Dean Mahomet 
The Travels of Dean Mahomet 
An Eighteenth-Century Journey through India

This unusual study combines two books in one: the 1794 autobiographical travel narrative of an Indian, Dean Mahomet, recalling his years as camp-follower, servant, and subaltern officer in the East India Company’s army (1769 to 1784); and Michael H. Fisher’s portrayal of Mahomet’s sojourn as an insider/outsider in India, Ireland, and England. Emigrating to Britain and living there for over half a century, Mahomet started what was probably the first Indian restaurant in England and then enjoyed a distinguished career as a practitioner of ‘oriental’ medicine, i.e., therapeutic massage and herbal steam bath, in London and the seaside resort of Brighton. This is a fascinating account of life in late eighteenth-century India—the first book written in English by an Indian—framed by a mini-biography of a remarkably versatile entrepreneur.


Travels presents an Indian’s view of the British conquest of India and conveys the vital role taken by Indians in the colonial process, especially as they negotiated relations with Britons both in the colonial periphery and the imperial metropole.


Connoisseurs of unusual travel narratives, historians of England, Ireland, and British India, as well as literary scholars of autobiography and colonial discourse will find much in this book. But it also offers an engaging biography of a resourceful, multidimensional individual.

Table of Content

List of Illustrations

Map

PREFACE


A Text and a Life


Dean Mahomet in Europe (1784-185I)


The Significance of Dean Mahomet’s Work


A Guide to This Volume


Acknowledgments


ONE: THE WORLD OF EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY INDIA


The Mughal Empire and the Regional States


The European East India Companies


The Diverse Origins of the Bengal Army


The New Model: The Sepoy


Sepoy Battalions


The Bengal Army’s European Regiments


Dean Mahomet’s Youth in Bihar (1759-69)


Dean Mahomet as Camp Follower (1769-81)


Dean Mahomet as Bengal Army Officer (1781-82)


Dean Mahomet in Transit (1782-84)


TWO: THE TRAVELS OF DEAN MAHOMET


THREE: DEAN MAHOMET IN IRELAND AND ENGLAND

(I784-1851)


Dean Mahomet Enters Cork


Publication of Travels


Cork Society


Immigration to London


Dean Mahomet Works for a Nabob


The Hindostanee Coffee House (1809-12)


The World of Brighton


Dean Mahomet and Jane Move to Brighton


The Battery House Baths (1815-20)


Mahomed’s Baths (1821-43)


Shifting Self-Presentations


The Indian Method


Shampooing Surgeon to Royalty


Social Position in Brighton


Dean Mahomet’s Legacies


Notes

Glossary

Abbreviations

Bibliography

Index

About the author

Michael H. Fisher is Professor of History at Oberlin College. He is the author of A Clash of Cultures: Awadh, the British, and the Mughals (1987) and Indirect Rule in India: Residents and the Residency System, 1764-1858 (1991).