Notes

INTRODUCTION

1 Mark Zebrowski, Gold, Silver and Bronze from Mughal India (London, 1997)

2 Edward Strachey, ‘The Romantic Marriage of James Achilles Kirkpatrick, Sometime British Resident at the Court of Hyderabad’, in Blackwood’s Magazine, July 1893.

3 That said, though it has yet to be pulled together into a single coherent thesis, there is a growing body of work which has begun to show the degree to which the East India Company officials of the eighteenth century, like the Portuguese before them, assimilated themselves to Mughal culture. Nearly thirty years ago, Percival Spear’s The Nabobs (Cambridge, 1963) painted a picture of hookah-smoking eighteenth-century Englishmen with Indian bibis living it up in Calcutta, while their counterparts in the backwoods mofussiltowns and more distant centres of Mughal culture made a more profound transition, dressing in Mughal court dress, intermarrying with the Mughal aristocracy and generally attempting to cross cultural boundaries as part of their enjoyment of, and participation in, late Mughal society. Subsequent work has refined this picture. Much of this work has centred on Lucknow, where Desmond Young, Rosie Llewellyn-Jones, Seema Alavi, Muzaffar Alavi, Jean-Marie Lafont and Maya Jasanoff have between them painted a remarkably detailed picture of a hybrid and inclusive culture where men like Claude Martin, Antoine Polier, Benoît de Boigne, John Wombwell and General William Palmer all, to differing extents, embraced that city’s notably hedonistic take on late Mughlai civilisation. Desmond Young, Fountain of Elephants (London, 1959); Rosie Llewellyn-Jones, A Fatal Friendship: The Nawabs, the British and the City of Lucknow (New Delhi, 1982), A Very Ingenious Man: Claude Martin in Early Colonial India (New Delhi, 1992) and Engaging Scoundrels: True Tales of Old Lucknow (New Delhi, 2000); Muzaffar Alam and Seema Alavi, A European Experience of the Mughal Orient: The I’jaz i-Arslani (Persian Letters, 1773-1779) of Antoine-Louis Henri Polier (New Delhi, 2001); Jean-Marie Lafont, ‘The French in Lucknow in the Eighteenth Century’, in Violette Graff (ed.), Lucknow: Memories of a City (New Delhi, 1997) and Indika: Essays in Indo-French Relations 1630-1976 (New Delhi, 2000); Maya Jasanoff’s essay on art-collecting and hybridity in Lucknow will appear in 2002 in Past & Present. Toby Falk, Mildred Archer and myself have found evidence of a similar process of transculturation in Delhi, particularly in the circle of Sir David Ochterlony, William Fraser and James Skinner that formed around the British Residency from around 1805 until about the time of Fraser’s death in 1835: Mildred Archer and Toby Falk, India Revealed: The Art and Adventures of James and William Fraser 1801-35 (London, 1989); William Dalrymple, City of Djinns(London, 1993). Seema Alavi has also shown the extent to which James Skinner, half-Scottish, half-Rajput, mixed both cultures to create an ‘amalgamation of Mughal and European military ethics’, as well as personally acculturating himself ‘in the manners of high class Muslim society[, adopting] many of the customs especially the hookah and Mughal cuisine’: Seema Alavi, The Sepoys and the Company: Tradition and Transition in Northern India 1770-1830 (New Delhi, 1995), esp. Chapter 6. Skinner has also been the subject of study by Mildred Archer in Between Battles: The Album of Colonel James Skinner (London, 1982) and Christopher Hawes in Poor Relations: The Making of a Eurasian Community in British India 1773-1833 (London, 1996). Chris Bayly has shown how useful inter-racial sexual relationships were for gaining knowledge and information about the other side, while Durba Ghosh’s important work on the bibis has shown just how widespread this sort of cross-cultural sexual relationship was at this period: C.A. Bayly,Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India 1780-1870 (Cambridge, 1996); Durba Ghosh, ‘Colonial Companions: Bibis, Begums, and Concubines of the British in North India 1760-1830’ (unpublished Ph.D., Berkeley, 2000). Ghosh has also demonstrated the extent to which this assimilation was a two-way process, affecting the Indian women who came into close contact with Europeans as much as it did the Europeans themselves. Meanwhile, Amin Jaffer’s work has shown the degree to which the domestic material environment Company servants inhabited tended to be something of an Anglo-Mughal amalgam, while in a parallel study Lizzie Collingham has emphasised the assimilation of the British body to its Mughal environment. Linda Colley has demonstrated the degree to which English captives—particularly those imprisoned by Tipu Sultan at Seringapatam—embraced Islam by a combination of force and choice, and the degree to which they took on different aspects of Indian ways of living: Amin Jaffer, Furniture from British India and Ceylon (London, 2001); E.M. Collingham, Imperial Bodies: The Physical Experience of the Raj (Cambridge, 2001); Linda Colley, ‘Going Native, Telling Tales: Captivity, Collaborations and Empire’, in Past & Present, No. 168, August 2000, p.172. Colley’s forthcoming work, Captives, will expand on this theme.

4 Mirza Abu Taleb Khan (trans. C. Stewart), The Travels of Mirza Abu Taleb Khan in Asia, Africa, and Europe during the years 1799, 1800, 1801, 1802, and 1803 (London, 1810).

5 Michael Fisher, The Travels of Dean Mahomet: An Eighteenth Century Journey Through India (Berkeley, 1997), p.xxi.

CHAPTER 1

1 ‘Report of an Examination instituted by the direction of his Excellency the most noble Governor General, Fort St. George 7th Nov 1801’ OIOC HM464. For Government House Madras see Sten Nilsson, European Architecture in India 1750-1850 (London, 1968) and Mark Bence-Jones,Palaces of the Raj (London, 1973).

2 Mountstuart Elphinstone: OIOC, Mss Eur F88 Box13/16[b], f.92.

3 Annemarie Schimmel, Islam in the Indian Subcontinent (Leiden-Koln, 1980), p.111.

4 OIOC HM464, op. cit., f.368.

5 Wellington, Supplementary Despatches & Memoranda, Vol. II, p.174, ‘Memorandum of Conversations which passed between Seyd-oo-Dowlah, Captain Ogg, and Colonel Wellesley, and between Meer Allum and Colonel Wellesley, Dummul 26th Sept 1800’.

6 Quoted by Sir Penderel Moon, The British Conquest and Dominion of India (London, 1989), p.277.

7 Stanley Lane-Poole, Aurangzeb and the Decay of the Mughal Empire (London, 1890), p.19.

8 Castanheda, Historia do Descobrimento e Conquista da India peolos Portugueses, Vol. I, III-43, p.107, and quoted in Maria A.L. Cruz, ‘Exiles and Renegades in Early Sixteenth Century Portuguese India’, in The Indian Economic and Social History Review, XXIII, 3 (1986), p.9.

9 J.H. Van Linschoten, The Voyage of John Huyghen Van Linschoten to the East Indies (2 vols, London, 1885; original Dutch edition 1598), p.205. 10 Ibid., p.213.

11 Jean-Baptiste Tavernier (trans. V. Ball, ed. W. Crooke), Travels in India (2 vols, Oxford, 1925). 12 Linschoten, op. cit., Vol. 1, pp.207-8.

13 Ibid., pp.206-10, 212-14. See also M.N. Pearson, The New Cambridge History of India 1.1: The Portuguese in India (Cambridge, 1987), pp.98-119.

14 Quoted in Pearson, op. cit., p.87.

15 Linschoten, op. cit., Vol. 1, p.184.

16 Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution (Oxford, 1988), p.129.

17 See Cruz, op. cit., p.11.

18 G.V. Scammell, ‘European Exiles, Renegades and Outlaws and the Maritime Economy of Asia c.1500-1750’, in Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 26, No. 4 (1992), pp.641-61.

19 See A.R. Disney, Twilight of the Pepper Empire: Portuguese Trade in South West India in the Early Seventeenth Century (Harvard, 1978), p.21.

20 From a manuscript in the OIOC by Mirza Mohd Bux ‘Ashoob’, ‘Tarikh i-Shadaat e Farrukhsiyar va juloos e Mohd Shah’, f.266a, quoted by S. Inayat A. Zaidi, ‘French Mercenaries in the Armies of South Asian States 1499-1803’, in Indo-French Relations: History and Perspectives (Delhi, 1990), pp.51-78.

21 Sanjay Subrahmaniyam, The Portuguese Empire in Asia: A Political and Economic History (London, 1993), p.254.

22 William Foster (ed.), Early Travels in India 1583-1619 (London, 1921) pp.203-4.

23 Nabil Matar, Islam in Britain 1558-1685 (Cambridge, 1998), p.7.

24 Ibid., p.37.

25 Ms Bodley Or.430, f.47 recto.

26 Thomas Pellow (ed. Robert Brown), The Adventures of Thomas Pellow, of Penryn, Mariner (London, 1890), p.103; also quoted in Matar, op. cit., p.39.

27 Samuel C. Chew, The Crescent and the Rose: Islam and England During the Renaissance (New York, 1937), pp.373-4.

28 Zaidi, op. cit., p.74, n.112.

29 Nabil Matar, Turks, Moors and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery (New York, 1999).

30 Quoted in ibid., p.28. 31 Ibid., p.42.

32 William Foster (ed.), The English Factories in India 1618-1669 (13 vols, London, 1906-27), Vol. 1, pp.vi, 39-40.

33 Dr John Fryer, A New Account of East India and Persia Letters Being Nine Years Travels Begun 1672 and finished 1681 (3 vols, London, 1698), Vol. 1, p.83.

34 Foster, English Factories, op. cit., Vol. 3, p.360.

35 Ibid., Vol. 4, p.99.

36 J.A. de Mandelslo (trans. J. Davis), The Voyages and Travels of J. Albert de Mandelslo: The Voyages & Travels of the Ambasssadors sent by Frederick Duke of Holstein, to the Great Duke of Muscovy, and the King of Persia (London, 1662), Vol. 3, p.27.

37 Alexander Hamilton, A New Account of the East Indies, (2 vols, London, 1930), Vol. 1, pp.8-9.

38 Foster, English Factories, op. cit., quoted in Philip Davies, Splendours of the Raj: British Architecture in India 1660-1947 (London, 1985).

39 John Jourdain (ed. W. Foster), Journal of John Jourdain 1608-17 (London, 1905), p.162.

40 Foster, English Factories, op. cit., Vol. 8, passim. Also OIOC E/3/21, OC2121 (f126), OC2150 (f221), OC2151 (f224), OC2153 (f228), OC2154 (f232), OC2155 (f234), OC2156 (f236).

41 Foster, English Factories, op. cit., Vol. 8, p.304.

42 Ibid., Vol. 3, p.345.

43 Cited in H.D. Love, Vestiges of Old Madras (2 vols, London, 1913), Vol. 2, p.299.

44 Scammell, op. cit., pp.643, 646.

45 Philip B. Wagoner, ‘ “Sultan among Hindu Kings”: Dress, Titles and the Islamicization of Hindu culture at Vijayanagar’, in Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 55, No. 4 (November 1996), pp.851-80.

46 Chester Beatty Library 9.681, ‘A Young Prince and his Courtesans’, in Linda York Leach, Mughal and Other Paintings from the Chester Beatty Library (London, 1995), Vol. 2, pp.948-9.

47 Kirkpatrick’s conversion to Islam is the best-attested of such conversions for marriage purposes, but it is clear from his letters that William Gardner also had to undergo a similar ceremony, as, very probably, did William Palmer. The practice was no doubt a great deal more widespread than is apparent from the sources, which only go into detail on such points in exceptional circumstances.

48 Colley, ‘Going Native, Telling Tales’, op. cit., p.172.

49 P.J. Marshall, ‘Cornwallis Triumphant: War in India and the British Public in the Late Eighteenth Century’, in Lawrence Freeman, Paul Hayes and Robert O’Neill (eds), War, Strategy and International Politics (Oxford, 1992), pp.70-1.

50 James Scurry, The Captivity, Sufferings and Escape of James Scurry, who was detained a prisoner during ten years, in the dominions of Haidar Ali and Tippoo Saib (London, 1824), pp.252-3.

51 See Jaffer, op. cit., p.36.

52 Claudius Buchanan, Memoir on the Expediency of an Eccleciastical Establishment for British India; both as a means of Perpetuating the Christian Religion Among Our Own Countrymen; And as a foundation for the Ultimate Civilisation of the Natives (London, 1805), pp.15ff.

53 Sadly this much-repeated and thoroughly delightful story may well be apocryphal: I have certainly been unable to trace it back further than Edward Thompson’s The Life of Charles Lord Metcalfe (London, 1937), p.101, where it is described as ‘local tradition … this sounds like folklore’. In his will (OIOC L/AG/34/29/37), Ochterlony only mentions one bibi, ‘Mahruttun, entitled Moobaruck ul Nissa Begum and often called Begum Ochterlony’, who was the mother of his two daughters, although his son Roderick Peregrine Ochterlony was clearly born of a different bibi. Nevertheless it is quite possible that the story could be true: I frequently found old Delhi traditions about such matters confirmed by research, and several Company servants of the period kept harems of this size. Judging by Bishop Heber’s description of him, Ochterlony was clearly Indianised enough to have done so.

54 Reginald Heber, A Narrative of a Journey Through the Upper Provinces of India from Calcutta to Bombay, 1824-1825 (3 vols, London, 1827), Vol. 2, pp.362, 392.

55 See Herbert Compton (ed.), The European Military Adventurers of Hindustan (London, 1943), pp.365-6; Lester Hutchinson, European Freebooters in Mughal India (London, 1964), pp.23-6. See also Theon Wilkinson, Two Monsoons (London, 1976), p.125.

56 William Francklin, Military Memoirs of Mr George Thomas Who by Extraordinary Talents and Enterprise rose from an obscure situation to the rank of A General in the Service of Native Powers in the North-West of India (London, 1805), p.333n.

57 There is a wonderful picture of Jan Thomas in his banka kit at the Begun Sumroe’s durbar in a miniature in the Chester Beatty Library, 7.121. See Leach, op. cit., Vol. 2, pp.791-5, colour plates 109-110.

58 Cited in John Keay, India Discovered (London, 1981), p.21.

59 Hawes, op. cit., p.4.

60 Quoted in Anna A. Surorova, Masnavi: A Study of Urdu Romance (Karachi, 2000), pp.89-91.

61 Bengal Wills 1782, Number 24, Will of Thomas Naylor, Probate granted 6 August 1782; OIOC L/AG/34/29/4.

62 Bengal Wills 1804, Number 13, Will of Matthew Leslie; OIOC L/AG/34/29/16.

63 Charles D’Oyley, The European in India (London, 1813), pp.xix-xx. See also Captain Thomas Williamson, The East India Vade Mecum (2 vols, London, 1810; 2nd edition 1825), Vol. 1, p.451.

64 Cited in Fawn M. Brodie, The Devil Drives: A Life of Sir Richard Burton (London, 1967), p.51n.

65 See Collingham, Imperial Bodies, op. cit., pp.46-7.

66 D’Oyley, op. cit., p.ii.

67 C.A. Bayly, Imperial Meridian: The British Empire and the World 1780-1830 (London, 1989), p.115.

68 Thomas Medwin, The Angler in Wales (London, 1834), pp.4-8.

69 Gardner Papers, National Army Museum, Letter 119, Sekundra, 12 December 1821.

70 Elizabeth Fenton, The Journal of Mrs Fenton (London, 1901), pp.51-2.

71 See Bengal Wills 1780-1783. 1782, Number 41, The Will Of A. Crawford, Probate granted 13 November 1782; OIOC L/AG/34/ 29/4.

72 Williamson, op. cit., Vol. 1, p.412.

73 William Hickey (ed. A. Spencer), The Memoirs of William Hickey (4 vols, London, 1925), Vol. 3, p.327.

74 Ibid., Vol. 4, p.100.

75 Ibid., p.89.

76 Ibid., p.6.

77 Ibid., pp.26-7.

78 Ibid., pp.140-1.

79 The text of Halhed’s Code of Gentoo Laws may be found in P.J. Marshall, (ed.), The British Discovery of Hinduism (Cambridge, 1970).

80 Anonymous review of A Code of Gentoo Laws or Ordinations of the Pundits, from Critical Review, XLIV, September 1777, pp.177-91.

81 Cited in Marshall, The British Discovery of Hinduism, op. cit., p.39.

82 Quoted by Michael Edwardes in King of the Nabobs (London, 1964).

83 Cited in Marshall, The British Discovery of Hinduism, op. cit., p.189, from Hastings’s ‘Letter to Nathaniel Smith’ from The Bhagavat-Geeta.

84 Sir William Jones (ed. G. Canon), The Letters of Sir William Jones (2 vols, Oxford, 1970), Vol. 2, p.755, 23 August 1787, Sir William Jones to the second Earl Spencer.

85 Ibid., p.766, 4 September 1787, Sir William Jones to the second Earl Spencer.

86 Asiatic Journal, Vol. 26, 1828, pp.606-7.

87 See Gardner Papers, National Army Museum: Letter 1, 5 January 1820; Letter 2, 10 January 1820; Letter 110, Saugor, 9 November 1821; Letter 119, 12 December 1821.

88 See Wilkinson, op. cit., p.73.

89 James Morris, Heaven’s Command: An Imperial Progress (London, 1973), p.75.

90 OIOC Eur Mss, Mackenzie Collection General, XXV, pp.162-3, ‘The Culleeka-Pooree-Putna Vrittant Or Memoir Of The Ancient City Of Culleeka-Pooree-Putnam, rendered into Marattas from a Tamil Ms. On Cadjan, in the hands of the Curnam of Culleekapoor, near Tuckolm, in Arcot province, & translated by Sooba Row Bramin, September, 1808’; the original is in the Kalikapurici vrttanta in the Madras List, Marathi Mss, p.1. From the collection catalogue, p.362: ‘Next we have what is evidently the record by an eye witness of the visit of General Matthews to Takkolam, which was accompanied by many curious incidents, illustrating the conduct of a European in a Hindu Temple.’

91 Marshall, The British Discovery of Hinduism, op. cit., p.42.

92 ‘British Idolatry in India’: a sermon preached by the Rev. R. Ainslie at the monthly meeting of ministers of Congregational Churches, in The Pastoral Echo: Nineteen Sermons of Eminent Dissenting Ministers and Others (London, 1837).

93 Rev. A. Thompson, Government Connection with Idolatry in India (Cape Town, 1851).

94 A Vindication of the Hindoos from the Aspersions of the Revd Claudius Buchanan MA by a Bengal Officer (London, 1808). For Hindoo Stuart’s authorship of this work see Jorg Fisch, ‘A Solitary Vindicator of the Hindus: The Life and Writings of General Charles Stuart (1757/8-1828)’, inJournal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 4, 2-3, 1985, pp.35-57.

95 See Jorg Fisch, ‘A Pamphlet War on Christian Missions in India 1807-9’, in Journal of Asian History, Vol. 19, 1985, p.22-70.

96 Anon., Sketches of India Written by an Officer for the Fire-Side Travellers at Home (London, 1821), p.221-2.

97 Fenton, op. cit., pp.51-2.

98 Wilkinson, op. cit., p.84.

99 Ibid., p.73.

100 R.B. Saksena, Indo-European Poets of Urdu and Persian (Lucknow, 1941), p.21. Hawes, op. cit., Chapter 4.

101 See Norman Gash, Lord Liverpool: The Life and Political Career of Robert Banks Jenkinson, Second Earl of Liverpool, 1770-1828 (London, 1984), p.11.

102 Hastings Papers, BL Add Mss 29,178, Vol. XLVII, 1801-1802, John Palmer to Hastings, 1 January 1802.

103 Anderson Correspondence, BL Add Mss 45,427, William Palmer to David Anderson, 12 November 1786, F196.

104 See Durba Ghosh, op. cit., p.42, for the disappearance of bibis from wills, and p.36 for their disappearance from the East India Vade Mecum.

105 Major J. Blackiston, Twelve Years Military Adventures in Hindustan 1802-14 (London, 1829). 106 Williamson, op. cit., Vol. 1, p.501.

107 Emma Roberts, Scenes and Characteristics of Hindoostan, with sketches of Anglo-Indian Society (2 vols, 2nd edition, London, 1837), Vol. 1, p.75.

108 D’Oyley, op. cit., Plate X, ‘A gentleman with his Hookah-burdar, or Pipe-bearer’.

109 P.J. Marshall, ‘British Society under the East India Company’, in Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 31, No. 1, 1997, p.101.

110 Lady Maria Nugent, Journal of a Residence in India 1811-15 (2 vols, London, 1839), Vol. 2, p.9.

CHAPTER 2

1 Anne Barnard (ed. A.M. Lewin Robinson), The Cape Journals of Lady Anne Barnard 1797-98 (Cape Town, 1994), p.263.

2 Quoted in Moon, op. cit., p.341.

3 Anne Barnard (ed. A.M. Lewin Robinson), The Letters of Lady Anne Barnard to Henry Dundas from the Cape and Elsewhere 1793-1803 (Cape Town, 1973), p.99.

4 Barnard, Cape Journals, op. cit., p.266.

5 Now in the National Gallery of Ireland. Illustrated in Mildred Archer, India and British Portraiture 1770-1825 (London, 1979), pp.226, 152.

6 Richard Wellesley (ed. Edward Ingram), Two Views of British India: The Private Correspondence of Mr Dundas and Lord Wellesley: 1798-1801 (London, 1970), p.16.

7 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/27, p.26, letter to Lieutenant Colonel John Collins from William Kirkpatrick at the Cape, 11 February 1798.

8 Quoted in Henry Briggs, The Nizam: His History and Relations with the British Government (London, 1861), pp.9-10.

9 Strachey Papers, OIOC F127/478a, ‘Sketch of the Kirkpatrick Family by Lady Richard Strachey’.

10 Henry Dodwell, The Nabobs of Madras (London, 1926), p.113.

11 Ibid., p.122.

12 Kirkpatrick Papers, OIOC F228/13, p.156, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick, 8 September 1801.

13 Strachey Papers, OIOC F127/478a, ‘Sketch of the Kirkpatrick Family by Lady Richard Strachey’.

14 Kirkpatrick Papers, OIOC F228/96, Letter from Mrs R Strachey (Julia Maria Strachey), 69 Lancaster Gate W , to Sir Edward Strachey, Sutton Court, Pensford, Somersetshire, dated and postmarked 3 April 1886.

15 Kennaway Papers, Devon Records Office, Exeter, B961M ADD/F2.

16 Obituary in the New Monthly Magazine for 1836; Rev. George Oliver’s ‘Biographies of Exonians’ in Exeter Flying Post 1849-50; and a file on the Kennaway family in the West Country Studies Library.

17 Kennaway Papers, Devon Records Office, Exeter, B961M ADD/F2, William Kirkpatrick to Kennaway, London, July 1784.

18 Anderson Papers, BL Add Mss 45,427, f.198, William Palmer to David Anderson, 12 November 1786.

19 Sir Jadunath Sarkar (ed.), English Records of Mahratta History: Pune Residency Correspondence Vol. 1-Mahadji Scindhia and North Indian Affairs 1785-1794 (Bombay, 1936), p.111, Letter 65, James Anderson to William Kirkpatrick, Sindhia’s Camp, Shergarh, 5 December 1786.

20 Ibid., p.131, Letter 78, Cornwallis to William Kirkpatrick, Calcutta, 1 March 1787.

21 Kennaway Papers, Devon Records Office, Exeter B961M, ADD/F2, William Kirkpatrick to Kennaway, 24 April 1788.

22 Ibid., John Kennaway to William Kennaway, 23 December 1788.

23 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/1, p.6, Safdar Jung’s Tomb, 20 February 1787, William Kirkpatrick to Shore.

24 Ibid., p.114, 17 February 1794, William Kirkpatrick to Maria Kirkpatrick.

25 Strachey Papers, OIOC F127/478a, ‘Sketch of the Kirkpatrick Family by Lady Richard Strachey’.

26 Ibid. The file contains an undated letter from France from Clementina Robinson, a granddaughter of William Kirkpatrick (the daughter of Clementina Louis, m. May 1841 Sir Spencer Robinson), which fills in a lot of the gaps about William Kirkpatrick and Maria, of whom the girls had clearly completely lost track.

27 Kennaway Papers, Devon Records Office, Exeter, B961M ADD/F2, William Kirkpatrick to Kennaway, 31 October 1788.

28 Charles Ross (ed.), Correspondence of Charles, First Marquis Cornwallis (3 vols, London, 1859), Vol. 2, p.570.

29 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/1, p.88, 3 March 1793, William Kirkpatrick ‘to my dearest Maria’.

30 Ibid., p.92, 4 November 1793, William Kirkpatrick to Maria Kirkpatrick.

31 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/52, p.42, Ellore, 10 May 1792. The letter to the Madras Courier is unsigned but is in James Kirkpatrick’s handwriting and is clearly autobiographical.

32 Ibid., p.10, James Kirkpatrick to the Handsome Colonel, Camp before Seringapatam, 1 March 1792.

33 Ibid., p.1, James Kirkpatrick to the Handsome Colonel, Camp near Colar, 26 December 1792.

34 William Kirkpatrick, introduction to Select Letters of Tippoo Sultaun (London, 1811).

35 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/52, p.42, Ellore, 10 May 1792. See n34, above.

36 Ibid., p.15, James Kirkpatrick to the Handsome Colonel, Camp near Doscottah (?), 1 May 1792.

37 Ibid., p.1, James Kirkpatrick to the Handsome Colonel, Camp near Colar, completed January 1792.

38 Kennaway Papers, Devon Records Office, Exeter, B961M ADD/F2, James Kirkpatrick to Kennaway, 11 August 1793.

39 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/1, p.95, 14 November 1793, William Kirkpatrick to Cornwallis.

40 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/1, p.107, Hyderabad, 29 January, William Kirkpatrick to Gibson [agent] in Calcutta.

41 Bodleian Library, Russell Papers, Ms Eng Letts C151, p.8, Henry Russell to Charles Russell, 2 March 1811.

42 Sayyid Abd al-Latif Shushtari, Kitab Tuhfat al-’Alam (written Hyderabad, 1802; lithographed Bombay, 1847), p.156.

43 The uniforms are well illustrated in the great pair of panels of Nizam Ali Khan and his court setting off hunting, in the Salar Jang Museum, Hyderabad.

44 Archives Départmentales de la Savioe, Chambéry, de Boigne archive, bundle AB IIA, Lieutenant William Steuart to ‘Mac’, Paangul, 30 October 1790.

45 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/1, p.113, William Kirkpatrick to Kennaway, Camp near Bedar, 11 February 1794.

46 De Boigne archive, Chambéry, bundle AB IIA, Lieutenant William Steuart to ‘Mac’, Paangul, 30 October 1790.

47 M.A. Nayeem, Mughal Administration of the Deccan under Nizamul Mulk Asaf Jah (1720-48) (Bombay, 1985), p.87. For the reporting of illicit parties see Lala Mansaram, ‘Masir i-Nizami’, in P. Setu Madhava Rao, Eighteenth Century Deccan (Bombay, 1963), p.112.

48 Nayeem, op. cit., p.95.

49 OIOC, The Hardinge Album, Add Or. 4396-4470.

50 James Achilles Kirkpatrick, ‘A View of the State of the Deccan, 4th June 1798’, Wellesley Papers, BL Add Mss 13582 f.33.

51 OIOC, Diary of Edward Strachey, Mss Eur F128/196, ff16v-38, p.25v, 17 October 1801.

52 Kennaway Papers, Devon Records Office, Exeter. B961M/M/B9, Kennaway to Cherry, 14 December 1788.

53 Shushtari, op. cit., p.160.

54 Gobind Krishen to Nana Phadnavis, 20 February 1794. Quoted in Sarkar, English Records of Mahratta History, op. cit., p.ix.

55 Quoted in Lafont, Indika, op. cit., p.179.

56 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/3, p.27, William Kirkpatrick to Kennaway, 3 September 1794.

57 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/4, p.3, Kumtaneh, William Kirkpatrick to Shore, 3 December 1794.

58 For the Women’s Battalion, see Gavin Hambly, ‘Armed Women Retainers in the Zenanas of Indo-Muslim Rulers: The Case of Bibi Fatima’, in Gavin Hambly (ed.), Women in the Medieval Islamic World (New York, 1998), esp. p.454. For the Nizam’s zenana on campaign in their covered howdahs see William Hollingbery, A History of His Late Highness Nizam Alee Khaun, Soobah of the Dekhan (Calcutta, 1805), esp. p.54.

59 The details about the bribes, and of Mir Alam’s treachery, come from the Gulzar i-Asafiya, Chapter 3. The Gulzar was written by Ghulam Husain Khan, whose father, as Nizam Ali Khan’s personal physician, accompanied the Nizam to Khardla; this gives some credence to the information.

60 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/3, p.30, William Kirkpatrick to Jack Collins, 2 October.

61 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/4, p.11, Camp Khurdla, 13 March; also p.15, 21 March, to James Duncan.

62 Quoted in G. Kulkarni and M.R. Kantak, The Battle of Kharda: Challenges and Responses (Pune, 1980), p.59.

63 K. Sajun Lal, Studies in Deccan History (Hyderabad, 1951), p.87.

64 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/4, p.11, Camp Khurdla, 13 March.

65 Ibid., p.15, 21 March, William Kirkpatrick to James Duncan.

66 Lal, Studies in Deccan History, op. cit., pp.80-3.

67 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/4, p.20, 30 March, Khurdlah, William Kirkpatrick to Collins (?).

68 Khan, Gulzar i-Asafiya, Chapter 3, notice of Aristu Jah, pp.158-78.

69 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/4, p.28, 13 May, William Kirkpatrick to Shore.

70 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228.5, p.2, 24 November 1795, William Kirkpatrick to James Duncan.

71 See Gurbir Mansingh, ‘French Military Influence in India’, in his Reminiscences: The French in India (New Delhi, 1997), p.58. Also Jadunath Sarkar, ‘General Raymond of the Nizam’s Army’, in Mohammed Taher, Muslim Rule in the Deccan (New Delhi, 1997), pp.125-44. Also Compton, op. cit., pp.382-6.

72 Quoted by Anne Buddle in The Tiger and the Thistle: Tipu Sultan and the Scots in India (Edinburgh, 1999), p.33.

73 Kate Brittlebank, Tipu Sultan’s Search for Legitimacy: Islam and Kingship in a Hindu Domain (New Delhi, 1997), p.28. Also Kate Teltscher, India Inscribed: European and British Writing on India 1600-1800 (Oxford, 1995), p.252.

74 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/7, p.43, 16 December 1796, William Kirkpatrick to Shore.

75 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/6, p.14, 9 May, William Kirkpatrick to Shore.

76 Shore cited the India Act of 1784 as the reason for his refusal, explaining that it prohibited alliances in all but a few circumstances. He held that an alliance like that the Nizam sought was illegal under British statute.

77 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/15, p.33, 3 September 1797, William Kirkpatrick to Shore.

78 Ibid.

79 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/12, p.136, 14 August 1797, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

80 Ibid., p.226, 25 October 1797, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

81 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/15, p.33, 3 September 1797, William Kirkpatrick to Shore.

82 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/27, p.26, 11 February 1798, William Kirkpatrick to Lieutenant Colonel John Collins at the Cape.

83 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/10, p.87, 4 October 1797, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

CHAPTER 3

1 J. Pieper, ‘Hyderabad: A Qu’ranic Paradise in Architectural Metaphors’, in A. Peruccioli (ed.), Environmental Design, pp.46-51.

2 S. Sen, Indian Travels of Thevenot and Careri (New Delhi, 1949), p.135.

3 William Methwold, ‘Relations of the Kingdome of Golchonda and other neighbouring Nations and the English Trade in Those Parts, by Master William Methwold’, in W.H. Moreland, Relations of Golconda in the early Seventeenth Century (London, 1931).

4 Sir Jadunath Sarkar, ‘Haidarabad and Golkonda in 1750 Seen Through French Eyes: From the Unpublished Diary of a French Officer Preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris’, in Islamic Culture, Vol. X, p.240.

5 See Omar Khalidi, Romance of the Golconda Diamonds (Ahmedabad, 1999), p.66.

6 Many of the items made by Hyderabad jewellers can be seen in Manuel Keene, Treasury of the World: Jewelled Arts of India in the Age of the Mughals (London, 2001).

7 James Mackintosh, Memoirs of the Life of The Rt Hon Sir James Mackintosh (2 vols, London, 1835) Vol. 1, p.515.

8 Sarkar, ‘Haidarabad and Golkonda in 1750 … ’, op. cit., p.243.

9 De Boigne archive, Chambéry, bundle AB IIA, Lieutenant William Steuart to ‘Mac’, Paangul, 30 October 1790.

10 Server ul-Mulk (trans. Nawab Jiwan Yar Jung Bahadur), My Life, Being the Autobiography of Nawab Server ul Mulk Bahadur, (London, 1903), p.91.

11 Ali Akbar Husain, Scent in the Islamic Garden: A Study of Deccani Urdu Literary Sources (Karachi, 2000), p.31.

12 Ibid., pp.26-7.

13 Server ul-Mulk, op. cit., p.92.

14 Sarkar, ‘Haidarabad and Golkonda in 1750 … ’, op. cit., p.244.

15 Arthur Wellesley to Colonel Close, 22 September 1800. I have been unable to trace the whereabouts of the original letter, only small portions of which are reproduced in Wellington’s printed Despatches, but a copy made by Barbara Strachey in the mid-1980s exists in the archives of the Strachey Trust.

16 OIOC, Mountstuart Elphinstone Papers, Mss Eur F88, Box13/16[b], Elphinstone’s diary f.93, 23 August 1801, for the henna, mustachios and belching.

17 Ghulam Imam Khan, Tarikh i-Khurshid Jahi, pp.713-14.

18 For Raymond see Mansingh, ‘French Military Influence in India’, op. cit. For Piron’s wish to convert see OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/10, p.98, 9 October 1798.

19 Saksena, op. cit., pp.171-85.

20 The large numbers of Hyderabadi women left husbandless after the French were expelled from the city was a major problem for Kirkpatrick, who said he had ‘no means of ascertaining now how many wives, concubines or children belong to the Party’, but that there were clearly a large number. See OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/10, p.165, 4 December 1798.

21 OIOC, Mountstuart Elphinstone Papers, Mss Eur F88, Box13/16[b], Elphinstone’s diary, f.92, 23 August 1801.

22 OIOC, Bengal Political Consultations, -P/117/18, 3 June, No. 1: The Residency, Hyderabad, 19 October 1800, James Kirkpatrick to Sir George Barlow. Also OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/59, p.36, 24 October 1800, James Kirkpatrick to Sir John Kennaway.

23 OIOC, Edward Strachey’s Diaries, Mss Eur F128/196, f.16v.

24 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/12, p.163, 29 August 1800, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

25 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers F228/56, p.14, 10 January, James Kirkpatrick to William Palmer, for the complaint on zenana size, and p.26, 1 February 1802, James Kirkpatrick to John Tulloch, for the number of women in William Palmer’s suite. For Kirkpatrick’s own mahal having a large staff of aseels and maidservants see for example New Delhi National Archives, Secret Consultations, Foreign Department, 1800, 15 May, No. 20, ‘Translation of a Letter from Moonshee Meer Azeez Ooolah to Lieut Col Kirkpatrick’, 7 March 1800.

26 OIOC, Mountstuart Elphinstone Papers, Mss Eur F88, Box13/16[b], Elphinstone’s diary, 31 August and 16 October.

27 Scottish Record Office, Edinburgh, GD135/2086, The Will of Lieut Col James Dalrymple, Hussein Sagar, 8 December 1800.

28 Fanny Parkes, Wanderings of a Pilgrim in Search of the Picturesque (London, 1850), Vol. 1, pp.417-18.

29 Gardner Papers, National Army Museum 6305-56, Letter 6, 5 March 1820; Letter 49, Saugor, 6 January 1821, p.131.

30 Cambridge, South Asian Studies Library, Gardner Papers, Letter from W.L. Gardner to his Aunt Dolly Gardner, 25 May 1815.

31 Parkes, op. cit., Vol. 1, p.231.

32 Russell Papers, Bodleian Library, Ms Eng Letts C155, p.15, 9 June 1802.

33 OIOC, Mountstuart Elphinstone Papers, Mss Eur F88, Box13/16[b], Elphinstone’s diary, entry for 13 September.

34 For Mrs Ure’s appetite see OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, Mss Eur F228/11: p.134, 23 April; p.140, 23 April; p.154, 8 May.

35 New Delhi National Archives, Secret Consultations, Foreign Department, 1800, 15 May, No. 23, ‘Moonshee Azeez Oolah’s Report of a Conversation with Azim ul Omrah and of what passed at the Durbar of His Highness the Nizam on the 9th of March 1800’.

36 Russell Papers, Bodleian Library, Ms Eng Letts D151, p.96, 31 May 1810, Henry Russell to Charles Russell.

37 OIOC, Mountstuart Elphinstone Papers, Mss Eur F88, Box13/16[b], Elphinstone’s diary for 15 November 1801, p.111.

38 OIOC, Edward Strachey’s Diaries, Mss Eur F128/196, 13 November, p.29.

39 OIOC, Mountstuart Elphinstone Papers, Mss Eur F88, Box13/16[b], Elphinstone’s diary for 15 November 1801, p.112.

40 Ibid.

41 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/11, p.192, 5 August 1799, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

42 Sarojini Regani, Nizam-British Relations 1724-1857 (New Delhi, 1963), pp.32-4.

43 Kirkpatrick, ‘A View of the State of the Deccan’, op. cit., f.37.

44 As was in fact often the case in Islamic societies: for the power of post-sexual women in the Imperial Ottoman harem see for example Leslie P. Peirce, The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (New York, 1993), Chapter 1, esp. p.23.

45 New Delhi National Archives, Hyderabad Residency Records, Vol. 26, pp.46-7, 23 May 1803.

46 Compton, op. cit., pp.382-6.

47 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/10, p.21, 24 August 1797, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

48 Compton, op. cit., pp.382-6.

49 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/10, p.21, 24 August 1797, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

50 Wellesley, op. cit., pp.100-1.

51 The full translations of Raymond’s correspondence can be found in Sarkar, ‘General Raymond of the Nizam’s Army’, op. cit., pp.125-44.

52 Shushtari, op. cit., p.169.

53 Khan, Gulzar i-Asafiya, Chapter 3, notice of Aristu Jah, pp.158-78.

54 Ibid.

55 Nani Gopal Chaudhuri, British Relations with Hyderabad (Calcutta, 1964), p.64.

56 Richard Wellesley (ed. M. Martin), The Despatches, Minutes and Correspondence of the Marquess Wellesley KG during his Administration of India (London, 1840), Vol. 1, pp.220-1.

57 James Dalrymple, Letters & Relative To The Capture of Rachore (Madras, 1796).

58 New Delhi National Archives, Hyderabad Residency Records, Vol. 15, 19 December 1797, p.15.

59 For Nizam ul-Mulk’s use of Sufis, see Rao, op. cit., pp.95-6, 114-15.

60 For the Nizam’s intelligencers in villages and Delhi see Dr Zeb un-Nissa Haidar, ‘The Glimpses of Hyderabad in the Light of the Tarikh i-Mahanamah’ (research project for UGC Grant, Hyderabad, 1998-99). For intelligencers and newswriters in general see the excellent Bayly, Empire and Information, op. cit.

61 New Delhi National Archives, Political Consultations, 3 February 1844. No. 182, paras 3-4.

62 I am grateful to Professor Sarojini Regani for this information.

63 OIOC, Mss Eur F228/11, p.287, 25 November, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

64 OIOC, Mss Eur F228/10, p.4, 7 August 1797, James Kirkpatrick in Hyderabad to William Kirkpatrick.

65 For the spy in the Residency daftar see OIOC, F228/11, p.192, 5 August 1799.

66 OIOC, Mountstuart Elphinstone Papers, Mss Eur F88, Box13/16[b], Elphinstone’s diary, f.93, 25 August 1801.

67 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/10, p.75, 26 September, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

68 OIOC, ‘Capt GE Westmacott’s Ms Travels in India’, Mss Eur C29, f.289, 24 December 1833.

69 Compton, op. cit., p.379. See also Bayly, Empire and Information, op. cit., p.146.

70 Kirkpatrick, ‘A View of the State of the Deccan’, op. cit., f.48.

71 John W. Kaye, The Life and Correspondence of Sir John Malcolm GCB (2 vols, London, 1856), Vol. 1, p.78n.

72 This information comes from a sheet, ‘Finglas Family Records’, kindly lent to me by Bilkiz Aladin and given to her by one of Finglas’s descendants. There is some dispute as to when Finglas entered Hyderabadi service, with some secondary authorities assigning him a role at Khardla in 1795. This appears to be an error: no primary source mentions him in Hyderabad before 1797, and it seems likely that he came to the city with Aristu Jah after his return from captivity. See also Kirkpatrick, ‘A View of the State of the Deccan’, op. cit., f.50.

73 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/10, p.121, 11 November, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

74 Ibid.

75 For Gardner’s American childhood see Narindar Saroop, A Squire of Hindoostan (New Delhi, 1983). For James’s view of him see OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/10, p.72, 27 September 1798.

76 See The Dictionary of American Biography and Compton, op. cit., p.340.

77 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/10, p.19, 22 August 1798, James Kirkpatrick to Ulthoff.

78 Compton, op. cit., pp.354, 340.

79 Ibid., p.382.

80 See Saksena, op. cit., p.288; also John Lall, Begam Samru: Fading Portrait in a Gilded Frame (Delhi, 1997), p.127.

81 OIOC, Sutherland Papers, Mss Eur D547, p.8, 1801, Pohlmann to Sutherland.

82 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/11, p.75, 26 September 1798, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

83 OIOC, Sutherland Papers, Mss Eur D547, p.35, undated.

84 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/12, p.166, 31 August.

85 Wellesley, op. cit., Vol. 1, p.209. See also Jac Weller, Wellington in India (London, 1972), pp.24-5.

86 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/10, p.75, 26 September, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

87 Quoted by Andrew Roberts in Napoleon and Wellington (London, 2001), pp.16-17. The second quotation in fact dates from 1812, when Napoleon was flirting with launching a second Eastern expedition; but no doubt reflects the ease with which he saw India falling into his hands on the earlier expedition.

88 Quoted in Sir John Malcolm, Political History of India (2 vols, London, 1826), Vol. 1, p.310.

89 Louis Bourquien, ‘An Autobiographical Memoir of Louis Bourquien translated from the French by J.P. Thompson’, in Journal of the Punjab Historical Society, Vol. IX, Pt 7, 1923, p.50. For the proposal to land a French force at Cuttack see Iris Butler, The Eldest Brother (London, 1973), p.311.

90 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/10, p.92, 6 October, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

91 For Malcolm see Butler, op. cit., p.157 and J.W. Kaye, op. cit., Vol. 1, Chapter 5. Captain Malcolm was later knighted, and is better known as Sir John Malcolm. James later accused him of exaggerating his role in the disarming of the French troops. See OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/59, p.6, 16 August 1803 to Petrie.

92 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/10, p.98, 9 October, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

93 Ibid., p.110, 16 October, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

94 For the mutiny, see OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/11, p.325. For the bullock traces see OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/10, p.87, 4 October, 22 February 1799.

95 J.W. Kaye, op. cit., Vol. 1, p.75.

96 Rt Hon. S.R. Lushington, The Life and Services of Lord George Harris GCB (London, 1840), p.233.

97 Ibid., p.235.

98 J.W. Kaye, op. cit., Vol. 1, p.78.

99 Ibid., p.78n.

100 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/10, p.195, 25 December, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

101 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/7, p.7, 17 October, William Kirkpatrick to Wrangham.

102 The date of Mehdi Yar Khan’s death is not known, but he is never referred to in the records of the 1790s, so presumably had died sometime before. His family and his marriage to Sharaf un-Nissa are discussed in the Nagaristan i-Asafiya under the entry for Aqil ud-Daula. It is possible that Sharaf un-Nissa never left Bâqar Ali’s deorhi, and that Mehdi Yar Khan came to live with Bâqar Ali Khan: Karen Leonard’s work on the Kayasths of Hyderabad has shown that high-status men would arrange their daughters’ marriages with promising and ambitious younger men who would then enter the household as in-married sons-in-law, khana damad. Syliva Vatuk has told me in correspondence that she has found the same pattern among the high-status Muslim families she has worked upon. This would help explain why it was Bâqar Ali Khan who arranged his granddaughters’ marriages rather than Mehdi Yar Khan’s male relations, and especially his elder brother, Mir Asadullah.

103 ‘Report of an Examination …’, op. cit., p.364.

104 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/11, p.2, Hyderabad, 2 January 1799, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

105 This account comes from a translation of Sharaf un-Nissa’s letter to her granddaughter Kitty Kirkpatrick, in the private archive of her descendants.

106 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/96, ‘Account of the marriage of Sharpun Nisa Begam with Colonel Kirkpatrick called Hashmat Jang, Resident, Hyderabad’. This document was apparently compiled by a munshi working for Trevor Plowden, Resident in the early 1890s, after Plowden was asked for information about the romance by Edward Strachey, who was writing his 1893 article for Blackwood’s Magazine, op. cit. In the event, the information arrived a year after Strachey’s article had been published. The anonymous munshi states that he got the information from Khair un-Nissa’s cousins and an elderly slave girl of Sharif un-Nissa, all of whom were still alive in Hyderabad at the time. It seems generally reliable, with the single major error of calling Khair un-Nissa by her mother’s name throughout.

CHAPTER 4

1 Shushtari, op. cit., pp.36, 56.

2 Ibid., pp.82-5, 121-130.

3 Khan, Gulzar i-Asafiya, pp.305-15. Also Mohammed Sirajuddin Talib, Mir Alam, Chapter 1, passim.

4 Kirkpatrick, ‘A View of the State of the Deccan’, op. cit., f.45.

5 Khan, Gulzar i-Asafiya, pp.305-15.

6 Delhi National Archives, Hyderabad Residency Records, Vol. 57, pp.256-7, Henry Russell to Hastings, 29 November 1819. Also Henry Russell quoted in Talib, op. cit., pp.183-90.

7 Makhan Lal, Tarikh i-Yadgar i-Makhan Lal (Hyderabad, 1300 AH/AD1883), p.54. Durdanah Begum was ‘from the house of Mir Jafar Ali Khan, son of Benazir Jung’.

8 Abdul Raheem Khan, Tarikh i-Nizam (Hyderabad, AH1330/AD1912), pp.68-9; Anon., Riyaaz e-Muqtaria Salthanath Asafia, p.57; Khan, Gulzar i-Asafiya, pp.305-15.

9 Shushtari, op. cit., p.485.

10 Ibid., p.427.

11 Ibid., p.153.

12 Ibid., p.257.

13 Ibid., pp.11, 270.

14 Ibid., p.342.

15 Ibid.

16 Ibid.

17 Ibid., p.309.

18 Stephen Blake, ‘Contributors to the Urban Landscape: Women Builders in Safavid Isfahan and Mughal Shahjehanabad’, in Hambly, op. cit., p.407.

19 Asiya Begum, ‘Society and Culture under the Bijapur Sultans’ (unpublished Ph.D., University of Mysore, 1983), pp.62-3. There are numerous depictions of Chand Bibi on horseback, many of them from Hyderabad, including one from the collection of Henry Russell now in the India Office Library: OIOC Add Or. 3849.

20 See for example the fascinating comparison in scale of patronage between Mughal and Saffavid women in Blake, op. cit., pp.407-28.

21 Zinat Kausar, Muslim Women in Mediaeval India (Patna, 1992), p.145.

22 For Jahanara see Blake, op. cit., p.416. For Gulbadan see Gulbadan Begum, Humayun Nama, trans. Annette S. Beveridge as The History of Humayun by Princess Rose-Body (London, 1902).

23 Saqi Must’ad Khan, Maasir i-Alamgiri, trans. by Jadunath Sarkar as The History of the Emperor Aurangzeb-Alamgir 1658-1707 (Calcutta, 1946), p.322.

24 Shushtari, op. cit., p.342.

25 Parkes, op. cit., Vol. 1, pp.417-18. For the contemporary Mughal practice of providing girls to Indian rulers as a means of preferment, see Michael H. Fisher, ‘Women and the Feminine in the Court and High Culture of Awadh, 1722-1856’, in Hambly, op. cit., pp.500-1.

26 Husain, Scent in the Islamic Garden, op. cit., pp.27, 40, 127.

27 Niccolao Manucci, Storia do Mogor, or Mogul India, 1653-1708 (London, 1907), Vol. 1, p.218. For extra-marital relations in the Mughal mahal see K. Sajun Lal, The Mughal Harem (New Delhi, 1988), pp.180-2.

28 From a conversation with Dr Zeb un-Nissa Haidar. The records are now in the Andhra Pradesh archives.

29 Dargah Quli Khan (trans. Chander Shekhar), The Muraqqa’ e-Dehli (New Delhi, 1989). For Ad Begum, p.107; for Nur Bai, p.110.

30 That Mah Laqa was Mir Alam’s mistress is confirmed by James Kirkpatrick in his letters: see for example OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, Eur Mss F228/11, p.269, Hyderabad, 12 October 1799.

31 Shushtari, op. cit., p.157.

32 See her entry in the Tazkirah e-Niswan e-Hind (The Biography of Indian Women), by Fasih-ud-Din Balkhi (Patna, 1956).

33 For Mah Laqa’s poetry in the Nawab of Avadh’s library see A. Sprenger, Catalogue of Arabic, Persian and Hindustany Manuscripts of the libraries of the King of Oudh 1854; for Mah Laqa’s status in the durbar see Dr Zeb un-Nissa Haidar, ‘A Comprehensive Study of the Daftar i-Dar ul Insha 1762-1803’ (unpublished Ph.D., Osmania University, 1978), p.114.

34 Rahat Azmi, Mah e-laqa (Hyderabad, 1998), pp.34, 48-9.

35 Jagdish Mittal, ‘Paintings of the Hyderabad School’, in Marg, 16, 1962-63, p.44.

36 See Delhi National Archives, Secret Despatches, 1800, p.2491, Fort William, 10 May 1800, No. 3, ‘Intelligence from Azim ul Omrah’s Household’.

37 Tamkin Kazmi, Aristu Jah, p.38, quoting the Tarikh i-Saltanat i-Khudadad, p.39.

38 At least so Arthur Wellesley was told by Mir Alam; Wellington, ‘Memorandum of Conversations … Dummul 26th Sept 1800’, op. cit.

39 Quoted in Butler, op. cit., p.166.

40 Ibid., p.170.

41 Talib, op. cit., p.6.

42 Denys Forrest in Tiger of Mysore: The Life and Death of Tipu Sultan (London, 1970), pp.227-8.

43 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, Mss Eur F228/11, p.10, 8 January 1799, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

44 Organising the carriage bullocks and sheep for feeding the army was one of Kirkpatrick’s main concerns at this period. See OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, Mss Eur F228/11, pp.14, 15, 28 etc.

45 Wellesley’s remark quoted by Moon, op. cit., p.286; the subsistence remark quoted by Buddle, op. cit.

46 For Colonel Bowser see ‘Report of an Examination … ’, op. cit., pp.362, 364.

47 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, Mss Eur F228/83, Hyderabad, 23 May 1800.

48 Ibid.

49 Fyze’s sanad is in the OIOC, Persian Mss IO 4440. Mildred Archer in her magisterial India and British Portraiture, op. cit., wrongly states that Fyze was from the Delhi royal house. That she, and her sister Nur Begum, were the daughters of a Persian captain of cavalry is clear from numerous references in the de Boigne archive, Chambéry.

50 Bengal Wills 1825; OIOC L/AG/34/29/37, pp.185-205.

51 For Mubarak Begum’s background see the Mubarak Bagh Papers in the archives of the Delhi Commissioners Office, DCO F5/1861. Here it is recorded that ‘Mubarik ul Nissa was originally a girl of Brahmin parentage, who was brought from Poona in the Deckan by one Mosst. Chumpa, and presented or sold by the said Chumpa to Genl. Ochterlony when twelve years of age. Mosst. Mubarik ul Nissa from that time resided in Genl. Ochterlony’s house, and Mosst. Chumpa resided with her there, being known by the name of Banbahi.’

52 Gardner Papers, National Army Museum, Letter 16, p.42.

53 Ibid.

54 See the Mubarak Bagh Papers in the archives of the Delhi Commissioners Office, DCO F5/1861.

55 According to the evidence Bâqar Ali Khan gave to Colonel Bowser in Lord Clive’s Report, ‘After the death of Colonel Dalrymple, the Furzund Begum (Daughter in Law of the Minister) did twice use importunities with my Begum, when on a visit at the Minister’s house, to give up her Grand Daughter to the Resident.’ ‘Report of an Examination …’, op. cit. As late as 1802 Khair un-Nissa and her mother are reported making ‘occasional visits’ to Farzand Begum’s zenana in for example OIOC, Mss Eur F228/58, p.24, James Kirkpatrick to William Palmer, 1 April 1802.

56 Wellington, ‘Memorandum of Conversations … Dummul 26th Sept 1800’, op. cit.

57 Makhan Lal, Tarikh i-Yadgar i-Makhan Lal, op. cit., p.54. Lal reports that Bâqar Ali and Sharaf un-Nissa received jagirs and titles from the Nizam following the marriage, and that ‘Sharaf un-Nissa Begum is receiving the jagir from the government until now’, i.e. AD1819/1236AH, the time of writing.

58 Wellington, op. cit., p.176.

59 See Fisher, ‘Women and the Feminine …’, op. cit.

60 Wellington, op. cit., p.174.

61 Dhoolaury Bibi appears intermittently in William Kirkpatrick’s letters, as do her two children by him, who in Kent were known by the names Robert and Cecilia Walker: see OIOC, F228/10, p.14, 14 September 1797, for James promising to pay Dhoolaury Bibi her allowance of one hundred rupees per month during William’s absence. In William’s will, Dhoolaury Bibi is explicitly referred to as the mother of Robert Walker, and receives a legacy of twelve thousand rupees, a very large sum considering the ruinous state of William’s finances.

62 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, Eur Mss F228/13, p.113, 4 August 1801.

63 ‘Report of an Examination …’, op. cit., p.364. Also Khan, Tarikh i-Khurshid Jahi, op. cit., pp.713-14.

64 Arthur Wellesley to Colonel Close, 22 September 1800, op. cit.

65 Wellington, op. cit.

66 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, Eur Mss F228/13, p.113, 4 August 1801.

67 The letter is now lost but is quoted by Lady Strachey in a letter. Kirkpatrick Papers, OIOC, F228/96, Letter from Mrs R. Strachey [Julia Maria Strachey], 69 Lancaster Gate W, to Sir Edward Strachey, Sutton Court, Pensford, Somersetshire, dated and postmarked 3 April 1886.

68 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/59, p.27, 24 October 1804, James Kirkpatrick to his father, the Handsome Colonel, on his son’s death.

69 For eighteenth-century English aristocratic men, treating women from different classes in utterly different ways as far as sexual relations were concerned, see for example Amanda Foreman, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (London, 1998), and Stella Tillyard,Aristocrats: Caroline, Emily, Louisa and Sarah Lennox 1740-1832 (London, 1995), passim.

70 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, Eur Mss F228/11, p.348, 14 March 1800, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

71 Now sadly lost.

72 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, Mss Eur F228/83, Hyderabad, 23 May 1800.

73 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, Eur Mss F228/11, p.30, 15 January.

74 Ibid., p.73.

75 Quoted by Buddle, op. cit., p.15.

76 See for example Lord Macartney quoted in Lafont, Indika, op. cit., p.158.

77 For the bore of the artillery see ibid., p.157. For the rockets see Colley, ‘Going Native, Telling Tales’, op. cit., p.190.

78 Lafont, Indika, op. cit., p.186.

79 Quoted by Buddle, op. cit., p.34.

80 Weller, op. cit., p.73.

81 Quoted by Moon, op. cit., p.288.

82 See Buddle, op. cit., p.37.

83 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, Eur Mss F228/11, pp.162-75, 17 and 18 May 1799.

84 Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone (London, 1868).

85 Khan, Gulzar i-Asafiya, pp.305-15. A similar picture is painted by Mehdi Hasan, Fateh Nawaz Jung, Muraqq i-Ibrat (Hyderabad, 1300AH/AD1894), p.14.

86 Shushtari, op. cit., p.160.

87 Alexander Walker Papers, NLS 13,601-14, 193, Ms 13,601, f.156, Madras, 6 August 1799.

88 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, Eur Mss F228/11, p.321, 7 March 1800.

89 Ibid., p.252, 14 September 1799.

90 Ibid., p.200, 8 August 1799.

91 James was also surprised by the scale of the ‘pension’: OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, Eur Mss F228/11, p.258, 14 September, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

92 Ibid., p.174, 22 May.

93 Khan, Gulzar i-Asafiya, pp.309-10.

94 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, Eur Mss F228/11, p.275, 15 October.

95 Ibid., p.262, 26 September, and p.269, Hyderabad, 12 October 1799, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

96 Ibid., p.269, Hyderabad, 12 October 1799, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

97 The divan given by Mah Laqa Bai Chanda is now in OIOC, Islamic Ms 2768. The book contains an inscription: ‘The Diwan of Chanda the celebrated Malaka of Hyderabad. This book was presented as a nazr from this extraordinary woman to Captain Malcolm in the midst of a dance in which she was the chief performer on the 18 October 1799 at the House of Meer Allum Bahadur’.

98 ‘Report of an Examination … ’, op. cit., p.364.

99 Khan, The Muraqqa’ e-Dehli, op. cit., p.45-6, 56, 76, 81.

100 New Delhi National Archives, Hyderabad Residency Records, Vol. 20, p.218, 5 November 1799, James Kirkpatrick to Lord Wellesley.

101 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, Eur Mss F228/53, p.16, 24 July 1799, James Kirkpatrick to William Palmer.

102 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, Eur Mss F228/11, p.59, 3 February.

103 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, Eur Mss F228/54, pp.151-2, September, James Kirkpatrick to William Palmer.

104 James’s proposal for the jashn is a fascinating document, and worth reproducing in full, for it reveals his knowledge both of Mughal etiquette in general and, in particular, of the intimate hierarchy that formed the Nizam’s household. At the top of the pile came the Nizam, his three senior wives and the princes, each of whom was to receive the different types of jewels and dresses of honour appropriate to their rank:

Rough Estimate of a great Jushn

His Highness the Nizam and the

Begums of his Mahal

To His Highness: Jewels, nine sorts, viz 1 jiggah [turban ornament in the form of a raised bejewelled flower

spray] 1 sarpeich [a different sort of turban jewel] 1 pr dustbund [a jewelled wristband] 1 ditto Bhojbund [armband], 1 ditto bazoobund [an

armband formed of especially large jewels], 1 malla of pearls, 1 toorah [another form of

turban ornament, round and hung with pearls, associated with the end of the ornament]

. . . . . . 60,000 Rs khillut [i.e. a dress of honour, of which in the Mughal court there were five ranks] of

Badelah [gold and silver cloth]

khillut of 10 complete dresses

shawls ten pairs

kumkhauls [kincob furs] 10 pieces . . . . . . . . . 10,000

2 Elephants . . . . . . 10,000

4 Horses . . . . . . 4,000

Dinners, pawn &c . . . . . . . . . 1,000

Rs. 85,000

To the Principal Ladies of the Mahl:

To the Bukshy Begum, 9 sorts of jewels,

1 kuntee [pearl necklace], 1 pair Bhojedbund, 1 ditto bazoobund …… 4,000

badelahs, kumhuals and shawls 1,000

Rs. 5,000

To Thyneat un Nisa Begum

The same as Bukshy Begum

Rs. 5,000

To Zeib un Nissa Ditto

Rs. 5,000

To the Princes

Secunder Jah

(As with his Highness, but to the value of only) Rs 45,000

To His Bride

(Jewels as above plus 1 poownchee [‘pearls for wrists’] . . . . . . Rs. 15,000

Feridun Jah, Akbar Jah, Jehander Jah, Jumsheid Jah, Soliman Jah, Meir Jehunde Ali (‘lately born’), Humayoon

Jah (His Highnesses brother) Rs. 5,000 each

Then comes a similar list for the household of Aristu Jah, his two Begums (’To the Begum of his Great Mahl . . . . . . 5,000 Rs [of jewels and shawls] To the Begum of his Little Mahl . . . . . . 5,000 Rs ditto’, and the same amount to his daughter-in-law Farzund Begum). This is followed by disbursements to the three different ranks of Hyderabadi omrahs, and finally the costs of the ‘Notch Girls, flower garlands, fireworks, illumination, Donations to shrines and victuals to poor . . . . . . 15,000 Rs.’ OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, Eur Mss F228/11, p.259, 14 September, James Kirkpatrick to Lord Wellesley.

105 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, Eur Mss F228/11, p.217, 21 August.

106 Ibid., p.281, 1 November.

107 New Delhi National Archives, Hyderabad Residency Records, Vol. 20, p.218, 5 November 1799, James Kirkpatrick to Lord Wellesley.

108 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, Eur Mss F228/11, p.348, 14 March.

109 The akhbars survived in the New Delhi National Archives, Hyderabad Residency Records, where they were copied by Bilkiz Alladin in the 1980s, but have now become unusable since the records were waterlogged sometime in 1999 or 2000. Bilkiz kindly gave me access to her copies and I have worked from them. Some of the correspondence relating to them, however, is still intact in the New Delhi National Archives, Secret Consultations, 1800, Foreign Department, 15 May, No. 14, received from Mir Alam 18 February 1800. Part of the ‘Memoranda of the Papers referred to in the minute of the Rt. Hon. The Gov Gen of the 10th of May 1800’.

110 As above, also OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, Eur Mss F228/11, p.338, 9 March.

111 New Delhi National Archives, Secret Consultations, 1800, Foreign Department, 15 May, No. 21, ‘Translation of a Letter from Bauker Alli Khaun to Lt Col Kirkpatrick’.

112 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, Eur Mss F228/11, p.338, 9 March.

113 Khan, Gulzar i-Asafiya, pp.305-15.

114 New Delhi National Archives, Hyderabad Residency Records—see n109, above.

115 New Delhi National Archives, Secret Consultations, 1800, Foreign Department, 15 May, No. 22, pt 2, ‘Meer Uzeez Ollah’s report of his conference with Auzim ool Omrah 4 of March’.

116 Khan, Gulzar i-Asafiya, pp.305-15.

117 Munshi Khader Khan Bidri (trans. Dr Zeb un-Nissa Haidar), Tarikh i-Asaf Jahi (written 1266 AH/AD 1851, pub. Hyderabad, 1994), p.84. M. Abdul Rahim Khan, Tarikh e-Nizam (Hyderabad, 1311 AH/AD 1896), pp.167-8.

118 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/96, ‘Account of the marriage of Sharpun Nisa Begam with Colonel Kirkpatrick called Hashmat Jang, Resident, Hyderabad’. For further details see Chapter 3, n106.

119 Wellington, ‘Memorandum of Conversations … Dummul 26th Sept 1800’, op. cit.

120 Ibid., pp.175-6.

121 Ibid., p.178.

122 Khan, Tarikh i-Khurshid Jahi, op. cit., pp.713-14.

123 Wellington, op. cit., p.180.

124 Arthur Wellesley to Colonel Close, 22 September 1800. See Chapter 3, n15.

125 Khan, Gulzar i-Asafiya, p.308; Khan, Tarikh e-Nizam, op. cit., pp.86, 167-8.

126 See ‘Report of an Examination … ’, op. cit., p.374.

127 Scottish Record Office, Edinburgh, GD135/2086, The Will of Lieut Col James Dalrymple, Hussein Sagar, 8 December 1800.

128 Dalrymple, Letters &... , op. cit.

129 New Delhi National Archives, Secret Consultations, 1800, Foreign Department, 15 May, No. 8, ‘Extract of a Letter from Bauker Alli Khaun, 18 February 1800, part of the Memoranda of the Papers referred to in the minute of the Rt. Hon. The Gov Gen of the 10th of May 1800’.

130 ‘Report of an Examination … ’, op. cit., p.361.

131 New Delhi National Archives, 1800, Foreign Department, Secret Consultation-15 May, No. 24, point the 10th.

132 ‘Report of an Examination … ’, op. cit., p.368.

133 Ibid., p.369.

CHAPTER 5

1 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, Mss Eur F228/12, p.265, 26 November, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

2 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, Mss Eur F228/13, p.250, 12 November, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

3 Khan, Gulzar i-Asafiya, pp.549-59.

4 Ibid., p.552.

5 Bidri, op. cit., p.154.

6 Khan, in The Muraqqa’ e-Dehli, op. cit., p.17, the passage about the Urs of Khuld Manzil in Delhi.

7 Mah e-laqa, op. cit., p.25.

8 See S.A. Asgar Bilgrami, The Landmarks of the Deccan: A Comprehensive Guide to the Archaeological Remains of the City and Suburbs of Hyderabad (Hyderabad, 1927), p.13.

9 Ibid., pp.12ff. The musician Khush-hal Khan—Mah Laqa’s dancing instructor—built an arch on the site, while Mah Laqa’s daughter Hussun Laqa Bai built a dharamsala.

10 For the make-up of the Hyderabadi ruling class see Karen Leonard, ‘The Hyderabad Political System and its Participants’, in Journal of Asian Studies, XXX, No. 3, 1971, pp.569-82; also Leonard’s excellent Social History of an Indian Caste: The Kayasths of Hyderabad (Hyderabad, 1994).

11 C. Collin Davies, ‘Henry Russell’s report on Hyderabad, 30th March 1816’, in Indian Archives, Vol. IX, No. 2, July—December 1955, pp.123-4.

12 Bidri, op. cit., p.154.

13 Khan, Gulzar i-Asafiya, pp.549-59.

14 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, Mss Eur F228/11, p.217, 21 August, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

15 Ibid., p.191, Hyderabad, 31 July 1799, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

16 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, Mss Eur F228/12, p.9, 27 April, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

17 Ibid.

18 Quoted Butler, op. cit., p.182.

19 Ibid., p.70; Bence-Jones, op. cit., p.49; Moon, op. cit., p.312.

20 Butler, op. cit., p.225.

21 Ibid., p.257.

22 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, Mss Eur F228/11, p.217, 21 August 1799.

23 Ibid., p.248, 8 September 1799, and p.291, 29 November 1799.

24 Ibid., p.313, 3 January 1800.

25 Ibid., p.319, 30 January 1800.

26 Ibid., p.329, 27 February 1800.

27 Ibid., p.350, 22 March 1800.

28 For Munshi Aziz Ullah’s Delhi background see Shushtari, op. cit., p.591.

29 New Delhi National Archives, Secret Despatches, 1800, p.2491, Fort William, 10 May 1800, No.3, ‘Intelligence from Azim ul Omrah’s Household’, contains a wonderful picture of Aristu Jah’s methods of conducting business: ‘On the 7th January Moonshee Azeez Oollah waited upon Azim ul Omrah [AUO] & after being engaged with him in cockfighting told him that he had something of a very urgent nature to communicate with him in private & that he would wait upon him at another time for that purpose to which AUO signified his assent. On the 9th Munshi Azeez Oolah attended at 12 o’clock in the day & was sent for by AUO to the bath. The Moonshee desired Mustaqim un Dowlah [MUD] not to be present at the conference as he wished to say what he had to state to AUO without any other witnesses. When the Munshi had paid his respects to AUO in the bath, MUD informed the latter that the Moonshee wished to make a secret communication and therefore suggested his returning to the Nawah Khana or Summer House which was done accordingly & AUO continued in conversation with the Moonshee for a whole hour. On the fourteenth Moonshee Azeez Oollah again attended at the diversion of cock fighting.’

30 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, Mss Eur F228/12, p.105, 16 July, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

31 Ibid., p.226, 25 October, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

32 Ibid., p.185, 11 September, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

33 Ibid., p.200, 1 October, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

34 The picture forms the cover of Iris Butler’s The Eldest Brother, op. cit. It is also illustrated on p.315, plate 220 of Mildred Archer’s India and British Portraiture, op. cit.

35 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, Mss Eur F228/12, p.214, 12 October 1800, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

36 Ibid., p.38, 9 May 1800, William Palmer to James Kirkpatrick.

37 Ibid., p.183, 9 September, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

38 Ibid., p.17, 2 May 1800, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

39 These details are all taken from B.F. Musallam’s remarkable research published as Sex and Society in Islam (Cambridge, 1983). For the Islamic legal view on abortion see p.40. For methods of contraception and abortion see the tables between pp.77-88. For Ibn Sina on abortion see p.69. For the skills of Indian women in methods of birth control see p.94.

40 For the death of Khair un-Nissa’s half-sister (Mehdi Yar Khan’s daughter by an unnamed wife other than Sharaf un-Nissa) see OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/11, p.338, 9 March 1800, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

41 ‘Report of an Examination … ’, op. cit., pp.373-4.

42 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, Mss Eur F228/12, p.138, 17 August 1800.

43 Ibid., pp.138-9.

44 Richard Wellesley (ed. Edward Ingram), Two Views of British India: The Private Correspondence of Mr Dundas and Lord Wellesley: 1798-1801 (London, 1970), p.217.

45 Patrick Cadell, The Letters of Philip Meadows Taylor to Henry Reeve (London, 1947), p.62.

46 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, Mss Eur F228/12, p.58, 31 May, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

47 See Dr Zeb un-Nissa Haidar, ‘The Glimpses of Hyderabad’, op. cit., Chapters 4 and 5 (no page numbers).

48 Khan, Gulzar i-Asafiya, p.305.

49 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, Mss Eur F228/12, p.108, 10 July.

50 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, Mss Eur F228/12, p.275, 9 December, James Kirkpatrick to Webbe.

51 ‘Report of an Examination … ’, op. cit., p.377.

52 Ibid., pp.382-3.

53 Ibid., pp.378-80.

54 From a document in the private archive of Kirkpatrick’s descendants, ‘Enclosures from Resident at Hyderabad in a Letter dated 8th January 1801’. Enclosure 2: ‘Report of another conversation which took place between Aukil oo Dowlah and Colonel Bowzer on the 29th December 1800’.

55 OIOC HM464, op. cit., pp.377-8.

56 Shushtari, op. cit., p.591.

57 From a document in the private archive of Kirkpatrick’s descendants, ‘Enclosures from Resident at Hyderabad in a Letter dated 8th January 1801’. Enclosure 3: ‘Translation of a Shookha addressed by Abdool Lateef Khaun to the Resident, dated the 3rd January 1801’.

58 Ibid.

59 Delhi National Archives, Foreign Department, Secret Consultations, 16 April. Enclosure ‘B’ attached to No. 132: ‘Translation of a letter from Meer Allum addressed to Major Kirkpatrick dated 10th Jan 1801’.

60 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, Mss Eur F228/13, p.4, 16 January 1801, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

61 ‘Report of an Examination … ’, op. cit., pp.380-1.

62 Ibid., p.381.

63 Ibid., p.383.

64 This account comes from a translation of Sharaf un-Nissa’s letter to her granddaughter Kitty Kirkpatrick in the private archive of her descendants.

65 ‘Report of an Examination … ’, op. cit., p.386.

66 Ibid., p.391.

67 Philip Meadows Taylor, Story of my Life (London, 1878), p.36.

68 Philip Meadows Taylor, Confessions of a Thug (London, 1889), pp.124-6. Confessions of a Thug is of course a novel, but this passage clearly draws on Taylor’s many years as a Hyderabadi Resident, where he married the Anglo-Indian granddaughter of Khair un-Nissa’s best friend, Fyze Baksh Palmer. He gives a fascinating description of his father-in-law, William Palmer, and his house, where he ‘met the most intelligent members of Hyderabad society, both native and European, and the pleasant gatherings at his most hospitable house were a great relief from the state and formality of the Residency’. Meadows Taylor, Story of my Life, op. cit., p.37.

69 This is made clear in a letter from Thomas Sydenham to Henry Russell when he talks of two different mansions (see Bodleian Library, Russell Papers, Ms Eng Letts C172, p.1, 14 January 1807); but we know from Dr Kennedy’s visit that Sharaf un-Nissa’s mansion was part of Bâqar Ali Khan’s deorhi complex. It was clearly a huge campus of buildings.

70 OIOC, Mountstuart Elphinstone Papers, Mss Eur F88 Box13/16[b], p.24. For eighteenth-century deorhis see the descriptions given in Sarkar, ‘Haidarabad and Golkonda in 1750 … ’, op. cit., p.240. Several deorhis of this period still survive in the old city—albeit in a rather run-down state—for example the once lovely Hamid Khan Deorhi behind the Chowk Masjid.

71 ‘Report of an Examination … ’, op. cit., pp.387-9.

72 Ibid., pp.388-9.

73 Ibid., p.391.

74 From a document in the private archive of Kirkpatrick’s descendants, ‘Enclosures from Resident at Hyderabad in a Letter dated 8th January 1801’: ‘Report of a conference which took place on the 1st January between Moonshe Meer Azeez Oolla and Aukil oo Dowlah’ and ‘Report of Moonshee Aziz Oolah’s conference with Auzim ool Omrah on the 3rd Jan 1801’.

75 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, Mss Eur F228/13, p.1, Hyderabad, 9 January 1801, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick. For the details about Bâqar’s sight and hearing see Delhi National Archives, Foreign Department, Secret Consultations, 24 April 1800, No. 20, Item No. 66, James Kirkpatrick to Lord Wellesley, 21 January 1800.

76 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, Mss Eur F228/96, ‘Account of the marriage of Sharpun Nisa Begam with Colonel Kirkpatrick called Hashmat Jang, Resident, Hyderabad’. This document was apparently compiled by a munshi working for Trevor Plowden, Resident in the early 1890s.

77 Ibid.

78 It is unclear whether this was the same Ahmed Ali Khan whose son was originally engaged to Khair un-Nissa.

79 Syed ood Dowlah seems to have been the mujtahid who converted James. He may or may not have been the same Syed ood Dowlah who was in the train of Mir Alam when he met Arthur Wellelsey on his release from prison.

80 From a translation of Sharaf un-Nissa’s letter to Kitty Kirkpatrick in the private archive of her descendants.

81 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/84, Will of James Achilles Kirkpatrick.

82 For all James’s secrecy, the fact that he both embraced Islam and formally married Khair un-Nissa according to Shi’a law seems to have been widely known in Hyderabad, judging by the frequency with which the fact is mentioned in Hyderabad chronicles, for example Bidri, op. cit., p.84.

83 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, Mss Eur F228/13, p.4, Hyderabad, 16 January 1801, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

CHAPTER 6

1 Wellesley, op. cit., Vol. 5, pp.405, 407.

2 Abdul Lateef Shushtari, Tuhfat al-’Alam, ‘Dhail al-Tuhfa [the Appendix to the Tuhfat al-’Alam], Being additional notes to ’Abd al-Latif Shushtari’s autobiography, about his return to Haidarabad after he had finished writing his book in 1216/1802, these notes were written at the repeated request of Shiite divines, especially the late ’Allama Aqa Muhammad ’Ali son of ’Allama Aqa Muhammad Baqer Behbehani’, pp.3-5.

3 G.S. Sardesai (ed.), English Records of Mahratta History: Pune Residency Correspondence Volume 6-Poona Affairs 1797-1801 (Palmer’s Embassy) (Bombay, 1939), p.ii.

4 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/25 p.12, 1 January 1801, Lord Wellesley’s offer of the Poona Residency to William Kirkpatrick, a letter to the Board.

5 Sardesai, op. cit., p.571, No. 350A, William Palmer to Lord Wellesley, ‘Poona, 27th June 1800’.

6 Hastings Papers, BL Add Mss 29,178, Vol. XLVII, 1801-02, 10 October 1802, pp.277-8, William Palmer to Hastings.

7 Ibid., 10 July 1801, pp.61-3, William Palmer to Hastings.

8 William Palmer was the largest subscriber towards the publication of George Thomas’s military memoirs; see William Francklin, Military Memoirs of Mr George Thomas (Calcutta, 1803), p.xiii. For Palmer’s coin collection, and its loss during the 1857 Mutiny, see the note in Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 27, 1858, p.169.

9 Stuart Cary Welch, Room for Wonder: Indian Paintings During the British Period 1760-1880 (New York, 1979).

10 On a visit to St Kitts in 1972, Alex Palmer, William Palmer’s direct descendant, found the marriage entry in the Register of St George and St Peter’s church, Basseterre. See Alex Palmer, ‘The Palmer Family 1740-2000’ (unpublished manuscript). Sarah’s family name given in the register, ‘Hazell’, contradicts the evidence contained in a manuscript written by Edward Palmer, Alex’s grandfather, now in the India Office Library, entitled ‘The Palmers of Hyderabad’, OIOC Mss Eur D443 (1). Edward Palmer believed that Sarah was called Melhado or Melkado, but he gives no authority for this information.

11 In a charming letter from Sarah’s youngest son, now in the Bodleian Library, the young John Palmer describes his travels around India to his mother: ‘Wm [Sarah’s second son] and myself are now on a journey to see my father,’ he tells her. He mentions that his father is now a major, in a way that implies that he and Sarah were not in direct contact and were perhaps estranged. He goes on to describe his adventures in the navy, including one engagement with the French when ‘I was stationed in the quarter deck which place was one continual scene of slaughter, not having less than 10 men killed or wounded,’ but says that he finally left the fleet in August. He has seen his eldest brother Sam, and wants his mother to remember him kindly to all his old friends in St Kitts: ‘that God may grant you health and prosperity is my prayer’. See Palmer Papers, Bodleian Library, Ms Eng Lit C83, p.1, Benares, 16 December 1782.

12 According to Alex Palmer, a manuscript called the ‘Cayon Diary’ bound with the parish register of Cayon on St Kitts refers to Sarah staying on in the island after William’s departure. See ‘The Palmer Family’, op. cit., p.7 n2. For John Palmer’s letter to his mother, see Palmer Papers, Bodleian Library, Ms Eng Lit C83, p.1, Benares, 16 December 1782. For Sarah in Greenwich, and William’s attempts to get David Anderson to send her some money, see Anderson Papers, BL Add Mss 45,427, p.203, March 1792, Gualiar.

13 Palmer is frequently stated to have married Fyze according to Muslim law—for example by Count Edouard de Warren in L’Inde Anglaise en 1843 (Paris, 1845), where he says that the General married his wife, ‘a well-born Indian lady … according to the Koran [i.e. the rites of her religion]’, as is confirmed by Palmer family tradition: see letter from Palmer’s great-granddaughter, Mrs Hester Eiloart, of 15 September 1927, OIOC L/R/7/49). Given Fyze’s social status this would in turn imply that, like James Kirkpatrick, Palmer converted to Islam, which apart from anything else would have removed the obstacle of his previous marriage: Muslims are of course allowed up to four wives. But unlike the case of Kirkpatrick there is no firm evidence either for a conversion or a Muslim marriage, and in Palmer’s will, Fyze is merely referred to as ‘Beby Fize Buksh Saheb a Begum, who has been my affectionate friend & companion during a period of more than thirty five years’ (Bengal Wills 1816, OIOC L/AG/34/29/28, p.297). This formulation, however, leaves the question open, and certainly does not disprove a Muslim marriage: James Kirkpatrick used a similar one in his will to describe Khair un-Nissa, despite having been legally married in a Muslim ceremony, because—according to his friend and Assistant Henry Russell—he was worried that English law would not recognise the Muslim marriage, and he did not wish to endanger his legacy to his children. (See letter from Henry Russell to his brother Charles, Swallowfield, 30 March 1848, in the private archive of James Kirkpatrick’s descendants.) It is quite possible that Palmer described Fyze in this way for the same reason.

14 Young, Fountain of Elephants, op. cit., pp.99-100. Young quotes from some letters he found in the Chambéry archives, some of which appear to have disappeared since his trawl through the archive in the 1950s. I certainly could not find the one which refers to ‘the Persian Colonel’, but did find legal documents from Nur Begum’s time in Britain which repeatedly state that she was ‘of Delhi’. Although Fyze was later made a Begum by the Emperor, there is no contemporary evidence that she was ‘a member of the Delhi Royal House’, as her grandson-in-law Philip Meadows Taylor seemed to believe.

15 There has long been confusion over the name of Fyze’s sister and de Boigne’s wife. In an article in Bengal Past and Present (Vol. XLIII, p.150), Sir Judunath Sarkar suggested that as she took the name Helena when she later converted to Christianity, she might originally have had some similar Muslim name such as Halima. Since then the name Halima has entered the literature as if it were fact, most recently in Rosie Llewellyn-Jones’s fascinating piece on her in her Engaging Scoundrels, op. cit., pp.88-93. In actual fact her name was Nur Begum, as was recorded by Mirza Abu Taleb Khan, who writes of his meeting with her in London in The Travels of Mirza Abu Taleb Khan, op. cit., pp.198-200: ‘Noor Begum who accompanied General de Boigne from India … was dressed in the English fashion, and looked remarkably well. She was much pleased with my visit, and requested me to take charge of a letter for her mother, who resides at Lucknow.’

16 Anderson Papers, BL Add Mss 45,427, p.198v, undated but c.1781.

17 Ibid., p.146, 3 May 1783.

18 Ibid., p.180, 3 October 1784.

19 OIOC, IO Coll 597.

20 For details of the court costume of this period see Ritu Kumar, Costumes and Textiles of Royal India (London, 1998). Kumar’s book is much the best source for the clothing of the period, but she severely underestimates the degree of intermarriage and cultural cross-dressing that went on.

21 As with much else concerning Palmer’s marriage, there has been a great deal of scholarly controversy about the identity of the figures in the picture. A letter written by Palmer’s great-great-granddaughter, M.P. Hanley ‘of Assam’, now in the India Office Library, maintains that ‘the General was a ‘’bad old man” and had two wives, the first being the Princess Fyzun Nissa of Delhi, the mother of William Palmer of Hyderabad and the second a princess of Oudh. I have this information from Mr. Charles Palmer who tells me he got it from Miss Meadows Taylor who edited Meadows Taylor’s Story of My Life’ (OIOC, L/R/7/49). This version of events was followed by Mildred Archer in her India and British Portraiture, op. cit., pp.281-6, who thought that the figure kneeling to Palmer’s left must be the ‘Oudh Princess’, and that she was ‘looking ardently at Palmer and leaning against his knee while he for his part holds her hand’ (although this is clearly not the case if you look carefully at the unfinished painting, and represents an almost unique case of the usually super-scrupulous Mrs Archer failing to look closely at a picture: Nur is in fact neither looking at Palmer nor holding his hand). Archer’s reading of the picture has been blindly followed by Beth Toibin in Picturing Imperial Power: Colonial Subjects in Eighteenth Century British Painting (Duke, 1999), pp.113-14. The story seems however to have got garbled in the retelling, for while Fyze and her sister appear frequently in Palmer’s letters and will, there is never a single mention of a second Indian wife or concubine—though the General did in fact have a second wife, Sarah Hazell, in St Kitts, and here must lie the origin of the confused story. Palmer’s ‘Begum of Oudh’ referred to in a Times marriage announcement of 19 February 1925 (taken out by a proud great-grandson of the Begum who was getting married), which Archer believed to be substantiating evidence for a second Indian wife, was of course Fyze herself, who though born in Delhi had long been a Lucknow resident. The beautiful bejewelled figure kneeling beside Palmer in the picture must presumably be Nur Begum, as Mrs Hester Eiloart, another great-granddaughter (who sold the picture to the India Office), always maintained, and as Durba Ghosh also concluded in her investigation of the picture (see ‘Colonial Companions’, op. cit., p.97, n36). This is also the view of the current Director of the Prints and Drawings Section in the India Office, Dr Jerry Losty, who, just to add to the confusion, has recently re-attributed the picture to the painter Johan Zoffany. (Mildred Archer believed it to be the work of Francesco Renaldi: see her India and British Portraiture, op. cit., p.282, and ‘Renaldi and India: A Romantic Encounter’, in Apollo, Vol. 104, July- September 1976, pp.98-105.) The well-dressed female figure standing on the extreme right of the picture must presumably be another of Fyze’s sisters.

22 De Boigne archive, Chambéry, letters from William Palmer to Benoît de Boigne, 13 March 1790; Ogeine, 23 April 1792; and ‘Friday Evening’ (undated but c.1785).

23 De Boigne archive, Chambéry, arzee from the Lady Faiz un-Nissa.

24 Dennis Kincaid, British Social Life in India 1608-1937 (London, 1938).

25 Mulka Begum was also the Mughal Emperor’s niece. See Narindar Saroop, A Squire of Hindustan (London, 1983), p.149.

26 When she visited the Nawab’s harem, Fanny Parkes met one of the Angrezi Begums and writes in detail about her in Wanderings of a Pilgrim, op. cit.

27 Mrs B. Meer Hassan Ali, Observations on the Mussulmauns of India Descriptive of their Manners, Customs, Habits and Religious Opinions Made During Twelve Years Residence in their Immediate Society (London, 1832).

28 See the Introduction by W. Crooke to the 1917 Oxford University Press (OUP) edition, p.xv.

29 De Boigne archive, Chambéry, ‘Mrs Begum’s London accounts’.

30 Alam and Alavi, A European Experience of the Mughal Orient, op. cit., esp. pp.69-71.

31 Hastings Papers, BL Add Mss 29,178, Vol. XLVII, 1801-02, 10 October 1802, pp.277-8, William Palmer to Hastings.

32 Ibid., 4 December 1802, pp.314-19.

33 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/12, p.30, 5 May 1800.

34 For example ibid., p.179, 16 September 1801, William Palmer to James Kirkpatrick.

35 This had stated that the land handed over was, as William Palmer reported to Warren Hastings, ‘a full and complete equivalent and discharge, whether revenue should exceed or fall short of the estimate, in either of which events neither party was to make any demand on the other’. Hastings Papers, BL Add Mss 29,178, Vol. XLVII, 1801-02, 10 July 1801, pp.61-3.

36 Ibid.

37 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/13, p.70, 23 June 1801, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

38 Ibid., p.113, 4 August 1801, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

39 See Moon, op. cit., p.305, and Butler, op. cit., pp.242-51.

40 OIC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/56, p.2, 2 December 1801, James Kirkpatrick to William Palmer.

41 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/13, p.58, 7 June 1801, James Kirkpatrick to William Palmer.

42 Ibid., p.17, 26 January, William Palmer to James Kirkpatrick.

43 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/56, p.13, 4 January 1802, and p.14, 10 January 1802, James Kirkpatrick to William Palmer.

44 Ibid., p.26, 1 February 1802, James Kirkpatrick to John Tulloch.

45 For Fyze’s adoption by the Emperor and her title see OIOC, Persian Mss, IO 4440.

46 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/83, pp.19-24, 4 January 1802, James Kirkpatrick to Lord Wellesley.

47 Ibid., p.152, 6 September 1801, and p.166, 21 September 1801, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

48 Ibid., p.152, 6 September, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

49 Ibid., p.166, 21 September 1801, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

50 Thomas Sydenham, quoted in Anon., Some Notes on the Hyderabad Residency Collected from Original Records in the Residency Office (Hyderabad, c.1880), p.3.

51 Mackintosh, Memoirs, op. cit., Vol. 1, p.511.

52 Julian James Cotton, ‘Kitty Kirkpatrick’, Calcutta Review, April 1899, p.243.

53 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/13, p.35, 5 April 1801, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

54 Ibid., p.39, 17 April 1801, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick. For William Thackeray in Madras see Sir William Hunter, The Thackerays in India (London, 1897), pp.111-40. This odd little book also contains (on p.174) an interesting mention of James’s now-vanished grave in South Park Street Cemetery, as he was buried adjacent to the grave of Richmond Thackeray, the father of the novelist.

55 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/13, p.40, 22 April 1801, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

56 Ibid., p.58, 7 June 1801, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

57 Ibid., p.44, 4 May 1801, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

58 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/25, p.21, 20 June 1801, Lord Wellesley to William Kirkpatrick.

59 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/13, p.62, 11 June 1801, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

60 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/55, p.3, 6 December 1801, James Kirkpatrick to William Palmer.

61 There is a wonderful account of the two young men’s trip written by Edward’s descendant, Barbara Strachey, in The Strachey Line: An English Family in America, India and at home from 1570 to 1902 (London, 1985), pp.100-5. The diaries of both survive in the India Office Library, though Elphinstone’s writing is so scruffy as to be partly illegible. Mountstuart Elphinstone’s is in Mss Eur F88 Box13/16[b], and Edward Strachey’s in Mss Eur F128/196.

62 OIOC, Edward Strachey’s Diary, Mss Eur F128/196, pp.16-20.

63 OIOC, Mss Eur F88 Box13/16[b], entry for 14 September 1801.

64 OIOC, Edward Strachey’s Diary, Mss Eur F128/196, p.33.

65 Ibid., p.17.

66 OIOC, Mss Eur F88 Box13/16[b], entry for 13 September 1801.

67 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/58, p.92, 16 October 1802, James Kirkpatrick to to Sir John Kennaway.

68 Colley, ‘Going Native, Telling Tales’, op. cit., pp.180-1, 184.

69 OIOC, Mss Eur F88 Box 13/16[b], entry for 22 August 1801.

70 Ibid., entry for 23 August 1801.

71 Ibid., entry for 15 November 1801.

72 Khan, Gulzar i-Asafiya, p.560.

73 Ibid., pp.560-5.

74 For this practice in Lucknow see Fisher, ‘Women and the Feminine … ’, op. cit., p.507.

75 Khan, Gulzar i-Asafiya, p.588.

76 For this tilework, which has recently been drastically ‘renovated’ by the Archaeological Survey of India in hideous Disney colours, see the excellent description in Michell and Zebrowski, The New Cambridge History of India 1.7: Architecture and Art of the Deccan Sultanates (Cambridge, 1999), p.138.

77 Husain, Scent in the Islamic Garden, op. cit., p.31.

78 Kausar, op. cit., p.224.

79 Ali, Observations on the Mussulmauns … , op. cit., p.51.

80 Shushtari, op. cit., pp.545-8.

81 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/13, p.166, 21 September, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

82 Ibid., p.168, 22 September, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

83 Ibid., p.187, 29 September, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

84 Ibid., p.216, 13 October, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

85 Wellesley Papers, BL Add Mss 37,282, p.279, 7 October 1801, Lord Wellesley to William Kirkpatrick.

CHAPTER 7

1 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/56, p.13, 4 January 1802, James Kirkpatrick to William Palmer.

2 Ibid., p.26, 1 February 1802, James Kirkpatrick to John Tulloch; also F228/57, p.7, Hyderabad, 5 April 1802, James Kirkpatrick to John Read.

3 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/56, p.25, 1 February 1802, James Kirkpatrick to William Petrie.

4 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/58, p.36, 2 October 1802, James Kirkpatrick to William Palmer.

5 James actually spelt Sulaiman’s name ‘Sooleymaun’, but I have updated the spelling to ease comprehension throughout.

6 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/58, p.23, 6 May 1802, James Kirkpatrick to William Palmer.

7 Ibid., p.15, 24 July 1802, James Kirkpatrick to William Palmer.

8 Ibid., p.24, 1 April 1802, James Kirkpatrick to William Palmer.

9 That Fyze was literate is clear from her letter to de Boigne quoted in Chapter 6. Khair un-Nissa’s literacy is alluded to frequently in Henry Russell’s letters in the Bodleian Library, which refer to him receiving regular letters from her, although none have survived. Sharaf un-Nissa’s letters have survived, however, although they somehow became detached from Russell’s well-catalogued English correspondence and languished uncatalogued in the store of the library’s Persian Department. I am extremely grateful to Doris Nicholson for finally locating them all. Khair un-Nissa’s letters may have been deliberately destroyed, either by Russell himself or by his daughter-in-law, Lady Russell, who became the family historian. The English correspondence also shows signs of being discreetly pruned, especially of correspondence that might have implicated Russell in the scandal surrounding the collapse of Palmer’s bank, about which Russell had to face a formal investigation by the East India Company and which led to his early retirement from India.

10 See previous note. Russell’s letters refer to his worries that Palmer might use the matter of ‘the Begum’ against him in the East India Company inquiry into the collapse of Palmer’s bank, and it may have been at this stage that he took the precaution of destroying Khair’s letters.

11 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/57, p.8, 8 April 1802, James Kirkpatrick to William Palmer.

12 Both notes are now in the private archive of their descendants.

13 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/58, p.23, 6 May 1802, James Kirkpatrick to William Palmer.

14 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/57, p.24, 1 April 1802, James Kirkpatrick to William Palmer.

15 Scottish Record Office, Edinburgh, Seaforth Muniments, GD46/8/1, Henry Russell to Lady Hood, Hyderabad, 5 November 1813.

16 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/56, p.8, 8 April 1802, James Kirkpatrick to William Palmer.

17 Ibid., p.24, 1 April 1802, James Kirkpatrick to William Palmer.

18 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/58, p.73, 10 December 1802, James Kirkpatrick to William Palmer.

19 Durba Ghosh discusses this letter eloquently in her thesis ‘Colonial Companions’, op. cit., p.124.

20 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/18, p.30, 31 October, William Kirkpatrick to James Kirkpatrick.

21 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/12, p.280, 6 December, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

22 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/18, pp.20-3, from Maula Ali, 23 November 1801, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

23 Ibid., pp.11-13, John Malcolm to William Kirkpatrick, Patna, 19 October 1801.

24 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/13, p.265, 28 November 1801, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

25 Ibid., p.222, 19 October 1801, Vigors to James Kirkpatrick.

26 Probably because of this incident, James later wrote a code for etiquette connected to the reception of the British Resident which laid down in minute detail exactly what should be done on the occasion of a visit, including the number of guns which were to make the salute and the size and make-up of the guard of honour with which he was to be met. See New Delhi National Archives, Foreign Department, Secret Consultations, 16 May 1805, No. 89-90.

27 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/13, p.238, 9 November 1801, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

28 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/58, p.15, 24 July 1802, James Kirkpatrick to William Palmer.

29 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/13, p.282, 7 December 1801, William Palmer to James Kirkpatrick.

30 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/11, p.192, 5 August 1799, William Kirkpatrick to James Kirkpatrick.

31 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/56, p.9, 8 April 1802, James Kirkpatrick to Close.

32 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/18, p.48, 30 November 1801, John Malcolm to William Kirkpatrick.

33 Ibid., pp.24-7, 20 January 1802, William Kirkpatrick to James Kirkpatrick.

34 Ibid., pp.33-7, 20 April 1802, John Malcolm to William Kirkpatrick.

35 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/58, p.27, 25 March 1802, N.B. Edmonstone to James Kirkpatrick.

36 William Palmer’s authorship of the letter is clear from its style, its contents, the handwriting, and finally James’s remarks on it to William Palmer’s father, the General.

37 For William Palmer’s stay with his brother John, see the letter from General Palmer to his brother-in-law Benoît de Boigne, Pune, 13 December 1799, in the de Boigne archive at Chambéry.

38 From James Baillie Fraser, Military Memoirs of Lt. Col. James Skinner C.B. (2 vols, London, 1851), Vol. 2, p.162.

39 Hastings Papers, BL Add Mss 29,178, pp.240, 254-5.

40 Hawes, op. cit., pp.102-3.

41 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/57, p.1, 14 March 1802, James Kirkpatrick to Ebeneezer Roebuck.

42 East India Company, ‘The Hyderabad Papers: Papers Relative To Certain Pecuniary Transactions Of Messrs William Palmer And Co With The Government Of His Highness The Nizam’ (London, 1824), letter from William Palmer to Henry Russell, p.2.

43 The Resident Charles Metcalfe, quoted in Hawes, op. cit., p.106.

44 OIOC, HM 743, ‘The Affairs Of Messrs Wm Palmer & Co Vol. 2 Extract From Bengal Pol Cons 7th Oct 1825’, Point 61-2, (18).

45 Anon., Sketches of India … , op. cit., pp.325-6.

46 Certainly, William Palmer seems to have been trading in a modest way from at least 1802, when James bought a consignment of camels from him. See OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/58, p.22, 8 September 1802, James Kirkpatrick to Charles Farran.

47 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/83, ‘The Letter from Philothetes’.

48 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/57, p.27, 25 March 1802, N.B. Edmonstone to James Kirkpatrick.

49 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/27, p.19, 27 April 1802, James Kirkpatrick to N.B. Edmonstone.

50 See J.W. Kaye., op. cit., Vol. 2, p.162.

51 OIOC, Mountstuart Elphinstone Papers, Mss Eur F88, Box13/16[b], Elphinstone’s diary, f.92, 23 August 1801.

52 J.W. Kaye, op. cit., p.162. Holland initially resided in the royal palace until he rented the Residency site several months later. See Ashwin Kumar Bakshi, ‘The Residency of Hyderabad 1779-1857’ (unpublished Ph.D., Osmania University, 1990), p.97.

53 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/12, p.163, 29 August 1800, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

54 OIOC, Bengal Political Consultations, P/117/18, 19 October 1800; 3 June 1801, No. 1: The Residency, Hyderabad.

55 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/13, p.117, 15 August 1801, for Shumsair Jung.

56 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/12, p.143, 30 August 1801, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick. For James’s request for peach trees see F228/57, p.33, 27 May 1802.

57 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/58, p.30, 12 September 1802, James Kirkpatrick to Fawcett in Bombay.

58 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/54, p.8, 9 September, James Kirkpatrick to Trail.

59 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/53, p.21, 25 September 1800, James Kirkpatrick to Trail.

60 Ibid., p.31, 25 September 1800, to Richard Chase.

61 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/57, p.16, 29 April 1802, James Kirkpatrick to an unnamed Madras jeweller.

62 Ibid., p.25, 9 May 1802, James Kirkpatrick to Barry Close.

63 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/59, p.31, 24 October 1804, James Kirkpatrick to Kennaway.

64 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/58, p.44, 18 October 1802, to Fawcett.

65 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/59, p.31, 24 October 1804, James Kirkpatrick to Kennaway.

66 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/58, p.67, 3 December 1802, James Kirkpatrick to T.G. Richardson in Madras.

67 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/58, p.77, 21 December 1802, James Kirkpatrick to T.G. Richardson.

68 Anon., The Chronology of Modern Hyderabad from 1720 to 1890 AD (Hyderabad, 1954), p.55.

69 Khan, Gulzar i-Asafiya, pp.305-15.

70 Jagdish Mittal, ‘Paintings of the Hyderabad School’, in Marg, 16, 1962-63, p.44.

71 This fine image, which James Kirkpatrick’s Assistant and successor Thomas Sydenham said he ‘procured with much difficulty from the archives of the Nizam’s family’, is illustrated on p.265 of Mark Zebrowski’s Deccani Painting (London, 1983).

72 This section is derived from the extraordinary research of Ali Akbar Husain in his important study Scent in the Islamic Garden, op. cit., p.108.

73 Ibid., pp.105-6.

74 Ibid., pp.38, 71, 78, 131.

75 Ibid., pp.107-8.

76 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/58, p.3, 2 October 1802, James Kirkpatrick to William Palmer.

77 This is said explicitly in the first letter from Kitty Kirkpatrick to Sharaf un-Nissa, in the private archive of their descendants.

78 James notes in 1801 that of the Residency staff only Dr Ure had seen the children: OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/13, p.152, 6 September, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick. Later it becomes clear that Henry Russell had also met them. Khair nevertheless kept strict purdah and did not show herself to any of the Europeans: Russell, who had to deal frequently with her both before and after Kirkpatrick’s death, was only permitted to see her unveiled in 1806 in Calcutta, and it was clearly considered a great honour to him that she did so. After her affair with Russell commenced, she promised to show herself to his brother Charles, again something that was granted as a special favour in very special circumstances: as Henry explained, ‘The Begums are both of them very grateful for your constant attentions to their wishes, and frequently speak of you with great warmth and interest. Khyr oon Nissa says she will see you and become personally acquainted with you, whenever she has an opportunity.’ See Bodleian Library, Russell Papers, Ms Eng Letts C155, p.164.

79 Khair un-Nissa did however seem to have met Russell’s mistress, who is never named and remains only ‘my girl’. Russell’s relationship with the girl does not appear to have been a very serious or affectionate one: in 1806, during his long absence in Calcutta, she became pregnant, to Russell’s fury, though he was sure that he was the father and wrote to his brother Charles: ‘Your account of my girl’s conduct gives me much pain, and I am exceedingly dissatisfied to hear she is with child. On me she has not many claims, but the Begum has interceded very warmly for her; and, and at her particular request, I have consented to restore to the girl her full monthly allowance of 30 rupees she originally received from me. I will therefore thank you to pay her that sum in future, and to tell her that I expect her gratitude to the Begum, as well as to me, will induce her to behave better than she has done lately.’ See Bodleian Library, Russell Papers, Ms Eng Letts C155, p.155, Calcutta, 18 June. One child the children might have met was young John Ure, the doctor’s son, who was the same age as Sahib Begum.

80 Judging by the evidence of Khair and Sharaf un-Nissa taking Fanny and Fyze to the Minister’s and Nizam’s zenanas.

81 This section is derived from the extraordinary research of Zinat Kausar in her wonderful Muslim Women in Mediaeval India, op. cit., esp. Chapter 1.

82 I am grateful to Dr Ruby Lal for her help on the role of wetnurses in the Mughal harem.

83 Letter from Sharaf un-Nissa to Kitty Kirkpatrick, undated but c.1840, in the private archives of their descendants.

84 Jehangir (trans. Alexander Rodgers, ed. Henry Beveridge), The Tuzuk i-Jehangiri or Memoirs of Jehangir (London, 1909-14), p.36.

85 Kausar, op. cit., p.11.

86 Ibid., p.14.

87 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/59, p.33, 24 October 1804, James Kirkpatrick to George Kirkpatrick.

88 Bodleian Library, Russell Papers, Ms Eng Letts C156, p.21, 21 April 1808. After James’s death and Khair un-Nissa’s exile to Masulipatam, Henry Russell sent his brother Charles to Khair’s townhouse to fetch him some of James’s Mughal clothes that he kept there and which Henry needed for a masquerade in Madras. He told his brother to take ‘as many of the poor Colonels Hindoostanee dupes[?] [Indian clothes] that I might wish’, asking him to go to the house and ‘see if you can solicit[?] a complete dup, if there be one, and if not take what articles are sufficient, and what will be the expense of purchasing them. There should be a jama complete, with sunjaf[?] and kinaree; a pair of rich kumkhand turbauns; a turban of Umjud Ally Khan’s shape; and a rich putka or cummarbund for the court[?]—all these things I believe you will find at least three or four setts of in the Begum’s House, except perhaps the turbun and cummerbund; but you can soon ascertain and let me know’.

89 In Henry Russell’s correspondence from Calcutta, he records Khair writing letters not only to her grandmother but to her friends ‘Chistan and Hyatee’s mother’. Bodleian Library, Russell Papers, Ms Eng Letts C155, p.150, Chowringhee, 4 July 1806. When Khair died, ‘her mother [Sharaf un-Nissa] and all her relations and friends were with her’. Among those gathered around her bed was Fyze. In the days that followed, huge crowds turned up at her funeral, ‘which was attended by every person of rank in the place’. See Scottish Record Office, Edinburgh, GD46/15/3/1-30, Henry Russell to Lady Hood, Hyderabad, 23 September 1813.

90 Letter from William George Kirkpatrick (Sahib Allum) to Kitty Kirkpatrick (Sahib Begum), dated 1 March 1823, in the private archive of Kirkpatrick’s descendants.

91 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/59, p.4, 11 June 1803, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

92 Letter from Kitty Kirkpatrick to Sharaf un-Nissa, undated but c.1840, in the private archives of their descendants.

93 Ibid. For one among many instances of Khair un-Nissa making dresses for a friend see Bodleian Library, Russell Papers, Ms Eng Letts C172, p.67, 7 June 1813, Masulipatam, from Lady (Mary) Hood.

94 Kausar, op. cit., pp.194-8.

95 For an excellent account of Wellesley’s rebuilding of Government House in Calcutta see Bence-Jones, op. cit., Chapter 2.

96 Quoted in Davies, Splendours of the Raj, op. cit., p.35.

97 Quoted by Moon, op. cit., p.340

98 Malcolm makes the error, in his telling of the story, of calling the Minister ‘Meer Allum’. As the Mir was in 1802 under house arrest and Aristu Jah was the Minister at the time, I have corrected the mistake in the quotation to avoid confusion.

99 J.W. Kaye, op. cit., Vol. 2, p.100.

100 For the Nizam’s toothlessness see de Boigne archive, Chambéry, bundle AB IIA, Lieutenant William Steuart to ‘Mac’, Paangul, 30 October 1790. For the camels’ milk see Bidri, op. cit., p.60; for the fishing see New Delhi National Archives, Foreign Department, Secret Consultations, 1800, 15 May, No. 12, ‘Moonshee Azeez Oolah’s Report of a conversation with AUO and of what passed at the Durbar of HH on 9th March 1800’. For the spice-island pigeons see OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/13, p.80, 29 June 1801, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick. For the lioness see OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/58, p.65, 3 December 1802, James Kirkpatrick to N.B. Edmonstone. For the clock, the automaton and the cloak see OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/11, p.332, 5 March 1800, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

101 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/13, p.292, 17 December 1801, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

102 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/57, p.35, 23 May 1802, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

103 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/11, p.287, 25 November 1800, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

104 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/13, p.47, 6 May 1801, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

105 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/58, p.38, 6 October 1802, James Kirkpatrick to James Brunton.

CHAPTER 8

1 See Anon., Some Notes on the Hyderabad Residency, op. cit., p.29.

2 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/59, p.1, 11 June 1803, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

3 New Delhi National Archives, Hyderabad Residency Records, Vol. 834, p.178, 6 August 1803, James Kirkpatrick to Arthur Wellesley.

4 Ibid., 7 August 1803, James Kirkpatrick to ‘Major Laton commanding the Hyderabad Detachment’ for the ‘extra butter’; pp.179-80, 8 August, James Kirkpatrick to Arthur Wellesley for the succession of Nizam Sikander Jah.

5 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/59, p.8, 18 August 1803, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

6 Kirkpatrick, ‘ A View of the State of the Deccan’, op. cit., p.33.

7 From Davies, ‘Henry Russell’s Report on Hyderabad’, op. cit., pp.121-3.

8 Moon, op. cit., p.314

9 Arthur Wellesley quoted in ibid., p.316.

10 Letter from James Kirkpatrick to N.B. Edmonstone, undated but c.May 1803, in the private archive of Kirkpatrick’s descendants.

11 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/59, p.1, 11 June 1803.

12 Sir Thomas Munro, quoted in Moon, op. cit., p.321.

13 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/59, p.40, 4 June 1805.

14 Ibid., p.13, 2 October, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

15 Ibid., p.1, 11 June 1803, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick

16 Hastings Papers, BL Add Mss 29,178, Vol. XLVII, 1801-02, 4 December 1802, pp.314-19, William Palmer to Hastings.

17 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/58, p.62, 23 November 1802, and p.67, 1 December 1802, both James Kirkpatrick to William Palmer.

18 New Delhi National Archives, Hyderabad Residency Records, Vol. 634, 9 May 1804, pp.32-3.

19 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/59, p.8, 18 August 1804, and p.40, 4 June 1805, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

20 Bodleian Library, Russell Papers, Ms Eng Letts C155, p.42, 17 August 1804, Madras, Henry Russell to Charles Russell.

21 I am grateful to Professor Robert Frykenberg for sending me a copy of this image.

22 Bodleian Library, Russell Papers, Ms Eng Letts C155, p.1, 21 February 1802; p.5, 19 March 1802; p.11, 15 April 1802: all Henry Russell to Charles Russell.

23 Quoted in ‘A Preliminary Report on the Russell Correspondence Relating to Hyderabad 1783-1816’, reprinted in Indian Archives, Vol. IX, January-June 1955, No. 1, pp.25-6.

24 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/59, p.40, 4 June 1805, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

25 Bidri, op. cit., p.83.

26 New Delhi National Archives, Hyderabad Residency Records, Vol. 634, 20 October 1804, ‘A Secret Communication’, p.85.

27 Moon, op. cit., pp.340-1.

28 Quoted in Butler, op. cit., p.326.

29 Hastings Papers, BL Add Mss 29,180, Vol. XLIX, f.328, October 1804-December 1805, William Palmer to Hastings, Berhampore, 12 October 1805.

30 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/75, p.3, 27 July 1805, Lieutenant Colonel Robinson to James Kirkpatrick.

31 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/58, p.53, 9 November 1802, James Kirkpatrick to James Brunton.

32 Ibid., p.66, 30 November 1802, James Kirkpatrick to James Brunton.

33 Ibid., p.31, 24 October 1804, James Kirkpatrick to Kennaway.

34 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/59, p.8, 18 August 1804, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

35 See the obituary in the New Monthly Magazine for 1836; Rev. George Oliver’s ‘Biographies of Exonians’, in the Exeter Flying Post 1849-50; and a file on the Kennaway family in the West Country Studies Library, Exeter.

36 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/59, p.31, 24 October 1804, James Kirkpatrick to Kennaway.

37 Ibid., p.25, 23 July 1804, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick. Isabella (who was christened Barbara Isabella Kirkpatrick, but was known as an adult by her more becoming middle name) was born in 1788. See Strachey Papers, OIOC F127/478a, ‘Sketch of the Kirkpatrick Family by Lady Richard Strachey’.

38 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/58, p.67, 3 December 1802, James Kirkpatrick to T.G. Richardson in Madras.

39 Ibid., p.53, 8 November 1802, James Kirkpatrick to James Brunton.

40 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/59, p.20, 9 October.

41 Ibid., p.40, 4 June 1805, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

42 See Khan, Indian Muslim Perceptions of the West, op. cit., Chapter 2.

43 Shushtari, op. cit., pp.11, 351, 425.

44 For Thomas Deane Pearse’s interests in astronomy see Bengal Past and Present, Vol. 2, 1908, pp.304ff, and esp. Vol. 6, 1910, pp.40 and 273-4, part of a long series of articles on Pearse’s letters.

45 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/59, p.40, 4 June 1805, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

46 Ibid., p.33, 24 October 1804, James Kirkpatrick to George Kirkpatrick.

47 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/82, p.32, 13 July 1805, Dr Ure.

48 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/59, p.40, 4 June 1805, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

49 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/84, dated 22 March 1805.

50 Mirza Abu Taleb Khan, op. cit., p.197.

51 Ibid., pp.198-200.

52 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/13, p.166, 21 September 1801, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

53 OIOC, Sutherland Papers, Mss Eur D547, pp.133-4, undated but c.1803.

54 Ibid., p.134.

55 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/13, p.152, 6 September 1801, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

56 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/59, p.27, 4 October 1804, James Kirkpatrick to the Handsome Colonel.

57 Ibid.

58 Ibid., p.40, 4 June 1805, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

59 Ibid., p.27, 4 October 1804, James Kirkpatrick to the Handsome Colonel.

60 Ibid., p.35, James Kirkpatrick to Mrs Hooker, c.August 1805.

61 Ibid., p.40, 4 June 1805, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

62 Letter from Kitty Kirkpatrick to Sharaf un-Nissa, undated but c.1840, in the private archive of Kirkpatrick’s descendants.

63 Hickey, op. cit., Vol. 4, p.385.

64 Patrick Conner, George Chinnery 1774-1852: Artist of India and the China Coast (London, 1993), p.62.

65 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/75, p.5, 6 August 1805, William Petrie to James Kirkpatrick.

66 Hickey, op. cit., Vol. 4, pp.319-20.

67 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/75, p.3, 27 July 1805, Lieutenant Colonel Robinson to James Kirkpatrick.

68 See Hastings Papers, BL Add Mss 29,180, Vol. XLIX, f.328, October 1804-December 1805, William Palmer to Hastings, Berhampore, 12 October 1805.

69 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/75, p.5, 6 August 1805, William Petrie to James Kirkpatrick.

70 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/68, p.109, 20 August 1805, Mir Alam to James Kirkpatrick, trans. by Henry Russell, First Assistant.

71 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/75, p.13, 9 September 1805, Henry Russell to James Kirkpatrick.

72 Calcutta Gazette, 3 October.

73 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/75, p.15, 14 September, James Kirkpatrick to William Bentinck: Passes on Meer Allum’s request to buy His Highness of Arcot’s house and enclosure in Hyderbad. Also p.18, 22 September: a note from the Nawab of Arcot’s secretary giving James Kirkpatrick an appointment at ten the following morning to see the Nawab at Chipauck House, presumably to discuss Mir Alam’s proposed purchase.

74 Calcutta Gazette, 10 October.

75 OIOC, Elphinstone Papers, Mss Eur F88, Box13/16[b], entry for 13 September 1801.

76 Calcutta Gazette, 3 October.

77 Hastings Papers, BL Add Mss 29,180, Vol. XLIX, f.328, October 1804-December 1805, William Palmer to Hastings, Berhampore, 12 October 1805.

78 The codicil lies at the bottom of the will. See OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/84, dated 22 March 1805. Among the points James added was a characteristically thoughtful directive that his generous bequests to his nieces should be paid on marriage, and not necessarily to await their twenty-first birthdays.

79 These details are all taken from Theon Wilkinson’s wonderful book Two Monsoons, op. cit.; n.b. esp. Chapter 1.

80 Calcutta Gazette, 28 November.

81 Bodleian Library, Russell Papers, Ms Eng Letts C152, p.50.

CHAPTER 9

1 Denis Kincaid, British Social Life in India up to 1938 (London, 1938), pp.22, 95.

2 David Burton, The Raj at Table: A Culinary History of the British in India (London, 1993), p.208.

3 Shushtari, op. cit., p.427.

4 Quoted in John Keay, India Discovered (London, 1981), p.22.

5 Hickey, op. cit., Vol. 2, p.187.

6 Shushtari, op. cit., p.434.

7 Ibid., p.137.

8 Ibid., p.301.

9 OIOC, Fowke Papers, Mss E6.66, Vol. XXVII, J. Fowke to M. Fowke, Calcutta, 12 December 1783.

10 Shushtari, op. cit., p.432.

11 Bodleian Library, Russell Papers, Ms Eng Letts C155, p.128, 9 April 1806, Henry Russell to Charles Russell; and p.176, 30 August 1806, Henry Russell in Calcutta to Charles Russell in Hyderabad.

12 Ibid., pp.190-2, 7 November 1806, Henry Russell to Charles Russell.

13 Ibid., p.138, 9 May; p.152, 11 July; and p.128, 25 June: all three letters from Henry Russell in Calcutta to Charles Russell in Hyderabad.

14 Ibid., p.140, 2 June 1806, Henry Russell to Charles Russell; and p.158, Calcutta, 23 July, Henry Russell to Charles Russell.

15 Ibid., p.164, 16 August, Henry Russell to Charles Russell.

16 Ibid., p.190, 7 November, Henry Russell to Charles Russell.

17 Ibid., p.162, 3 August 1806.

18 Khan, Tarikh i-Khurshid Jahi, op. cit., pp.713-14.

19 Bodleian Library, Russell Papers, Ms Eng Letts D151, p.96, Poona, 31 May 1810, Henry Russell to Charles Russell.

20 Quoted in Anon., Some Notes on the Hyderabad Residency, op. cit., p.4.

21 Bodleian Library, Russell Papers, Ms Eng Letts D151, p.120, c.June 1810, Henry Russell to Charles Russell.

22 Ibid., p.11, 1 March 1806; and p.126, 24 March: both Henry Russell to Charles Russell.

23 Bodleian Library, Russell Papers, Ms Eng Letts.

24 Ibid., C155, p.155, 18 July 1806.

25 Ibid., p.132, 14 May.

26 Bodleian Library, Russell Papers, Ms Eng Letts D151, p.76, Poona,19 May 1810, and p.96, Poona, 31 May 1810. For his vow not to employ anyone disloyal to James, see Ms Eng Letts C155, p.132, 14 May.

27 Bodleian Library, John Palmer Papers, Ms Eng Lit C76, pp.82-3, 8 September 1813, John Palmer to William Palmer.

28 Hastings Papers, BL Add Mss 29,180, Vol. XLIX, October 1804-December 1805, f.328, William Palmer to Hastings, Berhampore, 12 October 1805.

29 Bodleian Library, John Palmer Papers, Ms Eng Lit C76, p.115, 25 July 1810, John Palmer to William Palmer.

30 Bodleian Library, Russell Papers, Ms Eng Letts C155, p.138, 29 May 1806, Henry Russell to Charles Russell.

31 Ibid., p.142, 5 June 1806, Henry Russell to Charles Russell.

32 Ibid.

33 Ibid., p.145, 13 June 1806, Henry Russell to Charles Russell.

34 Ibid., p.198, 29 November, Henry Russell to Charles Russell.

35 Ibid., p.140, 2 June 1806, Calcutta, Henry Russell to Charles Russell.

36 Ibid., p.150, 4 July 1806, Henry Russell to Charles Russell.

37 Ibid., p.158, Calcutta, 23 July; and p.150, 4 July: both Henry Russell to Charles Russell.

38 Ibid., p.155, Calcutta, 18 July, Henry Russell to Charles Russell.

39 Ibid.

40 Ibid., pp.190-2, 7 November 1806, Henry Russell to Charles Russell.

41 Bodleian Library, Russell Papers, Ms Eng Letts C172, p.5, 25 November 1806, Thomas Sydenham to Henry Russell.

42 Ibid., p.7, 26 December 1806, Henry Russell to Thomas Sydenham.

43 Ibid.

44 Bodleian Library, Russell Papers, Ms Eng Letts C168, p.1, 24 December 1806, N.B. Edmonstone to Henry Russell.

45 Bodleian Library, Russell Papers, Ms Eng Letts C172, p.7, 26 December 1806, Henry Russell to Thomas Sydenham.

46 Ibid., p.1, 14 January 1807, Thomas Sydenham to Henry Russell.

47 Ibid., p.11, 20 February 1806, Hemming to Henry Russell.

48 Bodleian Library, Russell Papers, Ms Eng Letts C155, pp.205-6, 22 March 1806, Henry Russell to Charles Russell.

49 Ibid., p.207, 14 April 1807, Henry Russell to Charles Russell.

50 Ibid.

51 Scottish Record Office, Edinburgh, GD135/2086, The Will of Lieut Col James Dalrymple, Hussein Sagar, 8 December 1800.

52 Jacon Hafner, from his Reizen van Jacob Haafner eerste Deel, pp.112, 135, quoted in Sinnappah Arasaratnam and Aniruddha Ray, Masulipatam and Cambay: A History of Two Port Towns 1500-1800 (New Delhi, 1994), p.116.

53 Bodleian Library, Russell Papers, Ms Eng Letts C155, p.213, 27 April 1807, Henry Russell to Charles Russell.

54 Ibid., p.216, 14 January 1808, Henry Russell to Charles Russell.

55 Ibid.

56 Ibid.

57 For Madras see Dodwell, op. cit., pp.187, 217, 220. Also Jan Morris, Stones of Empire: The Buildings of the Raj (Oxford, 1983), pp.214-15, Davies, Splendours of the Raj, op. cit., p.30.

58 Bodleian Library, Russell Papers, Ms Eng Letts C156, p.4, 7 April 1808, Henry Russell to Charles Russell.

59 Bodleian Library, Russell Papers, Ms Eng Letts C155, pp.226-30, 4 March 1808, Henry Russell to Charles Russell.

60 Bodleian Library, Russell Papers, Ms Eng Letts C156, p.21, 21 April 1808, Henry Russell to Charles Russell.

61 Bodleian Library, Russell Papers, Ms Eng Letts C155, p.31, 7 March 1808, Henry Russell to Charles Russell.

62 Bodleian Library, Russell Papers, Ms Eng Letts C156, p.51, 14 May 1808, Henry Russell to Charles Russell.

63 Bodleian Library, Russell Papers, Ms Eng Letts C155, p.236, 9 March 1808, Henry Russell to Charles Russell.

64 Bodleian Library, Russell Papers, Ms Eng Letts C156, p.29, 29 April 1808, Henry Russell to Charles Russell.

65 Bodleian Library, Russell Papers, Ms Eng Letts C155, p.236, 9 March 1808, Henry Russell to Charles Russell.

66 Ibid., p.244, 10 March 1808, Henry Russell to Charles Russell.

67 Bodleian Library, Russell Papers, Ms Eng Letts C156, p.4, 7 April 1808, Henry Russell to Charles Russell.

68 Ibid., p.18, 19 April 1808.

69 Ibid., p.30, 1 May 1808, Henry Russell to Charles Russell

70 Ibid., p.41, 7 May 1808, Henry Russell to Charles Russell.

71 Ibid., p.51, 14 May 1808, Henry Russell to Charles Russell.

72 Ibid., p.88, June 1808, Henry Russell to Charles Russell.

73 Ibid., p.89, 11 June 1808, Henry Russell to Charles Russell.

74 Ibid., p.91, 11 June 1808, Henry Russell to Charles Russell.

75 Bodleian Library, Russell Papers, Ms Eng Letts C152, undated letter (c.1809), Sir Henry Russell to Charles Russell; also letter from Sir Henry to Henry Russell, 13 November 1818, reprinted in Indian Archives, Vol. VIII, July-December 1954, pp.135-6. See also Peter Wood, ‘Vassal State in the Shadow of Empire: Palmer’s Hyderabad, 1799-1867’ (unpublished Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1981), pp.106-7.

76 Bodleian Library, Russell Papers, Ms Eng Letts C156, p.98, 20 October, Henry Russell to Charles Russell.

77 Ibid., p.102.

78 Ibid., p.107, 29 December 1808, Henry Russell to Charles Russell.

79 Bodleian Library, Russell Papers, Ms Eng Letts D152, p.8, 9 October 1810.

80 Bodleian Library, Russell Papers, Ms Eng Letts C156, p.279, n.d., Henry Russell to Charles Russell.

81 Bodleian Library, Russell Papers, Ms Eng Letts C172, p.67, 7 June 1813, Lady Hood to Henry Russell.

82 Scottish Record Office, Edinburgh, GD46/15/3/1-30, Henry Russell to Lady Hood, Hyderabad, 23 September 1813.

83 Scottish Record Office, Edinburgh, GD46/8/1, Henry Russell to Lady Hood, Hyderabad, 5 November 1813.

84 See Lady [Constance] Russell, The Rose Goddess and Other Sketches of Mystery & Romance (London, 1910), pp.1-18.

85 Scottish Record Office, Edinburgh, GD46/8/1, Henry Russell to Lady Hood, Hyderabad, 5 November 1813.

CHAPTER 10

1 Quoted in Archer and Falk, India Revealed, op. cit., p.54.

2 Captain George Elers, Memoirs of George Elers, Captain of the 12th Regiment of Foot (London, 1903), pp.179-88.

3 I would like to thank Michael Fisher for this information.

4 For the children pining for India see Lady Russell, The Rose Goddess … , op. cit., pp.1-18. For Kitty apparently referring to a ban on correspondence with her mother, see letter in the private archive of her descendants, in which in 1841 she tells Sharaf un-Nissa: ‘I longed to write to you & tell you these feelings that I was never able to—[express?], a letter w[hich] I was sure wd be detained.’

5 Edward Strachey, ‘The Romantic Marriage of James Achilles Kirkpatrick’, op. cit., pp.27-8.

6 Certainly it was always William, not the Handsome Colonel, who wrote occasional progress reports on the children to Henry Russell. His letters clearly describe the children from observation rather than report, so it can safely be assumed that they spent a fair amount of time together.

7 As he described Kennaway in his will. I have been unable to trace the whereabouts of the original of this document, and have worked from a copy made by William’s descendant Kenneth Kirkpatrick which he sent to Bilkiz Alladin in Hyderabad. I am very grateful to Bilkiz for twice giving me access to this and to her voluminous collection of Kirkpatrick papers.

8 Brendan Carnduff, entry for William Kirkpatrick in The New Dictionary of National Biography (forthcoming). Brendan tells me that Kirkpatrick’s letters to Kennaway at this period seem to hint at serious opium abuse.

9 The East India Company Collection is now part of the Oriental and India Office Collections in the British Library. William’s description of Nepal was published as An Account of the Mission to Nepaul in 1793 (London, 1811)

10 In India Inscribed, op. cit. (p.235), Kate Teltscher comments that in his preface ‘Kirkpatrick describes Tipu’s epistolary self-portrait in terms drawn largely from the vocabulary of despotism: the cruel enemy, intolerant fanatic, oppressive ruler, harsh master, the sanguinary and perfidious tyrant … the final sentence [of the preface] which leaves much inferred rather than stated, suggests that Kirkpatrick is attempting to answer those few writers who depict the sultan in reasonable guise and dismiss the tyrannical image as an exaggeration.’ There is a direct parallel to this selective publication of documentation with a view to showing Muslim rulers in the worst possible light in the selective translations from the Arab and Islamic press produced by various pro-Israeli lobbying organisations today.

11 Mark Wilks (1760?-1831), Military and Private Secretary to Lord Clive 1798-1803, Resident in Mysore 1803-08, when he left India. In retirement in England he wrote Historical Sketches of the South of India in an Attempt to trace the History of Mysore(London, 1810-14), and an analysis of the Akhlak i-Nasiri, a Persian metaphysical treatise.

12 OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/21, pp.1, 7; 4 and 12 November 1809, Mark Wilks to William Kirkpatrick.

13 I am very grateful to Brendan Carnduff for his help with William Kirkpatrick, and for his clever and generous suggestions, especially relating to William’s possible opium addiction and his obsession with Tipu’s astrological systems.

14 For William’s overdose see Strachey Papers, OIOC F127/478a, ‘Sketch of the Kirkpatrick Family by Lady Richard Strachey’. His granddaughter Clementina Robinson (daughter of Clementina, Lady Louis) wrote: ‘I think he suffered from rheumatic gout but he died from drinking laudanum which his servant had put by his bedside believing it to be senna.’ William was buried in St Clement Danes church in the Strand. His death notice in the Exeter Flying Post reads: ‘Thursday Sept 3rd, 1812: Died, Near London, on the 22nd Ult, most suddenly, Major General Kirkpatrick, of the East India Company’s service, late resident in this city. He had long filled high and important public stations in India, and was alike distinguished for his literary attainments, political knowledge, and private virtues.’

15 There is an undated letter in the archive of his sisters’ descendants which refers to the amputation he was going to have to undergo, but does not specify which limb was concerned. The accident is mentioned in Sir Edward Strachey’s unpublished memoirs, quoted in Charles Richard Sanders,The Strachey Family 1588-1932: Their Writings and Literary Associations (New York, 1968), p.122.

16 From the private archive of their descendants. The Handsome Colonel to Katherine Kirkpatrick, Hollydale, 8 September 1812.

17 The Handsome Colonel died at Hollydale and was buried in St Clement Danes church in the Strand. There was a memorial plaque to him and William high on the north wall of the church, but it was lost when the church was burned down in the Blitz.

18 Thomas Carlyle (ed. Charles Eliot Novem), Reminiscences (London, 1887), p.243.

19 Ibid., p.244.

20 Barbara Strachey, The Strachey Line, op. cit., p.113.

21 Carlyle, Reminiscences, op. cit., p.247.

22 Ibid., p.246.

23 Alexander Carlyle (ed.), Love Letters of Thomas Carlyle and Jane Welsh (London, 1909), Vol. 2, p.15.

24 Ibid., p.20.

25 Carlyle, Reminiscences, op. cit., p.247: ‘Mrs Strachey took to me from the first, nor ever swerved: it strikes me now, more than it then did, she silently could have liked to see “dear Kitty” and myself come together.’

26 Love Letters of Thomas Carlyle and Jane Welsh, op. cit., Vol. 2, p.25.

27 Ibid., pp.50-1.

28 Ibid., p.235.

29 Quoted in ‘Carlyle and the “Blumine” of Sartor Resartus’, Westminster Review, CLXLII, August 1894, pp.164-5.

30 Barbara Strachey, The Strachey Line, op. cit., p.117.

31 In Sanders, The Strachey Family 1588-1932, op. cit., p.134.

32 Carlyle, Reminiscences, op. cit., p.248.

33 From the private archive of their descendants, letter from James Phillipps to Kitty dated only ‘Friday Night’.

34 Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus (London, 1833-34); see Chapter 5, ‘Romance’, passim.

35 There is a considerable literature on the identity of Carlyle’s ‘Blumine’ and ‘The Rose Goddess’. See G. Strachey, ‘Carlyle and the Rose Goddess’, in Nineteenth Century, Vol. 32, July- December 1892, pp.470-86; J.J. Cotton, ‘Kitty Kirkpatrick’, in Calcutta Review, Vol. CCXVI, April 1899, pp236-48; and the follow-up in Vol. CCIXX, December 1899, J.J. Cotton, ‘Kitty Kirkpatrick and Blumine’, pp.128-35; Henry Strachey, ‘Carlyle’s First Love’, Spectator, CIII, 9 October 1909, pp.559-60. See also Lady Russell, The Rose Goddess … , op. cit., pp.1-18. Other candidates for Blumine include Margaret Gordon and Carlyle’s wife, Jane Welsh. See C.F. Harrold (ed.), Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus (New York, 1937), pp.37-8.

36 G. Strachey, ‘Carlyle and the Rose Goddess’, op. cit.

37 Ibid.

38 Ibid., p475.

39 How he did this is unclear, and Kitty tried to find out by writing to a contact in the Hyderabad Residency. Russell did not give her the picture immediately, but later left it to her in his will, much to the annoyance of his own family. See letter of Henry Russell to William Palmer in Bodleian Library, Russell Papers, Mss Eng Letts C174, 2 October 1841, p.147. This letter contradicts the later and inaccurate account given by Lady Russell in The Rose Goddess … , op. cit., p.1, where Kitty is said to have first visited Swallowfield in the company of a Mrs Clive in the summer of 1846-although there may of course have been two different visits to Swallowfield.

40 Anon., Some Notes on the Hyderabad Residency, op. cit., p.23.

41 See Wood, op. cit., pp.269-71.

42 De Warren, op. cit., Chapter 9.

43 Ibid., Chapter 10.

44 Ibid.

45 The best account of Palmer’s bank, and Russell’s secret involvement with it, can be found in Peter Wood’s remarkable thesis ‘Vassal State in the Shadow of Empire’, op. cit., pp.348-61. For Russell bribing the printers of the Hyderabad Papers see ibid., p.357. See also the good short account given in Hawes, op. cit., pp.101-9.

46 Scottish Record Office, Edinburgh, GD46/8/1, Henry Russell to Lady Hood, Hyderabad, 5 November 1813.

47 The letter is in the bound volume of Russell’s Persian correspondence in the Bodleian Library. See Chapter 7, n9, above.

48 Bodleian Library, Russell Papers, Mss Eng Letts C174, p.147, 2 October 1841, Henry Russell to William Palmer.

49 Ibid., p.154, 15 January 1842, William Palmer to Henry Russell.

50 The letter, which is undated but must presumably be 1841, survives in the private archive of their descendants. The original is in Persian, and Captain D.C. Malcolm’s slightly inaccurate translation is attached to it.

51 The correspondence survives in the private archive of Khair un-Nissa’s descendants in London. It is not numbered or referenced.

52 See Wood, op. cit., p.362n.

53 The correspondence survives in the private archive of Khair un-Nissa’s descendants in London. It is not numbered or referenced.

54 Bodleian Library, Russell Papers, Mss Eng Letts C174, p.174, 27 July 1847, William Palmer to Henry Russell.

55 Bengal Regimental Orders, IOR/P/Ben/Sec/253, Fort William, 17 December 1813, No. 39, Regimental Orders by Lt. Col. Stuart, Futtyghur, 2 July 1813. Also No. 68.

56 Gardner Papers, National Army Museum, p.206, Letter 81, Babel, 27 June 1821.

57 Saksena, op. cit., pp.100-37.

58 Parkes, op. cit., p.458.

59 Quoted in Alex Palmer’s unpublished ‘The Palmer Family’, op. cit.

60 Temple, Journals of Hyderabad..., op. cit., Vol. 1, p.240.

61 Quoted by Lady Russell, The Rose Goddess … , op. cit., p.18.

62 Edward Strachey, ‘The Romantic Marriage of James Achilles Kirkpatrick … ’ op. cit., p.29.

63 See for example p.52.