Counterflows to Colonialism: Indian Travellers and Settlers in Britain 1600-1857

Indian have been visiting or settling in England since the early 1600s. By the mid-nineteenth century several thousand Indian seamen, servants, scholars, soldiers, women and children, students, diplomats, royalty, merchants, tourists, and settlers were participating in British society. their self-representations and activities influenced British attitudes and policies towards India generally. The context for these interactions and representations was colonialism and its processes, which powerfully altered what being ‘Indian’ meant, culturally and legally. This book surveys and analyses Indian that ventured to Britain over 250 years, their reasons for travels, their diverse lived experiences, and their contrasting representations of colonizer, colonized, and colonial rule. Written in jargon-free prose, this book will enthrall general readers as well as historians. Comprising diverse stories and telling anecdotes, eccentric personalities and peculiar lives, this is an unusually readable work by an eminent historian of India.