Description: British historians influenced the empire in critical ways. Time's Monster shows how the modern vision of history as a form of ethics empowered historians to shape policy, while history became a justification for domination. Later, alternative notions of history revised the discipline's ethics and effects, reminding us that ideas have consequences.
Brief description: Priya Satia is the award-winning author of Spies in Arabia and Empire of Guns. The Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History and Professor of British History at Stanford University, she has written for the Financial Times, The Nation, Time, the Washington Post, and other outlets.
Review Quotes: Time's Monster is not a conventional history...The conclusion [Satia] arrives at ultimately is that it was the discipline of History itself, ever since its emergence as a field of academic inquiry in nineteenth century Europe, that provided well-intentioned, highly-educated Western liberals with a set of ethical tools for the management of their consciences as they unleashed murderous violence on 'backward' peoples across the planet...Built into the foundations of History, and indeed, many other disciplines in the Humanities, is the repression of some of the most important questions about human existence on this planet...Satia's fearlessness in tackling big questions, even to the point of indicting the very discipline that has raised her to a position of not-inconsiderable eminence, suggests that she might well be the historian who could summon the courage to plunge into this chasm.--Amitav Ghosh "Scroll" (6/26/2021 12:00:00 AM)