People from India have been travelling to England about as long as Englishmen have been sailing to India, from about 1600 onward. Yet, while from their earliest visits Englishmen began writing travel narratives about what they found in India, to our knowledge, Indians began writing such works about Britain only 150 years later. By the mid-nineteenth century, tens of thousands of Indians had made this voyage, but only thirteen booklength autobiographical accounts of their travels appear to have survived — some were published, others remain in manuscript even today. Consequently, British written representations and knowledge of India rapidly accumulated over the centuries, becoming a powerful base for colonialism; in contrast, Indians travelling to Britain had access to very limited written evidence from their precursors, at least until the early nineteenth century. This chapter considers the two earliest instructional travel guides written by Indians about Britain.

In their books, which they published in London in 1840–41, these authors — Ardaseer Cursetjee (1808-77), Hirjeebhoy Merwanjee (1817–83), and Jehangeer Nowrojee (1821–66) — revealed their particularly complex identities: technically trained professional men who went to Britain as students; proud Indians but of a minority community that originally immigrated from Iran; both foreigners in Britain and loyal subjects of Queen Victoria; ‘the colonized’ who both had pride in the burgeoning Empire but also wanted to lead India toward progress while avoiding British moral flaws. They also wrote for disparate audiences.