Begums Thugs and White Mughals
Encyclopedia
Begums Thugs and White Mughals - The Journals Of Fanny Parkes is a 2002 historical travel book based on the journals of Fanny Parkes and edited by William Dalrymple.
Dalrymple's Begums Thugs and White Mughals - The Journals Of Fanny Parkes followed his earlier book White Mughals
.
who was in India from 1822 to 1846. Dalrymple edited Parkes's book, Wanderings of a Pilgrim in Search of the Picturesque.
He wrote the introduction in which he challenged some of the preconceptions of academic studies of travel writing, which attempt to fit all English views on India into the 'Orientalist' template laid down by Edward Said
.
"Fanny was a passionate lover of India and though a woman of her time, in her writing and her travels did her best to understand and build bridges across the colonial divide," he writes "[A]s Colin Thubron has pointed out, ‘To define the genre [of travel writing] as an act of domination – rather than of understanding, respect or even catharsis – is simplistic.
If even the attempt to understand is seen as aggression or appropriation, then all human contact declines into paranoia.’ The attacks made on Fanny highlight the problem with so much that has been written about 18th- and early 19th-century India: the temptation felt by so many critics to project back onto it the stereotypes of Victorian
and Edwardian
behaviour and attitudes with which we are so familiar."
Dalrymple's Begums Thugs and White Mughals - The Journals Of Fanny Parkes followed his earlier book White Mughals
White Mughals
White Mughals is a 2002 history book by William Dalrymple.Its Dalrymple's fifth major book.-Summary:The book is a work of social history about the warm relations that existed between the British and some Indians in the 18th and early 19th century, when one in three British men in India was married...
.
Summary
This is an edited edition of the travel journals of the traveller, Fanny ParkesFanny Parkes
Fanny Parkes was a Welsh travel writer.She was the daughter of Anne and Major Edward Caulfield Archer, 16th Lancers, ADC to Lord Combermere and author of Tours in upper India, and in parts of the Himalaya Mountains; with accounts of the courts of the native princes, &c. She married Charles...
who was in India from 1822 to 1846. Dalrymple edited Parkes's book, Wanderings of a Pilgrim in Search of the Picturesque.
He wrote the introduction in which he challenged some of the preconceptions of academic studies of travel writing, which attempt to fit all English views on India into the 'Orientalist' template laid down by Edward Said
Edward Said
Edward Wadie Saïd was a Palestinian-American literary theorist and advocate for Palestinian rights. He was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and a founding figure in postcolonialism...
.
"Fanny was a passionate lover of India and though a woman of her time, in her writing and her travels did her best to understand and build bridges across the colonial divide," he writes "[A]s Colin Thubron has pointed out, ‘To define the genre [of travel writing] as an act of domination – rather than of understanding, respect or even catharsis – is simplistic.
If even the attempt to understand is seen as aggression or appropriation, then all human contact declines into paranoia.’ The attacks made on Fanny highlight the problem with so much that has been written about 18th- and early 19th-century India: the temptation felt by so many critics to project back onto it the stereotypes of Victorian
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
and Edwardian
Edwardian period
The Edwardian era or Edwardian period in the United Kingdom is the period covering the reign of King Edward VII, 1901 to 1910.The death of Queen Victoria in January 1901 and the succession of her son Edward marked the end of the Victorian era...
behaviour and attitudes with which we are so familiar."