered for specific points of disjuncture that the current literature on both writers has addressed only at a superficial level. My thesis suggests that the arbitrary division of private and public lives in extant Imperial histories compromises Imperial historical narratives. Instead, it is much better to approach the writings of Imperial knowledge-producers with an awareness of the private issues and circumstances these individuals faced. This thesis is also a call to recognise the individual writer behind even seminal works as being human, all too human, just as we are.