The Travels of Dean Mahomet
Subtitle: An Eighteenth-Century Journey through India
Edition: 1 edition
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: July 30, 1997
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 214
ISBN-13: 9780520207165
Subjects: Biography: general; Classic travel writing; Other prose: 16th to 18th centuries; c 1700 to c 1800; Great Britain; Description And Travel; Prose; History - General History; History: World; England; India; Ireland; Historical - General; Asia - India & South Asia; Essays & Travelogues; Europe; History / General; Journeys; Mahomet, Sake Deen,; Social conditions; 1759-1851; 18th century; East Indians; History; Immigrants
First sentence: During the eighteenth century, the Mughal Empire, which for two centuries had provided political and cultural leadership for virtually all of India, fragmented as a variety of regionally based rulers seized power.
Description: Vividly recounting his travels as a camp follower and then as a subaltern officer in the British East India Company's army, Dean Mahomet - an early Indian emigrant to Britain - presents us with the first book ever written by an Indian in English. He began this memoir, which was originally published in 1794, with his wrenching departure from his childhood home among the Indian Muslim elite. He concluded with his voyage to Ireland in 1784.

His auto-ethnographic account of his family's domestic and religious customs, and of this crucial period in the violent establishment of British colonialism, stands as an important counterexample to any view of eighteenth-century English literature as the sole preserve of Europeans. Placing the Travels in context, Michael Fisher's introduction and biographical essay trace the author's life in India and Britain.