https://jaidevd.com/tags/colonialism/ Recent content in Colonialism on Jaidev's Blog Hugo en-us Sun, 07 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0530 https://jaidevd.com/posts/the-great-arc-review/ Sun, 07 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0530 https://jaidevd.com/posts/the-great-arc-review/ <p>This book invokes two very different reactions in me. The primary reaction is jubilant, almost romantic. The second is gloomy. Imagine you’re watching Oppenheimer: spirits rising until the point the bombs actually drop, after which you feel guilty about having felt good in the first place.</p> <p>The Great Trigonometric Survey was completed over the duration of a better part of a century, across three generations of mathematicians, physicists and surveyors (they were called compasswallahs - I finally see where <a href="https://youtu.be/pRJ2Xw5qwIw">Rohit Gupta</a> gets his pseudonym), and at the cost of thousands of lives. They managed to complete an accurate-to-the-inch survey of much of the subcontinent. The Great Trigonometric Survey afforded to the Raj a much welcome administrative and military efficiency over the whole subcontinent. It is perhaps only a coincidence that the events of 1857 happened only a few years after the conclusion of the survey. But it’s very likely that the Survey was among the many things that irritated Indians. And the results of the Survey certainly played no small part in quelling of the Rebellion.</p>