Legitimacy and Symbols

F. W. Buckler’s writings convey a highly daring mind, in which intellectual ability is coupled with great unconventionality. At the very outset, in the lead article, Buckler sweeps away a century and a half of Indian historiography “represented in Europe almost entirely by the propaganda of the Trading Companies, which approached Indian politics and states under the influence of the Colonial System of Western Expansion.” He proposes the radical revision of current theories, replacing them with one centered upon a reading of Mughal political culture which the Company misunderstood, manipulated, and deliberately misrepresented to Britons back home and to future generations.