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This book on the history of Oxford University Press (OUP) in Colonial India takes its title from a Churchill speech at Harvard in 1943 envisioning "empires of the future". Indeed, OUP served as a shield for the Empire. But it had to mediate on behalf of Indians too. After all, "The press made its money interpreting other civilizations for the West." It helped too that the Oxonian intellect had been sceptical of authority at least since the 1650s, so independent thought asserted itself often enough to give Oxford credibility as an academic publisher dedicated to a higher ideal. This self-history, though, sees little beyond its own archival spires. Wider contextualisation""the drastic domestic bifurcation of the 1920s, for example""could have made it a gripping read.

EMPIRES OF THE MIND

Rimi Chatterjee
Rs 795
471 PAGES
OUP