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Among the dissenters: reciprocal ethnography in nineteenth-century Inglistan*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2009

Nile Green
Nile Green
Affiliation:
Department of History, Bunche Hall, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA E-mail: green@history.ucla.edu
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Abstract

The emergence of ‘fieldwork’ as a technique for gathering knowledge was part of a reciprocal process of two-way observation between Europeans and Asians. The methods of language-learning, cultural immersion, and note-taking that were eventually canonized in the discipline of anthropology were no more unique to Europeans than the writing of the learned travelogues through which they first found expression. In the early nineteenth century, Asian travellers were observing and taking notes on the English at home as part of a reciprocal pattern of exchanges made possible by the new commercial and diplomatic contacts of the age. This thesis is demonstrated by using the Persian travel diary made by an Iranian ‘fieldworker’ to reconstruct in detail the methods and conditions of his ‘ethnographic’ tour of the English West Country in 1818. In the reversal of a familiar trope of European ethnography, the diary described meetings with the ‘sects’ and ‘mystics’ of the English provinces in the very same years that saw the first English accounts of Persia religiosa. Using numerous contemporary English sources to build on the Persian field diary, the article reveals the multiple patterns of reciprocity by which knowledge was gained through a ‘scientific’ epistemology of observation and experience. From Unitarianism to Baha’ism, the collaborative knowledge so created led to changing intellectual attitudes among both European and Asian scholar-travellers.

The well informed of all denominations are the most liberal.

(W. J. Fox, A sermon on free inquiry in matters of religion, 1815)

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , July 2009 , pp. 293 - 315
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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References

1 Wright, Denis, The English amongst the Persians during the Qajar Period 1787–1921, London: Heinemann, 1977Google Scholar; and idem, ‘British Travelers in Qajar Persia and their Books’, in Elton Daniel (ed.), Society and culture in Qajar Iran: studies in honor of Hafez Farmayan, Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda, 2002.

2 Cf. Anthony Pagden, The fall of natural man: the American Indian and the origins of comparative ethnology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.

3 On the genesis of Malcolm’s work, see A. K. S. Lambton, ‘Major-General Sir John Malcolm (1769–1833) and The History of Persia’, Iran: Journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies, 33, 1995, pp. 97–109.

4 Kinglake, Alexander, Eothen, London: Henry Frowde, 1906Google Scholar [1844], p. 7.

5 Juan R. I. Cole, ‘Invisible Occidentalism: eighteenth-century Indo-Persian constructions of the West’, Iranian Studies 25, 3–4, 1992, p. 15. See also Michael H. Fisher, Counterflows to colonialism: Indian travellers and settlers in Britain, 1600–1857, Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004; Gulfishan Khan, Indian Muslim perceptions of the West during the eighteenth century, Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 142–76; and Mohammad Tavakoli-Targhi, Refashioning Iran: Orientalism, Occidentalism, and Historiography, New York: Palgrave, 2001.

6 As Roxanne Euben has noted, ‘paradoxically, attempts to deconstruct these mechanisms of domination have tended to reproduce this structure and organization’, such that ‘the West is continually reconstituted as epicenter’ (Roxanne L. Euben, Journeys to the other shore: Muslim and Western travelers in search of knowledge, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006, p. 2). Kumkum Chatterjee and Clement Hawes, eds., Europe observed: multiple gazes in early modern encounters, Cranbury, NJ: Bucknell University Press, 2008, also ‘seeks to make such casual invocations of a supposedly invincible Europe obsolete’ (p. 2).

7 On the later European institutionalization of fieldwork and its role in colonial control, see Nicholas B. Dirks, ‘The crimes of colonialism: anthropology and the textualization of India’, in Peter Pels and Oscar Salemink, eds., Colonial subjects: essays on the practical history of anthropology, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1999; and George W. Stocking, ‘The ethnographer’s magic: fieldwork in British anthropology from Tylor to Malinowski’, in The ethnographer’s magic and other essays in the history of anthropology, Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992.

8 On the Iranian mission to British India, which reciprocated the first British embassy to Iran, see Ghulām Husayn Mīrzā Sālih, Tārīkh-i sifārat-i Hājjī Khalīl Khān va Muhammad Nabī Khān bih Hindūstān (History of the embassy to India of Hajji Khalil Khan and Muhammad Nabi Khan), Tehran: Kavīr, 1379/2000. For a Persian account of Central Asia at the same time as Russian exploration and description of the region, see Muhammad Hasan Kāvūsī ‘Irāqī, ed., Murāsalāt dar bāb-i Āsiyā-yi Markazī (Correspondence concerning Central Asia), Tehran: Mu’assasah-i Chāp va Intishārāt-i Vizārat-i Umūr-i Khārija, 1373/1995. On early Franco-Iranian exchanges, see Iradj Amini, Napoleon and Persia: Franco-Persian relations under the First Empire, Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 1999.

9 The fullest account of his career is interspersed in Farīd Qāsimī, Avvalīnhā-yi matbū‘āt-e Īrān (The beginnings of the Iranian press), Tehran: Nashr-e Ābī, 1383/2004, pp. 9–141.

10 For background, see Husayn Mahbūbī Ardakānī, ‘Duvvumīn kārvān-e ma‘rifat (The second karavan of knowledge)’, Yaghmā, 18, 1965, pp. 592–8; and Denis Wright, The Persians amongst the English: episodes in Anglo-Persian history, London: I.B. Tauris, 1985.

11 Cf. Abū al-Hasan Khān Īlchī, Hayratnāma: safarnāma-yi Mīrzā Abū al-Hasan Khān Īlchī bih Landan (The book of wonder: the travelogue of Ambassador Mirza Abu al-Hasan to London), Tehran: Mu’assasa-yi Khadāmāt-i Farhangī-yi Rasā, 1364/1986; and William Price, Journal of the British Embassy to Persia; also a dissertation upon the antiquities of Persepolis, London: Kingsbury, Parbury, and Allen, 1825.

12 The original manuscript (Bodleian Library, Ouseley MS 390) was subsequently annotated and printed by another member of the Ouseley embassy, William Price (1780–1830), as Persian dialogues: composed for the author by Mirza Sauli, of Shiraz, Worcester: n.p., 1822.

13 Bound into the same volume as Bodleian Library, Ouseley MS 390 and of forty folios in length, the Persian manuscript of Salih’s Iranian journey contains a description of the countryside, towns, buildings, and markets that lay along the route through which the embassy passed on its journey between Isfahan and Tehran. On later ‘internal’ ethnographies, see Arash Khazeni, ‘On the eastern borderlands of Iran: the Baluch in nineteenth-century Persian travel books’, History Compass, 5, 4, 2007, pp. 1399–1411.

14 Husayn Mahbūbī Ardakānī, Tārīkh-i mu‘assasāt-i tamaddonī-yi jadīd dar Īrān (The history of modern institutions in Iran), 3 vols., Tehran: Anjuman-i Dānishjūyān-i Dānishgāh-yi Tihrān, 1354/1975.

15 On Salih’s printer’s apprenticeship under Richard Watts, see Nile Green, ‘Journeymen, middlemen: travel trans-culture, and technology in the origins of Muslim printing’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 41, 2, 2009.

16 Ja‘far, for example, later served as ambassador to Istanbul, while Salih later led or accompanied missions to Georgia, St Petersburg, Paris, and London. For summaries of their later careers, see Mahdī Bāmdād, Sharh-i hāl-i rijāl-i Īrān dar qarn-i 12, 13, 14 hijrī (Notices of the lives of Iranian notables in the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries AH), 6 vols, Tehran: Kitabfurushi-ye Zawar, 1347/1969, vol. 1, pp. 241–4 and vol. 2, pp. 175–9.

17 Details of these and similar scientific books are found in Akram Mas‘ūdī, ed., Fihrist-i kitābhā’ī chāp-i sangī-yi Īrān mawjūd dar kitābkhāna-yi Dānishgāh-yi Tihrān (A catalogue of Iranian lithographic textbooks in the Tehran University Library), Tehran: Intishārāt-i Dānishgāh-yi Tihrān, 1379s/2001, pp. 136–9; and Sadīqa Saltānīfar, ed., Fihrist-i kutub-i darsī-yi chāp-i sangī mawjūd dar Kitābkhāna-yi Millī-yi Jumhūrī-yi Islāmī-yi Īrān (A catalogue of Iranian lithographic textbooks in the National Library of the Islamic Republic of Iran), Tehran: Intishār-i Kitābkhāna-yi Millī, 1376s/1998, pp. 93–4.

18 See, e.g., Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Indo-Persian travels in the age of discoveries, 1400–1800, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

19 Nile Green, ‘Paper modernity? Notes on an Iranian industrial tour, 1818’, Iran: Journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies, 46, 2008, pp. 277–84.

20 Muhammad Gulbin, ed., Safarnāmah-yi Khusraw Mīrzā ba-Pīturizbūrgh va tārīkh-i zindagānī-yi ‘Abbās Mīrzā Nā’ib al-Saltāna bih qalam-i Hājjī Mīrzā Mas‘ūd (Travelogue of Khusraw Mirza to St Petersburg and a history of the life of ‘Abbas Mirza Na’ib al-Saltana, written by Hajji Mirza Mas‘ud), Tehran: Mustawfī, 1349/1970, especially pp. 327–9 on Russia’s religious groups.

21 The same point may be made with regard to the reciprocity of early Russian ethnography of the Islamic world and Islamic ethnography of Russia from the early 1800s. See Izabela Kalinowska, Between East and West: Polish and Russian nineteenth-century travel to the Orient, Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2004, ch. and Gulbin, Safarnāmah-yi Khusraw Mīrzā.

22 This fieldwork among small-town dissenters sets Salih apart from slightly earlier Persophone Indian travellers to England, whose travels were primarily metropolitan and whose accounts of English religion were of a generalizing and theological rather than ethnographic nature. See Mirza Itesa Modeen, Shigurf namah i velaët: or, excellent intelligence concerning Europe, London: Parbury, Allen & Co., 1827, pp. 95–120, for the Mirza’s standardizing account of English religion. Abu Talib showed still less interest in religion: see Mirza Abu Taleb Khan, The travels of Mirza Abu Taleb Khan in Asia, Africa, and Europe, 2 vols., London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1814. I have deliberately kept out of the analysis Iranian and Indian travellers who wrote for an English-speaking audience, such as Joseph Emin or Dean Mahomet.

23 On Middle Eastern scholarly travels to Italy and France at this time, see Alain Silvera, ‘The first Egyptian student mission to France under Muhammad Ali’, Middle Eastern Studies, 16, 2, 1980, pp. 1–22.

24 Mīrazā Sālih Shīrāzi, Majmū‘a-yi safarnāmabā-yi Mīrazā Sālih Shīrāzi (Collection of the travelogues of Mirza Salih Shirazi), ed., Ghulām Husayn Mīrzā Sālih Tehran: Nashr-i Tārīkh-i Īrān, 1364/1985, pp. 321–4 on the Oxford visit. See also Nile Green, ‘The Madrasas of Oxford, 1818’, The Oxford Magazine, 253, 2006, pp. 13–14; and idem, ‘Parnassus of the evangelical empire: oriental learning in the English university, 1800–1850’ (forthcoming). On earlier Indo-Muslim visitors to Oxford, see Tavakoli-Targhi, Refashioning Iran, ch. 2.

25 On the coach route, see A Chip of the Old Block [i.e. William Bayzand], ‘Coaching in and out of Oxford from 1820 to 1840 [Ms. Bod. Add. A. 262]’, in Collectanea, fourth series, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905, p. 272. The Plough Hotel was demolished in the early 1980s, though an etching of this classic Regency coaching inn as it appeared in the Iranians’ time is found in Samuel Young Griffith, New historical description of Cheltenham and its vicinity, London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown & Green, 1826 [unpaginated].

26 Centre for Oxfordshire Studies, Central Library, Oxford, Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 17 October 1818.

27 Shīrāzī, Safarnāmahā-yi Mīrzā Sālih Shīrāzī, pp. 169–70; Whitgift School Archives, Croydon, Papers of Freddie Percy, SM/17/1, ‘John Bisset’. I am grateful to William G. Wood, Archivist of the Whitgift School, for providing access to this material.

28 Shīrāzī, Safarnāmahā-yi Mīrzā Sālih Shīrāzī, p. 328.

29 On Morier, see Henry McKenzie Johnston, Ottoman and Persian odysseys: James Morier, creator of Hajji Baba, London: British Academic Press, 1998.

30 On the debate over the ‘real’ Hajji Baba’s identity, see Abbas Amanat, ‘Hajji Baba of Ispahan’, Encyclopaedia Iranica, http://www.iranica.com (consulted 13 March 2009); and Henry McKenzie Johnston, ‘Hajji Baba and Mirza Abul Hasan Khan: a conundrum’, Iran: Journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies, 33, 1995, pp. 93–6.

31 Urdank, Albion, Religion and society in a Cotswold Vale: Nailsworth, Gloucestershire, 1780–1865, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990Google Scholar.

32 Shīrāzī, Safarnāmahā-yi Mīrzā Sālih Shīrāzī, p. 329.

33 On the road and the Nailsworth mills, see Betty Mills, A Portrait of Nailsworth, Nailsworth: B.A. Hathaway, 1985, pp. 13–14 and Urdank, Religion and society, pp. 43, 170–207.

34 Shīrāzī, Safarnāmahā-yi Mīrzā Sālih Shīrāzī, p. 329.

35 I have been unable to trace any record of this woman (or persons with similar names) in the Methodist Archives and Research Centre at Manchester University. I am, however, grateful to Dr Peter Nockles for assistance.

36 Shīrāzī, Safarnāmahā-yi Mīrzā Sālih Shīrāzī, p. 329.

37 Gloucester Herald, 21 November 1818.

38 Shīrāzī, Safarnāmahā-yi Mīrzā Sālih Shīrāzī, p. 329.

39 Carter, Grayson, Anglican evangelicals: Protestant secessions from the via media, c.1800–1850, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 143.

40 Shīrāzī, Safarnāmahā-yi Mīrzā Sālih Shīrāzī, pp. 329–30. For Salih’s description of Gloucester itself, see pp. 330–1.

41 Green, ‘Journeymen’.

42 Shīrāzī, Safarnāmahā-yi Mīrzā Sālih Shīrāzī, p. 330.

43 Ibid., p. 331.

44 Ibid.

45 Michael H. Fisher, ‘Representing “his” women: Mirza Abu Talib Khan’s 1801 “Vindication of the liberties of Asiatic women”’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 37, 2, 2000, pp. 215–37; and Mohammad Tavakoli-Targhi, ‘Eroticizing Europe’, in Daniel, Society and culture, pp. 311–46.

46 Jeremy and Margaret Collingwood, Hannah More, Oxford: Lion Publishing, 1990; and Patricia Demers, The world of Hannah More, Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1996.

47 Demers, Hannah More, p. 109. On other female religious leaders in this period, see Deborah M. Valenze, Prophetic sons and daughters: female preaching and popular religion in industrial England, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985.

48 Collingwood and Collingwood, Hannah More, p. 99.

49 Shīrāzī, Safarnāmahā-yi Mīrzā Sālih Shīrāzī, p. 331; Collingwood and Collingwood, Hannah More, p. 137.

50 Shīrāzī, Safarnāmahā-yi Mīrzā Sālih Shīrāzī, p. 332.

51 William Roberts, Memoirs of the life of Hannah More, 2 vols. London: R.B. Seeley & W. Burnside, 1836, pp. 246–7.

52 Iraj Afshar, ‘Book translations as a cultural activity in Iran, 1806–1896’, Iran: Journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies, 41, 2003, pp. 279–89.

53 Gregory, Olinthus, Letters to a friend, on the evidences, doctrines, and duties of the Christian religion, 9th edn, LondonGoogle Scholar: H.G. Bohn, 1851 [1815], and idem, A treatise of mechanics, 2 vols. London: n.p., 1806.

54 Skinner, James, Hannah More: Christian philanthropist; a centenary biography, London: Thynne & Co. Ltd, 1934Google Scholar, p. 96.

55 More, Hannah, Practical piety, 2 vols., 3rd edn, LondonGoogle Scholar: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1811; see, in particular, ch. 2, ‘Christianity – a practical principle’.

56 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 40.

57 On similar Baptist propagandism in Bengal at this time, see E. Daniel Potts, British Baptist missionaries in India, 1793–1837: the history of Serampore and its missions, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967.

58 Revd Samuel Lee, BD, Controversial tracts on Christianity and Mohammedanism, by H. Martyn and some of the most eminent writers of Persia, translated and explained; to which is appended an additional tract, London: W. Nicol, 1828, p. cxviii.

59 For correspondence in Salih’s own hand concerning his personal wine imports to London, see The National Archives, Kew, (formerly Public Record Office), FO 60/21 and 60/23.

60 Asad, Talal, Genealogies of religion: discipline and reasons of power in Christianity and Islam, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993Google Scholar.

61 Farīdūn Ādamiyyat, Amīr Kabīr va Īrān (Amir Kabir and Iran), Tehran: Intishārāt-e Khwārazmī, 1385s/2007, pp. 423–60.

62 ‘The Persian princes’, The Times, 7 December 1818, p. 3.

63 Ibid.

64 Tavakoli-Targhi, Refashioning Iran, 2001, ch. 3.

65 Shīrāzī, Safarnāmahā-yi Mīrzā Sālih Shīrāzī, pp. 332–5. Cf. Jonathan Barry and Kenneth Morgan, eds., Reformation and revival in eighteenth-century Bristol, Bristol: Bristol Record Society, 1994.

66 Alice Harford, ed., Annals of the Harford Family, London: Westminster Press, 1909; Shīrāzī, Safarnāmahā-yi Mīrzā Sālih Shīrāzī, p. 333. On the interior design of other houses that Salih visited, see Shīrāzī, Safarnāmahā-yi Mīrzā Sālih Shīrāzī, pp. 313–15.

67 Reprinted in The Times, 7 December 1818, p. 3.

68 Ibid.

69 On More covering the expenses of Louisa, ‘the Mad Maid of the Haystack’, at Mr Henderson’s Asylum in Bristol, see Collingwood and Collingwood, Hannah More, pp. 65–6. On Evangelicalism and emancipation in Bristol, see Madge Dresser, Slavery obscured: the social history of the slave trade in an English provincial port, London: Continuum, 2001, pp. 130–2.

70 Mathews Bristol guide: being a complete ancient and modern history of the city of Bristol, the Hotwells and Clifton; fifth edition, revised and carefully corrected to the present time, Bristol: Printed and sold by Joseph Mathews, and sold by the booksellers, 1819, p. 161.

71 Ibid., p. 162.

72 Shīrāzī, Safarnāmahā-yi Mīrzā Sālih Shīrāzī p. 334.

73 Mathews Bristol guide, p. 162. On the many other charitable foundations in Bristol at this time, including dispensaries, alms houses, and girls’ orphanages, see ibid., pp. 155–65.

74 Shīrāzī, Safarnāmahā-yi Mīrzā Sālih Shīrāzī, pp. 332–3.

75 Details on Rowe’s career are found in Bristol Record Office, records of the Lewin’s Mead Unitarian Congregation, and in his obituary in The Christian reformer, or, Unitarian magazine and review 1, 1834.

76 O. M. Griffiths, ‘Side lights on the history of Presbyterian-Unitarianism from the records of Lewin’s Mead Chapel, Bristol’, Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society, 6, 2, 1936, pp. 116–29.

77 Griffiths, ‘Side lights’, p. 117.

78 Mathews Bristol guide, p. 146.

79 Rowe, John, A letter from an old Unitarian to a young Calvinist, Bristol: John Evans & Co., 1816Google Scholar, p. 22.

80 Ibid., p. 23. In the year of Salih’s Bristol fieldwork, this critique of Islam as ‘superstition’ rather than ‘true religion’ also featured in ‘On the general prevalence of superstition’, The Monthly Repository of Theology and General Literature, 13, 1818, pp. 313–14.

81 Rowe, John, Scripture and reason the only test of Christian truth: a sermon, LondonGoogle Scholar: n.p., 1817.

82 Shīrāzī, Safarnāmahā-yi Mīrzā Sālih Shīrāzī, p. 334. In the edition of Salih’s diary prepared by Humāyūn Shahīdī (Guzārish-e safar-e Mīrzā Sālih Shīrāzī (Kāzarūnī) (The travel report of Mirza Salih Shirazi Kazaruni), Tehran: Rāh-e Naw, 1362/1983), pp. 350–1, the name Carpenter (karpintar) is variously misread as karinstar and karpinaz. On Carpenter’s career, see R. L. Carpenter, ed., Memoirs of the life of the Rev. Lant Carpenter, LLD, with selections from his correspondence, Bristol: Philip and Evans, 1842.

83 Griffiths, ‘Side lights’, p. 120.

84 See Carpenter’s early work, Discourses on the genuineness, integrity, and public version of the New Testament, Exeter: P. Hedgeland, 1809, in which he concluded his vindication of the Gospels’ genuineness with a long quotation from Paley (pp. 18–19).

85 Carpenter, Lant, Proof from Scripture that God, even the Father, is the only true God, and the only proper object of religious worship, ExeterGoogle Scholar: R. Cullum, 1812, pp. 1–2, which cites John 17:3 as the basis of its evidence and continues its anti-Trinitarian theme throughout the following pages. On the faithfulness of the Unitarians to ‘original’ apostolic Christianity, see Lant Carpenter, The primitive Christian faith: a discourse delivered in the evening service at the opening of the chapel in York Street, St James’s Square, London, December the 19th, 1824, London: Rowland Hunter, 1825.

86 Peter B. Godfrey, ‘Joseph Hunter, 1783–1861’, Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society, 18, 2, 1984, pp. 17–23.

87 Ibid., p. 20; and Joseph Hunter, A tribute to the memory of the Rev. John Simpson, contained in a sermon delivered at the Unitarian chapel in Bath, on Sunday August 29th, 1813, Bath: Richard Cruttwell, n.d. [1813], pp. 9, 34.

88 Fox, W. J., A sermon on free inquiry in matters of religion, LondonGoogle Scholar: R. Hunter and D. Eaton, 1815, pp. 21–2.

89 On the centrality of taraqqi to Salih and other nineteenth-century Iranian travellers, see Monica M. Ringer, ‘The quest for the secret of strength in Iranian nineteenth-century travel literature: rethinking tradition in the safarnameh’, in Nikki R. Keddie and Rudi Matthee, eds., Iran and the surrounding world: interactions in culture and cultural politics, Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2002, pp. 146–61.

90 Hunter, Revd Joseph, The connection of Bath with the literature and science of England, BathGoogle Scholar: R.E. Peach, 1853, especially pp. 45–50. On Salih’s meeting with Herschel, see Shīrāzī, Safarnāmahā-yi Mīrzā Sālih Shīrāzī, pp. 340–4. On the impact of European astronomy in Qajar Iran, see Kamran Arjomand, ‘The emergence of scientific modernity in Iran: controversies surrounding astrology and modern astronomy in the mid-nineteenth century’, Iranian Studies, 30, 1997, pp. 5–24.

91 Shīrāzī, Safarnāmahā-yi Mīrzā Sālih Shīrāzī, pp. 355–7. On Herschel, see Edward S. Holden, Sir William Herschel: his life and works, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1881, especially pp. 113–14 and 212–25 on the year of his meeting with Salih.

92 Hunter, Joseph, The deist, the Christian, the Unitarian: a Sermon delivered at the chapel in Trim-Street, Bath, on Sunday November 28th, 1819, Bath: Richard Cruttwell, 1819Google Scholar, p. 15.

93 Shīrāzī, Safarnāmahā-yi Mīrzā Sālih Shīrāzī, p. 336.

94 Quoted in Johnston, Ottoman and Persian odysseys, ch. 16.

95 Sir Francis Younghusband, Modern Mystics, London: J. Murray, 1935. On other Anglo-Indian cosmopolitan exchanges, see Leela Gandhi, Affective communities: anticolonial thought, fin-de-siècle radicalism, and the politics of friendship, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006.

96 Killingley, Dermot, Rammohun Roy in Hindu and Christian tradition, Newcastle upon Tyne: Grevatt & Grevatt, 1993Google Scholar; and Kissory Chand Mitter and Rammohun Roy, Rammohun Roy and Tuhfatul Muwahhiddin, Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi, 1975.

97 For details of Ram Mohan’s Bristol circle, see Mary Carpenter, ed., The last days in England of the Rajah Rammohun Roy, London: Trübner & Co., 1866.

98 Long extracts from the sermon appeared in ‘Rajah Rammohun Roy’, The Christian reformer; or, new evangelical miscellany, 19, 1833, pp. 494–8.

99 Claude Lévi-Strauss, Tristes tropiques, trans. John and Doreen Weightman, New York: Atheneum, 1973, p. 85.

100 Cf. Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial eyes: travel writing and transculturation, New York: Routledge, 1992.

101 Gandhi, Affective communities. For a nuanced survey of changing Indian attitudes towards Europeans, see Tapan Raychaudhuri, ‘Europe in India’s xenology: the nineteenth-century record’, Past and Present, 137, 1992, pp. 156–82.

102 For the classic statement on science and experience, see Charles B. Schmitt, ‘Experience and experiment: a comparison of Zabarella’s view with Galileo’s in De motu’, Studies in the Renaissance, 16, 1969, pp. 80–138.

103 My thanks to Roxanne Euben for drawing my attention to this preface.

104 Anon., ‘Abul-Bahā in Oxford, December 1912, Oxford: n.p., n.d. [1987]. On the emergence of Baha‘ism, see Mangol Bayat, Mysticism and dissent: socioreligious thought in Qajar Iran, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1982; and Juan R. I. Cole, Modernity and the millennium: the genesis of the Baha’i Faith in the nineteenth-century Middle East, New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.

105 The visit and speech were reported in the Oxford Times, 3 January 1913; also reprinted in Anon., ‘Abul-Bahā.