| Résumé: | <p>The founding of English schools and universities in an Indian social setting was by any standard a fantastic experiment whose reverberations continue to the present day. Much work has been done, on the one hand on the development of English education in India in relation to the controversies that raged in the nineteenth century between the Orientalist, Utilitarian and Evangelical points of view, and on the other hand on the creation of an English educated elite. While these studies have been wide in scope, there is a curious absence of a study of any kind, general or specialised, of one of India's principal higher education institutions, the Elphinstone College in Bombay. The College is important because in its development it presents all the confusion, the improvisations and problems that plagued the introduction of English education in India. However, while the College faced, in its early history, the general educational problems of the period, it was also unique in that, unlike the Presidency Colleges of Calcutta and Madras, it was established in a predominantly commercial city, and was from its inception something of a stepchild of the city's business magnates. The <u>Shetias</u> were not interested in higher education, but rather in improving their commercial links with the British, and the College was a means to that end. The College's importance is also evident in the significant contribution made by its more intellectual graduates (See Appendix E) to social, religious and political ideas in the latter half of the nineteenth century.</p>
<p>Continued in thesis ...</p>
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