The first painting of the red panda (Ailurus fulgens) in Europe? Natural history and artistic patronage in early nineteenth-century India

2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 368-376
Author(s):  
D. A. Lowther
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
Scientific Information ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
British East India Company ◽  
Red Panda ◽  
Ailurus Fulgens ◽  
Artistic Patronage ◽  
Early Investigator

Throughout the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, British East India Company officials, based in the Indian subcontinent, amassed huge collections of natural history images. One of the largest collections, consisting of many thousands of individual paintings commissioned mainly from Indian artists between 1790 and 1823, was formed by Major-General Thomas Hardwicke. Some of these later formed the basis of John Edward Gray’s Illustrations of Indian zoology, but the vast majority remained unpublished. This paper focuses on one of these images, a detailed watercolour of the red panda ( Ailurus fulgens), painted to accompany a scientific description of the species which Hardwicke sent from Bengal to the Linnean Society of London in 1820. The painting pre-dates Frédéric Cuvier’s description of the animal by four years, and is almost certainly the first image of the red panda to have arrived in Europe. This paper sets the painting in the context of Hardwicke’s career as a naturalist and private patron of Indian artists, highlighting both his role as an early investigator of Indian zoology and the importance of “Company Art” in the accrual of scientific information.

Administrator-scholars and the Writing of History in Early British India: A review article

2013 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 826-843
Author(s):  
JAMES LEES
Keyword(s):  
Early Years ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
British India ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
British East India Company ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
The Times

AbstractThe histories of Asian peoples penned by British East India Company officials during the early years of colonial rule—rightly—have long been considered to be doubtful source material within the historiography of South Asia. Their credibility was suspect well before the middle of the twentieth century, when Bernard Cohn's work began to present the British colonial state as one that relentlessly sought to categorize Indian society, and to use the distorted information thus gained to impose its government.However, the histories of these administrator-scholars still retain value—not as accurate studies of their subjects, perhaps, but as barometers of the times in which they were written and also in the unexpected ways in which some continue to resonate in the present. To illustrate that point, this paper will review three recent monographs which deal with the writings and historical legacies of some of the Company's most prominent early nineteenth-century administrator-scholars. These are: Jason Freitag's Serving Empire, Serving Nation: James Tod and the Rajputs of Rajasthan; Jack Harrington's Sir John Malcolm and the Creation of British India; and Rama Mantena's work centred around the antiquarian pursuits of Colin Mackenzie, The Origins of Modern Historiography in India: Antiquarianism and Philology, 1780–1880.1

Observation of Red Panda (Ailurus fulgens) in Choyatar, Ilam, East Nepal

2009 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 96-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. K. Chalise
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Protected Area ◽  
Natural Habitat ◽  
Community Forest ◽  
Protected Species ◽  
Short Survey ◽  
Community Behavior ◽  
Red Panda ◽  
Ailurus Fulgens ◽  
And Behaviors

A short survey of Red Panda was conducted in Choyatar Community forest of Ilam district, East Nepal. A pair of pandas was observed and behaviors were recorded. It is significant in Nepalese perspective that a protected species was recorded outside the protected area and relatively better natural habitat. Keywords:  Community;  Behavior; Protected species; Natural habitat.  Journal of Natural History MuseumVol. 24, 2009Page: 96-102 

A family affair: John Bacon’s monument to Jane Russell, 1810-13

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 303-322
Author(s):  
Viccy Coltman
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Young Woman ◽  
Social History ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
East India Company ◽  
British India ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
English East India Company

Focusing on John Bacon the younger’s monument to Jane Russell, this article illuminates death and memorialization in early nineteenth-century British India, with a social history focus regarding issues of gender and family. The monument in its first iteration was lost at sea in a shipwreck, and a later replacement is still in situ in St Mary’s Church at Fort St George, in the former Madras Presidency. The narrative arc traces the life cycle of a memorial to a young woman whose husband and father were leading English East India Company employees, including its commission by correspondence, execution in the metropolis and transport to the Indian subcontinent. Russell’s death and its commemoration in visual and material culture were, it is argued, a family affair on various interpretative strata, including but by no means limited to the iconography of her marmoreal ‘deathscape’.

The Early Years of the Mombasa Club: A Home Away From Home for European-Christians

2001 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 71-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
P.J.L. Frankl
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
Early Years ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Major Purpose ◽  
Living Space ◽  
The Military ◽  
New London ◽  
Temporary Accommodation

The word “club” as employed in “Mombasa Club” derives from the late eighteenth century and signifies “an association of people formed mainly for social purposes and having premises, providing meals, temporary accommodation, etc., for the use of members.” The early nineteenth century saw a spate of new London clubs such as the Travellers in 1819 (for gentlemen who had traveled abroad), and in 1824 both the Athenaeum (the most intellectually elite of all the London clubs), and the Oriental (founded by officers in the service of the East India Company who were not eligible for the military clubs of Pall Mall). One purpose of these clubs was to give gentlemen living space from which their womenfolk were excluded. The expansion of a new British empire, from the beginning of Queen Victoria's long reign, saw the establishment of “English” clubs in Asia (especially in the Indian subcontinent) and in Africa (especially from Cape Town to Cairo). A major purpose of these “English” clubs abroad was to give members living space from which natives were excluded. The Mombasa Club, dating from the end of Queen Victoria's reign, fits into this pattern.

scholarly journals Palmer and Company: an Indian Banking Firm in Hyderabad State

2013 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 1157-1184 ◽  
Author(s):  
KAREN LEONARD
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
English Language ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Business Practices ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
British East India Company

AbstractAlthough the misreading of Hyderabad's early nineteenth century banking firm, Palmer and Company, as scandalous, illegal, and usurious in its business practices was contested at the time in Hyderabad, and at the highest levels of the East India Company in both Calcutta and London, such conspiracy theories have prevailed and are here challenged. The Eurasian William Palmer and his partner, the Gujarati banker, Benkati Das, are best understood as indigenous sahukars or bankers. Their firm functioned like other Indian banking firms and was in competition with them in the early nineteenth century as Hyderabad State dealt with the increasing power of the British East India Company and its man-on-the-spot, the Resident. Historians need to look beyond the English language East India Company records to contextualize this important banking firm more accurately.

scholarly journals Empires of Opportunity: German naturalists in British India and the frictions of transnational science

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-46
Author(s):  
MORITZ VON BRESCIUS
Keyword(s):  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
East India Company ◽  
German Unification ◽  
British India ◽  
German Empire ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Rich Picture ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
British East India Company ◽  
Professional Mobility

Abstract This article examines the little-known but exceptionally well-documented German Schlagintweit brothers’ expedition to India and Central Asia in 1854–58, under the auspices of the British East India Company and the king of Prussia. The brothers’ careers present an instructive study of the opportunities and conflicts inherent within transnational science and the imperial labour market in colonial India in the course of the nineteenth century. Until now, historians have largely emphasized the ways in which European East India companies provided scientific practitioners with professional mobility from the seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries. In these accounts, German scientific practitioners are represented as especially mobile, moving more or less freely within foreign empires, because at the time no ‘German’ empire existed that might compete for allegiances and make them appear suspect. My article, in contrast, offers a revisionist account of this globalizing picture in two senses. First, a close look at the local everyday practices of the Schlagintweit brothers’ expedition highlights the considerable tensions and frictions that accompanied imperial recruitment to South Asia—even for German scientific practitioners. What emerges instead is a rich picture of the contradictory interpretations of supposedly cooperative projects among contemporaries, and the instrumentalization of scientific activities for political ends in the Indian subcontinent, for both established and aspiring colonial powers. Second, the ways in which the Schlagintweits’ scientific expedition was represented and remembered in subsequent decades shows how the politics around transnational science projects only intensified with German unification.

scholarly journals Tipu Sultan’s Role in Forming India’s Independence Fields

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 226
Author(s):  
Khadija Alemi ◽  
Seyyedeh Leila Mousavi Salem
Keyword(s):  
Analytical Method ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Elizabeth I ◽  
Main Claim ◽  
Commercial Company ◽  
Queen Elizabeth I ◽  
British East India Company ◽  
Royal Charter

British East India Company was a commercial company in London. Queen Elizabeth I with the aim of gaining commercial advantage in the Indian subcontinent granted a royal charter to this company. This advantage caused to Britain’s military and political presence in the subcontinent. East India Company was become to a major political-financial empire and Muslims of the Indian subcontinent, particularly in its southern regions began their campaigns against political domination of this company. Tipu Sultan chief and ruler of Mysore’s Muslim performed numerous efforts and campaigns to prevent the spread of British influence. This article tries to answer to this question that how was Tipu Sultan’s role in forming India’s independence fields? This research’s main claim is that Tipu Sultan got help from French troops against the company to reduce British influence in the subcontinent but because of sabotages of number of leaders and bitter experience that some new Muslim Hindus had from his actions he did not succeed. This research has been done in library and descriptive and analytical method.

Identity and Invisibility

2018 ◽  
pp. 26-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Todd Nachowitz
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
James Cook ◽  
Extant Literature ◽  
European Contact ◽  
British East India Company

Shipping logs reveal that the first Indians to set foot on New Zealand soil were two young lascars from Pondicherry who arrived on a French East India Company ship in 1769—the year that James Cook first visited the country. Indian arrival in New Zealand was, therefore, contemporaneous with first European contact, a fact never before recognized in the extant literature on nation-building. Since then hundreds of Indian sepoys and lascars accompanied British East India Company ships to New Zealand, many going through Australian ports seeking work with sealing expeditions and on timber voyages. In the early nineteenth century, some of the lascars began to jump ship, marry local Maori women and settled down in New Zealand. This chapter argues that Indians in New Zealand can claim a history that goes as far back as the earliest Maori–European (Pakeha) contact.

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