Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T18:21:59.618Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - The Theater of Imperial Sovereignty

Entertaining Diplomatic Failure in Mirza Shaykh I’tesamuddin’s London Travels

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 November 2020

Humberto Garcia
Affiliation:
University of California, Merced
Get access

Summary

Chapter Three argues that the Mughal emissary I’tesamuddin adopts contradictory personas in London parks, theaters, and ballrooms. His Persian travelogue, Shigarf-nāma i Wilāyat [The Wonder-book of the Province/England], narrates his 1767–1769 diplomatic mission to deliver Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II’s letter requesting military assistance from King George III, circumventing the Company’s authority. Because this mission failed after Robert Clive withheld the letter, the Mirza instead writes about London’s theatrical and touristic attractions, including Shakespeare’s King Lear, John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, and a pantomime farce.Enthralled by these shows, he morphs into a black-masked Harlequin in sexual pursuit of white fairy-like Englishwomen – the repertoire by which he judges off-stage Britons as deluded by worldly gain, figured as a Protestant work ethic that values efficient labor and capital accumulation. By the end of his narrative, his identity shifts from an admirer of an Islamized Anglican state to an ascetic Muslim who prefers elite Mughal society and its veiled light brown women.

Type
Chapter
Information
England Re-Oriented
How Central and South Asian Travelers Imagined the West, 1750–1857
, pp. 78 - 122
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×