This unusual study combines two books in one: the 1794 autobiographical travel narrative of an Indian, Dean Mahomet, recalling his years as camp-follower, servant, and subaltern officer in the East India Company’s army (1769 to 1784); and Michael H. Fisher’s portrayal of Mahomet’s sojourn as an insider/outsider in India, Ireland, and England. Emigrating to Britain and living there for over half a century, Mahomet started what was probably the first Indian restaurant in England and then enjoyed a distinguished career as a practitioner of ‘oriental’ medicine, i.e., therapeutic massage and herbal steam bath, in London and the seaside resort of Brighton. This is a fascinating account of life in late eighteenth-century India—the first book written in English by an Indian—framed by a mini-biography of a remarkably versatile entrepreneur.
Travels presents an Indian’s view of the British conquest of India and conveys the vital role taken by Indians in the colonial process, especially as they negotiated relations with Britons both in the colonial periphery and the imperial metropole.
Connoisseurs of unusual travel narratives, historians of England, Ireland, and British India, as well as literary scholars of autobiography and colonial discourse will find much in this book. But it also offers an engaging biography of a resourceful, multidimensional individual.
This unusual study combines two books in one: the 1794 autobiographical travel narrative of an Indian, Dean Mahomet, recalling his years as camp-follower, servant, and subaltern officer in the East India Company’s army (1769 to 1784); and Michael H. Fishe
Cuprins
List of Illustrations
Map
PREFACE
A Text and a Life
Dean Mahomet in Europe (1784-185I)
The Significance of Dean Mahomet’s Work
A Guide to This Volume
Acknowledgments
ONE: THE WORLD OF EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY INDIA
The Mughal Empire and the Regional States
The European East India Companies
The Diverse Origins of the Bengal Army
The New Model: The Sepoy
Sepoy Battalions
The Bengal Army’s European Regiments
Dean Mahomet’s Youth in Bihar (1759-69)
Dean Mahomet as Camp Follower (1769-81)
Dean Mahomet as Bengal Army Officer (1781-82)
Dean Mahomet in Transit (1782-84)
TWO: THE TRAVELS OF DEAN MAHOMET
THREE: DEAN MAHOMET IN IRELAND AND ENGLAND
(I784-1851)
Dean Mahomet Enters Cork
Publication of Travels
Cork Society
Immigration to London
Dean Mahomet Works for a Nabob
The Hindostanee Coffee House (1809-12)
The World of Brighton
Dean Mahomet and Jane Move to Brighton
The Battery House Baths (1815-20)
Mahomed’s Baths (1821-43)
Shifting Self-Presentations
The Indian Method
Shampooing Surgeon to Royalty
Social Position in Brighton
Dean Mahomet’s Legacies
Notes
Glossary
Abbreviations
Bibliography
Index
Despre autor
Michael H. Fisher is Professor of History at Oberlin College. He is the author of A Clash of Cultures: Awadh, the British, and the Mughals (1987) and Indirect Rule in India: Residents and the Residency System, 1764-1858 (1991).