An ‘India of Europe’. Stanisław Szczepanowski (1846-1900) and Galician-Indian pararells in ‘The Misery of Galicia’

An ‘India of Europe’. Stanisław Szczepanowski (1846-1900) and Galician-Indian pararells in ‘The Misery of Galicia’

Poland

Ukraine

Galicia

19th century

colonialism

global history

civilization

development

Galicia was called by its 19th-century contemporaries ‘an India of Europe’ as it was the poorest province of Habsburg Empire. This paper presents a global history of ideas and people that connects India’s colonial experience with Eastern Europe. Although different in size, both countries were ruled from the imperial centers that considered them as ‘backward’ and in a need of the ‘civilizing mission’. Vienna German-speaking center stigmatized Polish-Ukrainian-Jewish Galicia periphery as ‘barbaric East’.
My aim is to show how some ideas of ‘development’, ‘civilization’ and ‘barbarity’ produced by the British to India were transferred and appropriated into in Galicia. I will critically examine those ideas through the postcolonial prism. In this regard, I will demonstrate a Galician-Indian parallel in a biography and work of Stanisław Szczepanowski who held an ambivalent position that linked British colonial experience in India with attempts to ‘civilize’ Galicia.

Kwiecińska, Elżbieta

Artha Journal of Social Sciences; Vol. 20 No. 2 (2021): Artha Journal of Social Sciences; 57 - 73

0000-0000

0975-329X

Centre for Publications, CHRIST (Deemed to be University), Bangalore

2021-12-03

Copyright (c) 2021 Artha Journal of Social Sciences

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0

application/pdf

eng

info:eu-repo/semantics/article

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Peer-reviewed Article

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