Forbes, James, 1749–1819, James Forbes letter, on board the Calcutta, 1775 Feburary 26, copied between 1794 and 1800
- Call Number:
- Folio A 2023 69
- Holdings:
- Accessible by appointment in the Study Room [Request]
- Creator:
- Forbes, James, 1749–1819
- Title(s):
- James Forbes letter, on board the Calcutta, 1775 Feburary 26
- Date:
- copied between 1794 and 1800
- Classification:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Series:
- Series I: A voyage from England to Bombay with descriptions in Asia, Africa, and South America
- Part of Collection:
- volume 7, page 29-51
- Provenance:
- Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
- Conditions Governing Access:
- The materials are open for research.
- Conditions Governing Use:
- The collection is the physical property of the Yale Center for British Art. Literary rights, including copyright, belong to the authors or their legal heirs and assigns. For further information, consult the Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts.
- Scope and Content:
- Forbes begins this letter mid-journey: his wish to join an expedition sent by the East India Company to fight a continental war against the Marathas has been granted, and he writes onboard a ship headed to reinforce the company’s allies. Acknowledging the complicated political histories that have led up to this moment of violence, Forbes decides to reiterate a history of the various players involved. Forbes allows that the political situation in India has changed drastically since the original composition of the letter—the Mughal Empire, for instance, is now “totally subverted”—but nonetheless offers his account. He starts with an invocation of his previous letters. They have focused primarily on the customs of the Hindus, and Forbes insists that “their religious tenets, divested of fable and priestcraft, are pure and good.” Now, however, the story will shift to a different type of brahmin, not one who retreats into prayer, but one who shines “in all the splendor of royalty.” Forbes includes a brief digression on the dietary habits of brahmins—namely their abstention from meat as relevant to their “belief in transmigration”—as compared to the more lax standards of average Indians. Forbes then turns to an abbreviated history of South Asia. In his telling, a long, almost primordial period of Hindu calm was broken by the invasion of Muslim forces from central Asia. This was an understanding shared by many scholars of Forbes’s time, however much it misunderstands the realities of migration, religious transmission, and political conflict in pre-modern India. Forbes notes that the Marathas resisted conquest, and remained independent despite the flourishing of the Mughal Empire under the emperor Akbar (1542-1605). Forbes dates the decline of the Mughal Empire to the invasion of Delhi by Persian ruler Nadir Shah in 1739: “in a few years afterwards the Nabobs & Governors of distant provinces threw off their allegiance, and, instead of being servants to the Emperor, they set up for independent sovereigns.” Then came the rise of European empires, with Portugal in the lead, but soon to fall due to “cruelty, venality, and corruption.” Now, the English East India Company supports “a large army, and their subjects live happy under the English administration.” Forbes exalts the empire forged by the company beyond any the world has thus seen, though, reflecting on the events that transpired as Forbes transcribed these letters, he suggests that “a revolution in the Company’s affairs may soon be expected.” Having provided this brief backstory, Forbes alludes to his future letters, in which he will tell this history of the Maratha Empire. Portions of this text appear in <title>Oriental Memoirs</title>, volume 1, pp. 459-460.
- Physical Description:
- 23 pages
- Genre:
- Correspondence , Botanical illustrations, Ornithological illustrations, Travel sketches, Maps, Watercolors (paintings), Drawings (visual works), Engravings (prints), and Portraits
- Subject Terms:
- Forbes, James, 1749-1819. Descriptive letters and drawingsForbes, James, 1749-1819. Oriental memoirs
- Associated Places:
- EnglandItalyScotlandWales
- Associated People/Groups:
- East India CompanyForbes, James, 1749-1819
- Finding Aid Title:
- James Forbes archive
- Collection PDF:
- https://ead-pdfs.library.yale.edu/11734.pdf
- Archival Object:
- https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/3/archival_objects/3199692
- Metadata Cloud URL:
- https://metadata-api.library.yale.edu/metadatacloud/api/aspace/repositories/3/archival_objects/3199692?mediaType=json&include-notes=1&include-all-subjects=1