Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-767nl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-13T09:23:16.789Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Career of Colonel Polier and Late Eighteenth-Century Orientalism*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2009

Sanjay Subrahmanyam
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

This essay is concerned with the career of a somewhat obscure figure in the early history of Orientalism, Colonel Antoine-Louis-Henri Polier, who is however known both to aficionados of the early European manuscript collections in the West, as well as to historians of the more obscure aspects of the Enlightenment on the Continent. The occasion for the research on which this essay is based is, in large measure, a project intended to translate the extensive Persian letter-book that Polier (together with his amanuensis, or munshī, Kishan Sahay) produced during his long stay in India; this translation, of a text entitled I jāz-i-Arsalānī (which is preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris), has recently been brought to partial fruition by Muzaffar Alam and Seema Alavi, through the auspices of Oxford University Press (Delhi). In this context, it may be useful to reflect somewhat on the rather extraordinary career, and fascinating milieu, of Colonel Polier.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , April 2000 , pp. 43 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

This essay owes much to Muzaffar Alam, who encouraged me to write it, and equally to Kapil Raj, whose work on the late eighteenth-century intellectual encounter between Indians and Europeans is largely drawn upon here.

References

1 The context of the Euro-Indian intellectual encounter in the last years of the eighteenth century has recently been addressed in Bayly, C. A., Empire and Information: Intelligence gathering and social communication in India, 1780–1870 (Cambridge, 1996).Google Scholar

2 Geisendorf, Paul F. (ed.), livre des Habitants de Genève, Vol i (1549–1560) (Geneva, 1957), pp. 28–9.Google Scholar

3 Eugène, and Haag, Emily, La France Protestante, Vol. viii (Paris, 1858), pp. 274–83,Google Scholarentry for “Polier”.

4 “Liste des réfugiés français à Lausanne”, in Bulletin de la Société de I'Histoire du Protestantisme, XXI (1872), p. 476Google Scholar

5 On Voltaire, his contemporaries, and India, also see Murr, Sylvia, “Les conditions de l'émergence du discours sur I'Inde au Siècle des Lumières”, in Inde et Littérature, Collection Puruṣārtha 7, ed. Porcher, Marie-Claude (Paris, 1983), pp. 233–84.Google Scholar

6 Article “Polier”, in La France Protestante, pp. 278–9,Google Scholar collated with the article “Polier” from the Dictionnaire historique et biographique de la Suisse, Vol. v (Neuchatel, 1930), p. 313.Google Scholar

7 Section reproduced inDumézil, Georges, “Préface”, Le Mahabarat et le Bhagavat du colonel de Polier (Mythologie des Indous: Selections) (Paris, 1986), pp. 14–21.Google Scholar

8 On Paul-Philippe Polier, also see Piguet, Emile, “Paul-Philippe Polier et la reddition du fort Saint-David aux Indes”, Revue historique vaudoise, 05–06 1933, pp. 174–86.Google Scholar

9 Cf. Kuiters, Willem G. J., Les Britanniques au Bengale, 1756–1773: Une société en transition vue à travers la biographie d'une rebelle: William Bolts (1739–1808), (Ph.D. thesis, Paris, EHESS, 1998).Google Scholar

10 Deloche, Jean (ed.), Voyage en Inde du Comte du Modave, 1773–1776: Nouveaux mémoires sur l′état actuel du Bengale et de l′Indoustan (Paris, 1971), p. 77.Google Scholar

11 Deloche, Jean (ed.), Les aventures de Jean-Baptiste Chevalier dans l′Inde Orientale (1752–1765): Mémoire historique et Journal de Voyage à Asem (Paris, 1984).Google Scholar

12 Cf. for example, Barbé, E., Le Nabab René Madec (Paris, 1894).Google Scholar

13 For the standard accounts of Anquetil, see Schwab, Raymond, Vie d′Anquetil-Duperron, suivie des usages civils et religieux des Parses part Anquetil-Duperron (Paris, 1934);Google Scholar Kieffer, Jean-Luc, Anquetil-Duperron: L′Inde en France au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1983).Google Scholar

14 Richard, Francis, “Jean-Baptiste Gentil collectionneur de manuscrits persans”, Dix-huitième siècle, XXVIII (1996), pp. 91–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 Gole, Susan, Maps of Mughal India: Drawn by Colonel Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Gentil, agent for the French Government to the Court of Shuja-ud-daula at Faizabad, 1770 (New Delhi, 1988).Google Scholar

16 Deloche, Jean (ed.), Les mémoires de Wendel sur les jāt, les Pathān et les Sīkh (Paris, 1979);Google Scholar a partial translation may be found in Deloche, Jean and Walker, James, Wendel′s Memoirs on the Origin, Growth and Present State of Jat Power in Hindustan (1768) (Pondicherry, 1991).Google Scholar

17 Llewellyn-Jones, Rosie, A very ingenious man: Claude Martin in early colonial India (Delhi, 1992), pp. 55–6.Google Scholar

18 Ibid., p.56.

19 For an overview of survey operations in these years, see Edney, Matthew H., Mapping an Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765–1843 (Chicago, 1997).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 Oriental and India Office Collections, London, Bengal Secret Consultations, 24 February 1775, cited inLlewellyn-Jones, , A very ingenious man, p. 56.Google Scholar

21 The English commander in question was a certain Colonel Champion, with whom Polier had an altercation in the course of a campaign against the Rohilas; cf. Deloche, (ed.), Voyage de Modave, p. 442n.Google Scholar

22 Sir Eyre Coote sailed for India in 1754, and was at the Battle of Plassey (1757), and the capture of Pondicherry (1761). He then returned to England in 1762, but came back to India as Commander-in-Chief of the Madras army in 1769. After a further brief stint in England, he returned for the last time to India in 1779, after he had been named Commander-in-Chief in 1777. In 1781, he fought against Haidar ‘Ali in the Karnatak, and died in Madras in 1783. Also see, in this context, Polier, Antoine-Louis-Henri, Shah Alain II and His Court, ed. Gupta, Pratul C. (reprint, Calcutta, 1989).Google Scholar

23 Deloche, (ed.), Voyage de Modave, p. 441.Google Scholar

24 Llewellyn-Jones, , A very ingenious man, pp. 92–3.Google Scholar

25 Raj, Kapil, “Manufacturing Trust: William Jones and the Anglo-Indian Administration of the East India Company's Territories”, unpublished mss.Google Scholar

26 Valensi, Lucette, “Eloge de l′Orient, Eloge de l′Orientalisme: Le jeu d′échecs d′Anquetil-Duperreøn”, Revue de l′Histoire des Religions, CCXI1, no. 4 (1995), pp. 419–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 Marshall, Peter J., The British Discovery of Hinduism in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1970);Google Scholar Trautmann, Thomas R., Aryans and British India (Berkeley, 1997).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 An interesting discussion of some of these visual materials may be found in Mitter, Partha, Much Maligned Monsters: A History of European Reactions to Indian Art (Oxford, 1977).Google Scholar

29 Cf. for a general discussion of these materials, Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, “An Eastern El-Dorado: The Tirumala-Tirupati Temple-Complex in Early European Views and Ambitions, 1540–1660”, in Syllables of Sky: Studies in South Indian Civilization in Honour of Velchuru Narayana Rao, ed. Shulman, David (Delhi, 1995), pp. 338–90.Google Scholar

30 Cf. Ines Županov, G., “Le repli du religieux: Les missionaires jésuites du 17e siècle entre la théologie chrétienne et une éthique païenne”, Annales HSS, 11–12. 1996, pp. 1201–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 Hawley, Daniel S., “L’Inde de Voltaire” in Studies on Voltaire and the 18th Century, ed. Mason, H. T. (Oxford, 1974), PP. 139–78.Google Scholar

32 The treatment of these questions in Teltscher, Kate, India Inscribed: European and British Writing on India, 1600–1800 (Delhi, 1995)Google Scholar, Ch. 6 and passim, is manifestly inadequate.