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White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India
by William Dalrymple
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Viking Adult (2003-03-31)
ISBN: 0670031844
EAN: 9780670031849
Dewy Decimal #: 954.840311092
Hardcover: 512 pages
Release Date: 2003-03-31
SKU: 08010202
Condition: Very Good Very Good
Comments: First American Edition. Hardback in very good condition with no markings except remained mark on bottom edge and one underline in 303 page. Dust jacket in very good condition with minor shelf wear. Tight binding and clear crisp text. Very nice book.
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
From the early sixteenth century, it was common for British colonizers in India to embarrass the Crown by "turning Turk" or "going native." Few caused greater scandal than James Kirkpatrick, a British resident in the Court of Hyderabad, who converted to Islam and spied on the East India Company in the midst of an affair with Khair un-Nissa, the great-niece of the region's prime minister.
White Moguls is rich with many eccentric characters, from "Hindoo Stuart," who traveled with his own team of Brahmins, to Alexander Gardner, an American whose self-invented costume was showcased by a tartan turban with egret plumes. A remarkable love story set in an exotic and previously unexplored world, White Moguls is full of secrets, intrigue, espionage, and religious disputes and conjures all the resonance of a great nineteenth-century novel.
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Customer Reviews
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Thank you, Mr. Dalrymple!
Rating  (5)
Date: 2008-09-05
Here is a wonderful book that transcends the categories of history and biography to rise to the level of the truly remarkable. As a jaded reader, rarely do I find a book like this one that demands reading because of the fascination of the narrative and the prose style of the author. The story is grounded in an immense wealth of detail sourced from several languages. This scholarly apparatus is deployed in such an artful manner by the author that it never obstructs the story-telling. And, finally, many of the footnotes are delightful!
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The White Mughals
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-03-25
0 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
Another great book from William Dalrymple. Still reading it and find it very engrossing (wish the font size was a bit bigger)
Received it in perfect condition and it arrived in record time too.
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Great history
Rating (5)
Date: 2007-10-20
2 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
This is a fine book set in the period when India came under threat from Napoleon until Nelson intervened at the battle of The Nile. When young English boys were taken out to India for education prior to their careers there it is hadly surprising that some went native. But it was one thing to take a local mistress, quite another to marry a princess. A tragic love story results. The author is clearly more in sympathy with the old policy of The East India Company which banned Christian missionary activity. He regrets the changes brought about by Wilberforce and his Clapham Sect friends which changed official policy towards religion.
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Once Upon a Time in Hyderabad ...
Rating (5)
Date: 2007-09-21
5 out of 5 customers found this reveiw helpful
This book is a complex many-faceted marvel! It is carefully researched history transformed into the story of an ultimately tragic romance. With its portrayal of Europeans astride two cultures, it offers a wonderful, and probably unintentional, counterpoint to the Clash of Civilizations. It is a swarm of all-seeing flies on the walls and writing desks of Hyderabad's elite, both British and Indian, two centuries ago - with their city, dress, festivals and habits brought vividly to life. It is a fascinating description of British and Mughal political intrigue in and around the Deccan as imperial control tightened. It is a sensitive reflection on the rapacious, self-indulgent and precarious lives lived by the British in insalubrious coastal cities like Calcutta and Madras. And as result of the unbelievably painstaking process of meticulous documentation we are convinced that we are seeing events exactly as participants did. It is a mind-blowing accomplishment.
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A beautiful book
Rating (5)
Date: 2007-09-11
2 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
This is a beautiful book. A fascinating love story, a forgotten angle on the British in India, a human and historical tragedy. It's scholarly but warm, thoroughly researched but very readable, broad but not diffuse.
And in one sense it's also very much about the early 21st Century: with respect and good humour, cultures and religions can co-exist and complement each other. So much for the "clash of civilisations" theory.
The "moral of the story" right at the end could have been better placed in an author's preface, and I trust a second edition would pick up the small number of editing mistakes.
Read it.
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