This book offers an important reinterpretation of major themes of sovereignty, authority & social reform in colonial South Asian history. Focusing on the British prohibition of sati in 1829, the author shows how the debates that preceded this legislation have been instrumental in setting the terms of post-colonial debates.

'There are no two things in the world more different from each other than East-Indian and West Indian-slavery' (Robert Inglis, House of Commons Debate, 1833).
In Slavery, Abolitionism and Empire in India, 1772-1843, Andrea Major asks why, at a time when East India Company expansion in India, British abolitionism and the missionary movement were all at their height, was the existence of slavery in India so often ignored, denied or excused? By exploring Britain's ambivalent relationship with both real and imagined slaveries in India, and the official, evangelical and popular discourses...