Empire of Analogies: Kipling, India and Ireland

Starting from the analysis of the Irish characters in Kipling’s Indian stories, this book shows that the representation of the British Empire was greatly indebted to analogies and comparisons made between colonies. It contrasts two different ways of making colonial analogies: ‘imperialist’ and ‘nationalist’. Kipling, as a young journalist, was keenly aware of the fact that Indian and Irish nationalists drew analogies between each other’s colonial situation to make the case for self-government and British misrule, and his repeated emphasis on Irish participation in the Raj can be seen as a powerful ‘imperialist’ counter-representation to these subversive analogies. With this framework in mind, this book traces how Kipling’s representation of Empire changed over time as he moved away from India and also how the hegemony of British imperialism faltered toward the end of the nineteenth century. This book makes a major contribution to post-colonialism studies in general and to the comparative study of Ireland and India in particular.