Europe’s India: Words, People, Empires, 1500–1800

415 Pages·2017·4.11 MB·English

by  Sanjay Subrahmanyam

EU ROPE’S INDIA

Eu rope’s India
WORDS, PEOPLE, EMPIRES, 1500–1800
Sanjay Subrahmanyam
Cambridge, Mas sac hu setts
London, Eng land
2017
Copyright © 2017 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of Amer i ca
First printing
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, author.
Title: Eu rope’s India : words, people, empires, 1500–1800 /
Sanjay Subrahmanyam.
Description: Cambridge, Mas sa chu setts : Harvard University Press, 2017. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016036668 | ISBN 9780674972261 (alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Europe— Civilization— Indic influences. |
India— Civilization— European influences. | India— Foreign public
opinion, European— History. | Europeans— Attitudes— History. |
Orientalism— History.
Classification: LCC DS446 S78 2017 | DDC 303.48/240540903— dc23
LC rec ord available at https:// lccn . loc . gov / 2016036668
For Jaivir Singh

C O N T E N T S
PREFACE ix
Introduction: Before and Beyond “Orientalism” 1
1
On the Indo- Portuguese Moment 4 5
2
The Question of “Indian Religion” 1 03
3
Of Coproduction: The Case of James Fraser, 1730–1750 1 44
4
The Transition to Colonial Knowledge 2 11
By Way of Conclusion: On India’s Eur ope 2 86
ABBREVIATIONS 3 27
NOTES 329
INDEX 3 83

P R E F A C E
Kinder statt Inder (“ Children in place of Indians”): this enigmatic and
arresting slogan put forward by a conservative politician was much
on p eople’s minds in the years 2000 and 2001, when I happened to
be visiting and learning German in Berlin. It referred to the per-
ceived threat of a mass invasion by educated Indians, armed with
degrees in computer science and such, who would arrive in Germany
and thereby deprive “real” Germans of their livelihood. Some timid
moves had been made by the German government to give a few visa
concessions to computer scientists, and this was the populist reac-
tion: why not make our own baby computer scientists rather than
importing them from India? At the same time, as part of a small
group of Indians visiting a prestigious academic institution in the
German capital over that year, we were also frequently assured of
how much m iddle- class Germans “loved” India, not only in the ab-
stract and at a distance, but by visiting it regularly, and even by
bringing a strange dish called Currywurst into their gamut of fast
food, or Imbiss. Allegedly in ven ted after World War II, this dish con-
sisted of pork sausage (or Bratwurst) topped with tomato paste (or
ketchup) and seasoned with some odd form of prefabricated curry
powder, which had apparently been obtained from British troops sta-
tioned in Germany.
Perhaps the Currywurst was my Proustian madeleine; at any rate
it did lead me to the first concrete steps toward this proj ect.1 But a
germ of this book may have existed before then, even if somewhat
unconsciously. A c ouple of years earlier, in May 1998, I found my-
self in Kozhikode and Kochi (or, if one prefers, Calicut and Cochin)
ix