White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India - Hardcover

Dalrymple, William

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670031844 ISBN 13: 9780670031849

Publisher: Viking Pr, 2003

Synopsis

Traces the practice by British colonizers in India to assume local customs and religious practices, offering a particular focus on James Kirkpatrick, who converted to Islam and spied on the East India Company while having an affair with the great-niece of the region's prime minister. 15,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

William Dalrymple is the author of In Xanadu, City of Djinns, and From the Holy Mountain

Reviews

Dalrymple, author of the bestselling In Xanadu, now anchors himself in India around the turn of the 19th century to focus on James Kirkpatrick, an officer for the East India Company and the British Resident, representing the British government, in the Indian city-state of Hyderabad. Kirkpatrick, who converted to Islam and, after a celebrated and notorious romance, married Khair un-Nissa, the teenage great-niece of the region's prime minister, exemplifies the "White Mughals," British colonialists who "went native." One of the book's strengths is its stunningly detailed depiction of day-to-day life-gardens, food, sexual mores, modes of travel and architecture-and portraits of British governors-general, Indian politicians, their wives and families, and adventurers. It is also an astute study of the political complications Kirkpatrick faced because of his conversion and cross-cultural marriage, and the difficulties his divided loyalties caused him in his role as agent of the increasingly imperialistic British. But most suspenseful is the fate of Kirkpatrick's willful and charismatic wife, just 19 when he died in 1805, and the fate of their children. The twists and turns in the life of their daughter-sent to England when she was five, never to return to India or see her mother again-are fascinating. Dalrymple makes note of the present schism, which some believe unbridgeable, between Western and Eastern civilizations and Kirkpatrick's tale as a counterexample that the two can meet. Illus., maps.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Dalrymple has successfully interwoven history and romance into an absolutely fascinating overview of the often ambivalent and conflicted relationships between British colonists and native Indians. At the center of this compelling slice of social history is the true story of the passionate love affair between Jaynes Kirkpatrick, British ambassador to the Court of Hyderabad and an officer of the East India Company, and a young Muslim princess. Defying convention, Kirkpatrick not only took Khair-unNissa, the great-niece of the region's prime minister, as his mistress, but he eventually converted to Islam and married her, initiating a scandal that rocked two cultures. In addition to recounting this stirring love story, the author also successfully communicates the almost mystical hold that lushly exotic India exerted over quite a few British nationals who "turned Turk" during the colonial era. Dalrymple breaks down the facade of conventional historical stereotypes, painting a richly textured portrait of an imperial India in which racial and cultural relationships were surprisingly fluid and complex. Margaret Flanagan
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Edition details

• Publisher: Viking Pr
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0670031844
• ISBN 13: 9780670031849
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400