THE EMPIRE WRITES BACK

Part 1: Indian views on Britain and Empire, 1810-1915, from the British Library, London

What did Indian writers make of the sprawling metropolis of London? How do their views compare with those of English observers seeing India for the first time? What did they make of the great imperial project?

This microfilm collection makes available seventeen memoirs recording the views and experiences of Indian visitors to Britain. Many of these works are extremely rare and most were published in India (in Bombay, Calcutta, Lahore, Madras, Poona, and Sukkur).

Titles include:

- J Nauroji & H Mihrbanji, Journal of a residence of two years and a half in Great Britain (1841)
- Rajarama Chatrapati, Diary of the late Rajah of Kolhapoor during his visit to Europe in 1870 (1872)
- Ramesachandra Datta, Three years in Europe (1873 and 1890 editions)
- Pothum Janakamma Raghavayya, Pictures of England (1876)
- Nagandra Natha Ghosha, Indian views of England (1877)
- Pratapachandra Majumdar, Sketches of a tour around the world (1884)
- Trailokyanatha Mukharji, A visit to Europe (1889)
- Samuel Satthianadhan, Four years in an English university (1890)
- Lala Baijnath, England and India: Being impressions of persons and things English and Indian (1893)
- Nandalala Dasa, Reminiscences - English and Australian, being an account of a visit to England, Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania, Ceylon, etc (1893)
- Bahramji Mehrbanji Malabari, The Indian eye on English life (1893) (London and Bombay editions included)
- Jhinda Ram, My trip to Europe (1893)
- Thomas Pandiyan, England to an Indian eye (1897)
- G P Pillai, London and Paris through Indian spectacles (1897)
- Mary Bhore, Some impressions of England (1900)
- Ghanasyama Nikantha Nadkarni, Journal of a visit to Europe in 1896 (1903)
- Awatsingh Mahtabsingh, Something about my trips to Europe (1905)

There are descriptions of university life and medical instruction. There are accounts of cultural and trade exhibitions and of English domestic life. London is compared with other European capitals and the British Empire is compared with rival European empires. Some of the authors are grateful for the personal opportunities that being a part of the Empire affords, others are destitute in the street as outcasts of Empire. Issues of race and class are also fully explored and the experience of being an Indian in England in the nineteenth century is vividly depicted. We have also taken the opportunity to include a number of important related works.

Charles Stewart’s The travels of Mirza Abu Talib Khan in Asia, Africa and Europe (1810) and Mary Carpenter’s Last days in England of Rajah Rammghun Roy (1866) (London and Calcutta editions included) both describe the experiences of early travellers to England.

Ramesachandra Datta’s England and India: a record of progress during a hundred years, 1785-1885 (1897) and Joseph Salter’s The Asiatic in England (1873) and the East in the West (1896) describe Anglo-Asian experiences in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with much on life at the lower end of the scale.

For Malabari we have also included a number of his other publications including Infant marriage and enforced widowhood in India (1887), An appeal from the daughters of India (1890) and the journal that he edited, East and West (1895).

Similarly, we feature a number of additional works by and about Samuel Satthianadhan such as England and India (lectures given in Madras, 1886), Theosophy: An appeal to my countrymen (1893), and A holiday trip to Europe and America (1897).

The impact of India on England is suggested by Frank Cundall’s Reminiscences of the Colonial and Indian Exhibition (1886).

We are greatly indebted to the work of Kusoom Vadgama, Rozina Visram, Mary Louise Pratt, Antoinette Burton and Shompa Lahiri who have done much to uncover this literature. It forms an essential complement to the writings about India and Empire provided in our Colonial Discourses series.