Society of Bengal, Vol. 1: 1784-1800 (Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1980), p. 390.
53Many portraits of eighteenth-century Europeans by Indian painters show them in Western dress—such as the Mughal gouache of Warren Hastings sitting on a chair (reproduced in Bayly, ed., The Raj, p. 115). Another Lucknow collector, John Wombwell, was also painted in his jama by a local artist; the image is reproduced in William Dalrymple, White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India (London: HarperCollins, 2002).
54The original volume is in the Bibliothèque Nationale, and has been edited and translated by Muzaffar Alam and Seema Alavi as A European Experience of the Mughal Orient [hereafter cited as I’jaz]. See also G. Colas and F. Richard, “Le Fonds Polier à la Bibliothèque Nationale,” in Bulletin de l’École Française d’Extrême Orient 73 (1984): 112-17.
55I’jaz, pp. 108-9, 111, 125-26, 149-50.
56Ibid., pp. 261-62.
57Ibid., pp. 296-97.
58Ibid., pp. 164-65; 266-67.
59“Went after dinner into his Zinannah to see Col. Poliers family.” Plowden Diary, January 23, 1788; November 10, 1788.
60The best scholarly treatment of this fraught subject is Durba Ghosh, “Colonial Companions: Bibis, Begums, and Concubines of the British in North India, 1760-1830” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at Berkeley, 2000). For a detailed portrait of an Anglo-Indian love affair at this time, see Dalrymple, White Mughals.
61I’jaz, pp. 153-56.
62I’jaz, p. 285. Polier’s second son, Baba Jan (John), was evidently too young to write to his father.
63I have relied here and in many places below on the splendid biography of Martin by Rosie Llewellyn-Jones, A Very Ingenious Man: Claude Martin in Early Colonial India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992).
64Ibid., pp. 155-76.
65“Inventory of the Effects of the late Major General Claud Martin,” OIOC: L/AG/34/27/24, Bengal Inventories, 1801, Vol. 1.
66“Inventory…”; Deloche, ed., Voyage en Inde du Comte de Modave…, p. 106.
67“Tribunus,” quoted in Llewellyn-Jones, A Very Ingenious Man, pp. 149-50.
68Martin to Raikes and Company, August 13, 1796; May 25, 1798. I am indebted to Dr. Llewellyn-Jones for transcriptions of these letters, held in the Archives du Rhône, Lyon. They have now been published in her A Man of the Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century India: The Letters of Claude Martin 1766-1800 (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003).
69Rosie Llewellyn-Jones, “Major General Claude Martin: A French Connoisseur in Eighteenth-century India” in Apollo Magazine, Vol. 145 (March 1997): 17-22.
70Quoted in Llewellyn-Jones, A Very Ingenious Man, p. 87.
71Twining, p. 311.
72“Account of Lucknow,” p. 100.
73L. F. Smith, quoted in Archer, India and British Portraiture, 1770-1825, pp. 142-43.
74Clifford Geertz, “Centers, Kings and Charisma: Reflections on the Symbolics of Power,” in J. Ben David and T. N. Clark, eds., Culture and Its Creators (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), pp. 150-71.
75“Account of Lucknow,” p. 101.
76Milo Cleveland Beach and Ebba Koch, King of the World (London: Azimuth Editions, 1997).
77Pramod J. Jethi and Christopher W. London, “A Glorious Heritage: Maharao Lakhpatji and the Aina Mahal,” and Amin Jaffer, “The Aina Mahal: An Early Example of ‘Europeanerie,’ ” Marg 51 (2000): 12-39.
78Daniel Johnson, quoted in Llewellyn-Jones, A Very Ingenious Man, p. 133.
79George Annesley, Viscount Valentia, Voyages and Travels in India, Ceylon, the Red Sea, Abyssinia, and Egypt, in the Years 1802, 1803, 1804, 1805, and 1806, 3 vols. (London, 1809), I, p. 156. Frederick Arnott brought a stock of European guns “Commissioned by Mr. Arnott for the Nabob at his express desire and a stipulated sum…agreed on.” His inventory also included a number of curiosities that would have been sold to Asaf-ud-Daula or his courtiers, like “2 Large Ivory Immaum Barrahs,” “192 China Toys and 62 Tumbling Boys,” and “2 China Temples.” (“Cases of Ozias Humphry and Mr. Paul at Lucknow,” BL: Add. MSS 13,532.)
80I’jaz, p. 326.
81Basu, p. 4.
82Twining, pp. 311-12.
83Valentia, I, pp. 164-65.
As the monsoon rains sheeted down over Lucknow in 1786, Antoine Polier wrote to his benefactor, Warren Hastings, with a surprising and wonderful piece of news. For ten years Asaf ud-Daula had been in Polier’s debt, owing him loans and interest payments amounting to the staggering sum of twentyseven lakhs—about £270,000 then, at least £20 million today.