page_title: Jacob Haafner
section_title: Life in India (1771-1787)
hierarchical_section_title: Jacob Haafner / Life in India (1771-1787)
caption_attribution_description: English: Drawings of a temple dancer from Jacob Haafner, “Reize in eenen Palanquin, of Lotgevallen en merkwaardige aanteekeningen op eene reize langs de kusten Orixa en Choromandel” (1808), chapter 5.
context_page_description: Jacob Gotfried Haafner was a German-Dutch travel writer who lived in and wrote extensively on India and Sri Lanka. His travelogues were noted for their Romantic undertones, lively descriptions of Indian cultures and peoples, as well as criticisms of European colonialism, slavery, and cultural domination.
  In 1805, Haafner entered the annual essay contest organized by Teylers Eerste Genootschap. His anti-colonialist, counter-missionary treatise, titled Onderzoek naar het nut der zendelingen en zendelings-genootschappen, was selected as winner and published in 1807 amidst public consternation.
context_section_description: In June 1771, Haafner enlisted as a VOC servant and departed for Nagapattinam, the capital of Dutch Coromandel from 1660 to 1781. Tired of the sailor's life, he settled in the town and worked in the factory as an assistant bookkeeper from 1773 to 1778, learning Tamil and conducting private trade on the side. In 1779, he was appointed as secretary-bookkeeper to a branch office in Sadraspatnam.
  During the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War (1780-1784), he was taken prisoner and held in Madras, where he witnessed the struggle between the British army and Hyder Ali, the Sultan and de facto ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore, and the  famine that crippled the city in 1782. Released at the end of the year, he arrived at Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka) in early 1783. From June to September, he embarked on a hiking tour of the island from Jaffnapatnam to Colombo, then left for Calcutta in West Bengal.
  At the centre of British colonial administration, he found work as a bookkeeper to the former Governor of Benares, Joseph Fowke. Having developed a profound interest in Indian culture and studied a variety of Indian languages (Tamil, Urdu, Hindi, Telugu, and Sanskrit), he became acquainted with The Asiatic Society, founded in 1784 by Sir William Jones. In 1786, he traveled southwards along the Coromandel coast through Tamil Nadu and Orissa, covering more than 600 miles by palanquin. From January to September, he visited shrines and temples, making drawings of ancient monuments such as the temple ruins at Mammallapuram, which he called "one of the most beautiful and largest palaces of [his] time" and compared with the "miracles of Egypt".
  The result of this journey is described in Reize in eenen Palanquin (English: Travels in a palanquin), a narrative work of 2 volumes on the Indian landscape, people, religious customs, and ancient architecture. To a certain extent, the writer idealized the subcontinent while criticizing the English, among others, for causing havoc and suffering among the local population: "Rascals, squanderers, criminals, bankrupts, and other bad people, every one runs to the Indies, to oppress the poor Indians, to plunder them, and to kill them." 
  The tragic death of Mamia, a temple dancer with whom Haafner had fallen in love, ended his journey. He departed shortly afterwards, traveling via Mauritius, South Africa, France, and Germany, back to Amsterdam in 1790.
caption: Haafner's drawings of a temple dancer
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