Edge of Empire: Conquest and Collecting in the East 1750–1850. Maya Jasanoff

Asaf also personified what was right about Lucknow. For behind its sybaritic, eccentric exterior, something quite amazing was unfolding there. The game of empire was afoot, the Company was moving in. But some of the underdogs were winning. Despite the obvious differences among them, Claude Martin, Asaf ud-Daula, and Antoine Polier were all outsiders to the mainstream of imperial power—displaced persons, and disempowered ones. Yet living on the edge of empire opened up splendid opportunities. In Lucknow, as a collector, each managed to remake himself in extravagant style. Just as Polier collected manuscripts in the manner of a Mughal nobleman, so Martin and Asaf collected European objects to advertise their own Lucknow personæ: self-made combinations of power, wealth, and status. None of them, to be sure, was the typical representative of his own native culture. Yet neither did any of them completely adopt the ways of another culture. Rather, they were partners in a kind of third world, where an Indian environment absorbed European influences, where Europeans assimilated Indian ones. What was right about Lucknow was that it could, at once, be both. The only question was, how long could it last?

1John Prinsep, quoted in J. P. Losty, Calcutta City of Palaces: A Survey of the City in the Days of the East India Company, 1690-1858 (London: British Library, 1990), p. 36.

2William Hodges, Travels in India during the years 1780, 1781, 1782, and 1783 (London, 1794), p. 14.

3“Some account of the transactions in the Province of Oud from the 1st April to the end of June 1776,” OIOC: MSS Eur Orme Vol. 91.

4Matthew Edney, Mapping an Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765-1843 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), p. 9.

5I have compiled these statistics from the “General Register of the Military on the Coast of Coromandel 31 December 1766,” OIOC: L/Mil/11/109; “Register of the Honorable Company’s Effective European Troops on the Coast of Coromandel as they stood on the 31st December 1800,” OIOC: L/Mil/11/120. Religion is not listed, but county of origin is; the majority of Irish troops came from the counties of the south.

6Estimates range from 100,000 to 400,000, even before Plassey: P. J. Marshall, Bengal the British Bridgehead (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 24; Geoffrey Moorhouse, Calcutta: The City Revealed (London: Phoenix, 1998), p. 40.

7“List of Inhabitants etc. who bore arms at the seige of Calcutta, with their fate, whether killed or wounded July 1, 1756,” OIOC: MSS Eur Orme 19, pp. 61-64.

8OIOC: Clive Collection, MSS Eur G37/18, piece 9. This is a rare document, since the British did not compile regular lists of British civilians and protégés in Calcutta until later in the century. Marshall suggests that the names given here were male heads of household (p. 23).

9Many inventories also give full records of estate sales, with buyers’ names and prices. Only sales by Armenians did not seem to be attended by buyers from outside the community. For the years 1761-1770, see OIOC: P/154/62-69.

10Michael H. Fisher, Indirect Rule in India: Residents and the Residency System, 1764-1858 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 43-69.

11OIOC: L/Mil/9/103, Embarkation Lists, 1778-84. The Company had three recruiting stations in Ireland at this time, two of them south of Ulster. C. A. Bayly, Imperial Meridian: The British Empire and the World, 1780-1830 (London: Longman, 1989), p. 127.

12R. M. Bird, Dacoitee in Excelsis; or, the Spoliation of Oude, by the East India Company… (London, 1857), p. 21.

13C. U. A. Aitchison, ed., A Collection of Treaties, Engagements, and Sunnuds Relating to India and Neighbouring Countries, Vol. II: Northwestern Provinces, Oudh, Nipal, Bundelcund and Baghelcund (Calcutta, 1876), pp. 74-78; Purnendu Basu, Oudh and the East India Company, 1785-1801 (Lucknow: Maxwell Co., 1943), pp. 101-2.

14Quoted in Desmond Young, Fountain of the Elephants (London: Collins, 1959), p. 101.

15Jean Deloche, ed., Voyage en Inde du Comte de Modave, 1773-76 (Paris: École Française d’Extrême Orient, 1971), p. 170.

16Abdul Halim Sharar, who believed that “as any community or nation progresses, its diet is the most salient guide to its refinement,” is especially eloquent on food: Abdul Halim Sharar, Lucknow: The Last Phase of an Oriental Culture, trans. E. S. Harcourt and Fakhir Hussain (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1975), pp. 155-68.

17Thomas Twining, Travels in India a Hundred Years Ago (London, 1893), p. 312.

18Muhammad Faiz Bakhsh, Tarikh-i-Farahbakhsh, trans. William Hoey, Memoirs of Delhi and Faizabad (Allahabad, 1889), p. 24.

19Warren Hastings to John Macpherson, December 12, 1781, quoted in Richard B. Barnett, North India Between Empires: Awadh, the Mughals, and the British, 1720-1801 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), pp. 204-5.

20For an itemization of some of Asaf ud-Daula’s expenditures, see “Estimate of the Expences of the Nabob Vizier for the Fussellee Year 1192 [1783-84],” BL: Hastings Papers, Add. MSS 29,093. On a more anecdotal note, see William Blane, An Account of the Hunting Excursions of Asoph ul Doulah, Visier of the Mogul Empire, and Nabob of Oude (London, 1788); Captain Charles Madan, Two Private Letters to a Gentleman in England, from His Son who Accompanied Earl Cornwallis on his Expedition to Lucknow in the Year 1787 (Peterborough, 1788); and “Account of Lucknow,” in Asiatic Annual Register, vol. 2 (London, 1800), “Miscellaneous Tracts,” pp. 97-101.

21Abu Talib Khan, Tahzih ul-ghafilin, trans. William Hoey, History of Asafu’d Daulah Nawab Wazir of Oudh (Allahabad, 1885; repr. Lucknow: Pustak Kendra, 1974), pp. 73-74.

22Twining, pp. 309-10.

23Pigeon-rearing and kite-flying were among the activities banned by the Taliban in 1996, for encouraging “wicked consequences.” Asne Seierstad, The Bookseller of Kabul (Boston: Little, Brown, 2003), p. 81.

24Sharar, pp. 198-201, 94. Sharar also perceptively observed one reason for the popularity of animal fighting in this emasculated city: “Unable to display deeds of valour one looks