Introduction

Indian Diamonds 109
It is obvious, I think, that the theft of diamonds which are more or less clearly
identified as Indian, is the feature of a number of texts, at least from the publication
of The Moonstone onwards. Through the diamonds as stolen goods, India enters
the text and invariably connects the domestic problem with the reality of British
imperial possessions. It is therefore necessary to look at the underlying pattern
of imperialist discourse and the extent to which the domestic genre of detective
fiction is concerned with and dependent on imperial relations.
Orientalism in Literature
Empire relies on “cultural representations” (Boehmer 5) to persist in imagination
and reality. Geographical expansion has to be supplemented by a general cultural
climate which sustains imperial domination and supports its foundation. Literature
in general, and in the nineteenth century the novel in particular, supported and
perpetuated imperialist ideology (Said, Culture 74). The representation of the colony
and the metropolis as realms of the Other and the self transports the intrinsic
difference between the two spaces. The writing of empire rationalises and justifies
domination by ascribing a set of notions to these spaces which are presented as
natural and unchanging. Orientalism as a discipline and system of ideas defines the
Orient as the utter and deviant opposite of the Occident and western civilisation
(Said, Orientalism 58). In the logic of binary oppositions the Other comprises the
deviances from the colonisers’ auto-stereotype of masculinity, rationality, civilisation
and individuality. The Other is imagined as deficient, as “less human, less
civilized, as child or savage, wild man, animal, or headless mass” (Boehmer 76).
These ascriptions feed on projections and imaginations which are, in the example
of the Victorian novel, continually bequeathed as a rigid structure to later texts.
Edward Said argues that this ideology is taken for granted and underlies even the
most domestic plots as a silent and basic assumption (Culture 74-75). This system
of ascriptions is not confined to the Orient, but any culture or social group can be
thus othered and understood as inferior and opposite to one’s own.
Orientalism as an academic discipline was directly implicated in the imperial
project. Amassing knowledge on the Other and ordering it along western scientific
models is essential in governing them. Accordingly, Said describes the writing of
the Déscription de l’Égypte in the wake of Napoleon’s conquest as the quintessential
Orientalist project. It achieves the retelling of history from a western point of view
and consolidates power through a renaming and reinterpretation of the other
culture (86-87).
In my analysis of the texts, I will draw on Said’s thesis that the idea of empire
is an all-pervading element in Victorian novels and constitutes an integral, albeit
muted element. The importance of knowing and charting the Oriental Other in
order to gain power over them, which Said points out, also surfaces in studies on
the literary detective and his imperial predecessors. The specialised and scrutinis-