The idea of england in eighteenth-century indian travel writing

Abstract

In her article The Idea of England in Eighteenth-century Indian Travel Writing Amrita Satapathy discusses how Dean Mahomed's 1794 The Travels of Dean Mahomed maps out territories of the mind of the colonizer and the colonized, how the narrative redefines contours of two diverse communities and cultures, and determines forms of cultural representations. Mahomed's Travels presented for the first time the idea of England from an Indian immigrant's point of view and altered the prejudiced outlook of early Western travel writings about the East. Mahomed's narrative opened an alternative vista for the wide-eyed Easterner of the world of the West and exposed a life less ordinary lived by inhabitants of Cork, Brighton, and London. Satapathy argues that Mahomed's text is not a reductive account of England; rather, it reduces the colossal idea of England as imagined by Indian writers at the time. � Purdue University.