A point that escapes Darwin: Crises of colonial self in the nature essays of Edward Hamilton Aitken and Philip Robinson

This article shows how the colonial nature essay both spoofs and affirms crises of the European self in British India's post-Rebellion era (1857-1947). Authored by English civil servants who took to naturalism as a hobby, the nature essay's exaggerated misadventures with quotidian animals such as ants, beetles, and mosquitos parody British accounts of the 1857 Rebellion, while dehumanizing caricatures of uncooperative servants reduce Indian society's complex hierarchies of class, caste, gender, and race to buffoonery. Taking as a case study two of the genre's exemplars, Edward Hamilton Aitken and Philip Robinson, I read the colonized animals and people in these texts as agents who destabilize the material and psychic life of empire. Historians and postcolonialists agree that censorship, paranoia, and violence defined British rule over India between 1857 and 1947, yet they overlook the everyday life of empire. The nature essay's peculiar synthesis of humour and science grants surprising insights into how colonial agents understood themselves as Raj hegemony shifted into its final stages. As the nature essay's colonized people and animals thwart the daily work of empire, they also reveal the colonial class' failure to confront its anxieties about the sahib's political and epistemic stability as a rational, post-Enlightenment agent destined to master the colony.

Automated summary

This article reveals how the colonial nature essay both mocks and confirms the European self-crisis in the post-Rebellion era of British India. By examining the animals and people portrayed in these essays, it demonstrates their role in destabilizing the material and psychological aspects of empire. The unique combination of humor and science in this genre provides unexpected insights into the self-perception of colonial agents as the power of Raj shifted. The failure of the colonial class to confront their anxieties about the political and epistemic stability of the sahib is also exposed through the actions of the colonized animals and people.