White Mughals

Product Description

William Dalrymple’s fifth book, White Mughals, does not follow his usual technique of travelling & discovering & storytelling. Rather this work is a social history, an account of the much unknown warm relations that existed between the British & Indians in the 18th & early 19th centuries. During that time one in three British men living on the sub-continent were married to Indian women. Dalrymple’s account follows the life of James Achilles Kirkpatrick, the British representative at the court of the Nizam of Hyderabad, who fell in love with a beautiful young Mughal princess, Khair un-Nissa, the ‘ Most Excellent Among Women’. He soon converted to Islam & married her despite the opposition from all sides, & then became a double agent working for the Nizam & against his employers, the East India Company. He had become one of many ‘ White Mughals’. However, this book is not simply a love story in an exotic location, rather it is used as the anchor from which to explore the complex history of the British Empire in India. It’s an attempt to understand the cultural sharing & mixing that defines both eastern & western cultures & a rejection of religious intolerance & ethnic essentialism. Dalrymple received the Wolfson Prize for History 2003 & the Scottish Book of the Year Prize as well as winning a place on many other shortlists.