Natural Disasters and Victorian Empire looks at the relationship between epidemics and famines in south Asia and Victorian literature and culture. It suggests that much of how we think today about disasters, state and society can be traced back to the 19th-century British imperial experience.

Natural Disasters and Victorian Empire looks at the relationship between epidemics and famines in south Asia and Victorian literature and culture. It suggests that much of how we think today about disasters, state and society can be traced back to the 19th-century British imperial experience.

This history of an Indian earthquake aftermath analyses the role of civil society, the colonial state and international aid in disaster relief.

The twelve essays in Victorian Environmental Nightmares explore various “environmental nightmares” through applied analyses of Victorian texts. Over the course of the nineteenth century, writers of imaginative literature often expressed fears and concerns over environmental degradation (in its wide variety of meanings, including social and moral). In some instances, natural or environmental disasters influenced these responses; in other instances a growing awareness of problems caused by industrial pollution and the growth of cities prompted responses. Seven essays in this volume cover works about Britain and its current and former colonies that examine these nightmare environments at home and abroad. But as the remaining five essays in this collection demonstrate, “environmental nightmares” are not restricted to essays on actual disasters or realistic fiction, since in many cases Victorian writers projected onto imperial landscapes or wholly imagined landscapes in fantastic fiction their anxieties about how humans might change their environments—and how these environments might also change humans.

Postcolonial Disaster studies literary fiction about crises of epic proportions in contemporary South Asia and Southern Africa: the oceanic disaster in Sri Lanka, the economic disaster in Zimbabwe, the medical disaster in South Africa and Botswana, and the geopolitical disaster in India and Pakistan. Pallavi Rastogi argues that postcolonial fiction about catastrophe is underpinned by a Disaster Unconscious, a buried but mobile agenda that forces disastrous events to narrate themselves. She writes that in disaster fiction, a literary Story and its real-life Event are in constant dialectic tension. In recent disasters, Story and Event are tied together as the urgency to circulate information and rebuild in the aftermath of the disaster dictates the flow of the narrative. As the Story acquires temporal distance from the Event, such as the seventy-three years since the partition of India in 1947, it plays more with form and theme, to expand beyond a tale about an all-consuming tragedy. Story and Event are in a constant dance with each other, and the Disaster Unconscious plays the tune to which they move. Rastogi creates a narratology for postcolonial disaster fiction and brings concepts from Disaster Studies into the realm of literary analysis.

Contains 650 entries in alpha. order on the Brit. Imperial past and Commonwealth present. A ref. companion to the political, cultural, religious, mil. and econ. events that have shaped the transformation of a Victorian Empire into a world community of 51 sovereign states and 26 dependencies, still linked in free assoc. It looks back to the beginning of Brit. maritime expansion, but concentrates chiefly on the last 2 cent. As well as providing outline histories of individual states, it offers guidance to the many Commonwealth org. which link them. Includes biographical sketches; entries on cinema and theater, sports, natural disasters, railways, hill stations, and hotels. 7 maps.

Contains 650 entries in alphabetical order on the British Imperial past & Commonwealth present. A reference companion to the political, cultural, religious, military & economic events that have shaped the transformation of a Victorian Empire into a world community of 51 sovereign states & 26 dependencies, still linked in free association. It looks back to the beginning of British maritime expansion, but concentrates chiefly on the last 2 centuries. As well as providing outline histories of individual states, it offers guidance to the many Commonwealth organizations which link them. Includes biographical sketches; entries on cinema & theater, sports, natural disasters, railways, hill stations, & hotels. 7 maps.