England Re-Oriented
How Central and South Asian Travelers Imagined the West, 1750–1857

Between 1750 and 1857, westward-bound Central and South Asian travelers connected imperial Britain to Persian Indo-Eurasia by performing queer masculinities.

Humberto Garcia (Author)

9781108797252, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 3 November 2022

366 pages
22.7 x 15.1 x 1.8 cm, 0.54 kg

'Tracking the experiences of seven remarkable Islamicate travelers in Georgian and Victorian Britain, Garcia devises new strategies for analyzing intercultural performance, hybrid textuality, colonial masculinity, and imperial display that will set a new bar for archival subtlety and theoretical acumen among scholars of global cultural and social exchange.' Daniel O'Quinn, University of Guelph

What does the love between British imperialists and their Asian male partners reveal about orientalism's social origins? To answer this question, Humberto Garcia focuses on westward-bound Central and South Asian travel writers who have long been forgotten or  dismissed by scholars. This bias has obscured how Joseph Emin, Sake Dean Mahomet, Shaykh I'tesamuddin, Abu Talib Khan, Abul Hassan Khan, Yusuf Khan Kambalposh, and Lutfullah Khan found in their conviviality with Englishwomen and men a strategy for inhabiting a critical agency that appropriated various media to make Europe commensurate with Asia. Drama, dance, masquerades, visual art, museum exhibits, music, postal letters, and newsprint inspired these genteel men to recalibrate Persianate ways of behaving and knowing. Their cosmopolitanisms offer a unique window on an enchanted third space between empires in which Europe was peripheral to Islamic Indo-Eurasia. Encrypted in their mediated homosocial intimacies is a queer history of orientalist mimic men under the spell of a powerful Persian manhood.

Introduction: Why Re-Orient?
1. The British Raj's Mimic Men: Historicizing Genteel Masculinities across Empires 2. A Bluestocking Romance: Contesting British Military Masculinity in Joseph Emin's Letters and Memoir
3. The Theater of Imperial Sovereignty: Entertaining Diplomatic Failure in Mirza Sheikh I'tesamuddin's London Travels
4. Loving Strangers in Ireland: Indo-Celtic Masculinities in the Travels of Dean Mahomet and Mirza Abu Taleb Khan
5. Female Bodies in Motion: Performing Sexual Revolution in Mirza Abu Taleb Khan's Theatrical Metropolis
6. Dreaming with Fairyland: Virtual Magic in Yusuf Khan Kambalposh's Travels to Victorian London
7. The Making of a Munshi Patriot: Lutfullah Khan, the Indian Mutiny, and Victorian Newsprint
Epilogue: Mirza Abul Hasan Khan, James Morier, and the Queering of Hajji Baba
Appendix A: Abu Taleb's “Treatise on Ethics”
Appendix B: Excerpts from Abu Taleb Khan's Diw?n-i-T?lib
Appendix C: Letter by moonshee Lutfullah

Subject Areas: Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], Asian history [HBJF], European history [HBJD]