Plunder and Prestige: Tipu Sultan’s Library and the Making of British India

Abstract

This article traces the fortunes of one of India’s great libraries, which Tipu Sultan of Mysore amassed largely through plunder and which the British East India Company plundered in turn. It shows how Tipu used the library to legitimise his authority and how rival factions of the Company, after defeating him in 1799, did the same. The article links the figuration of loot in the subcontinent, as studied by historians of material culture, to the conceptualisation of British India, as studied by historians of political thought. More broadly, it attests the symbolic power that plunder had—perhaps still has—to confer prestige.

Keywords:

• Books
• British East India Company
• British India
• ideology
• libraries
• loot
• plunder
• prestige
• Richard Wellesley
• Tipu Sultan

Acknowledgements

For many helpful comments the author would like to thank the guest editors of this special issue and the anonymous South Asia referees.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Hugh Trevor-Roper, Princes and Artists: Patronage and Ideology at Four Habsburg Courts, 1517–1633 (London: Thames & Hudson, 1976), p. 162.

2. Hugh Trevor-Roper, The Plunder of the Arts in the Seventeenth Century (London: Thames & Hudson, 1970), p. 7.

3. Also see Anders Rydell, The Book Thieves: The Nazi Looting of Europe’s Libraries and the Race to Return a Literary Inheritance, Henning Koch (trans.) (New York: Penguin, 2017), esp. p. xii.

4. Richard H. Davis, ‘Indian Art Objects as Loot’, in Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 52 (1993), pp. 22–48; Richard H. Davis, ‘Three Styles in Looting India’, in History and Anthropology, Vol. 6 (1994), pp. 293–317; Richard H. Davis, Lives of Indian Images (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), pp. 51–87; and Finbarr B. Flood, Objects of Translation: Material Culture and Medieval ‘Hindu–Muslim’ Encounter (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), pp. 121–35. While typically focused on the medieval age, these studies have highlighted connections and comparisons over a long time span.

5. Sudipta Sen, Distant Sovereignty: National Imperialism and the Origins of British India (New York: Routledge, 2002); Robert Travers, Ideology and Empire in Eighteenth-Century India: The British in Bengal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); and Jack Harrington, Sir John Malcolm and the Creation of British India (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). Recent provocative studies have backdated the origins of this concept to metropolitan debates of the mid eighteenth century, or even to the East India Company’s founding in 1600. As discussed below, however, it is significant that the phrase ‘British India’ only entered common usage in 1793. Cf. Philip J. Stern, The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); and James M. Vaughn, The Politics of Empire at the Accession of George III: The East India Company and the Crisis and Transformation of Britain’s Imperial State (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019).

6. Hitherto the plunder of libraries has been little studied. By contrast, the destruction of libraries has long been a popular preoccupation. See, recently, James Raven (ed.), Lost Libraries: The Destruction of Great Book Collections Since Antiquity (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). On this preoccupation, see Walter Stephens, ‘Ozymandias: Or, Writing, Lost Libraries, and Wonder’, in Modern Language Notes, Vol. 124 (2009), pp. S155–68.

7. For the Indian case, see H. Goetz, The Crisis of Indian Civilization in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1938); George D. Bearce, ‘Intellectual and Cultural Characteristics of India in a Changing Era, 1740–1800’, in Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 25 (1965), pp. 3–17; Fritz Lehmann, ‘Urdu Literature and Mughal Decline’, in Mahfil, Vol. 6 (1970), pp. 125–31; and Ishrat Haque, Glimpses of Mughal Society and Culture—A Study Based on Urdu Literature: in the 2nd Half of the 18th Century (New Delhi: Concept, 1992).

8. See, generally, Jeremiah P. Losty, The Art of the Book in India (London: British Library, 1982); Miles Ogborn, Indian Ink: Script and Print in the Making of the English East India Company (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2007); and Francesca Orsini (ed.), The History of the Book in South Asia (New York: Routledge, 2013).

9. For the striking case of the ‘revolutions’ in Bengal in 1756–57, see Luke Scrafton, Reflections on the Government of Indostan (London, 1770), p. 93.

10. See, recently, William Dalrymple and Anita Anand, Koh-i-Noor: The History of the World’s Most Infamous Diamond (London: Bloomsbury, 2017).

11. On this and other late examples of British plunder in India, see Evans Bell, Memoir of General John Briggs (London: Chatto and Windus, 1885), pp. 62–6.

12. For the estimate made by Robert Clive, see S.C. Hill, ‘Introduction’, in S.C. Hill (ed.), Bengal in 1756–1757, Vol. 1 (London: John Murray, 1905), p. ccx.

13. Cited in G.R. Gleig, The Life of Robert, First Lord Clive (London: John Murray, 1848), p. 297.

14. Cited in Fort William–India House Correspondence, Vol. 8 (Delhi: National Archives of India, 1981), p. 421.

15. James Mackintosh to John Whishaw, 20 Feb. 1808, MS 2521, ff.137r–137v, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh.

16. On shifts in European norms regarding plunder, see Wayne Sandholtz, Prohibiting Plunder: How Norms Change (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

17. Anne Buddle, ‘The Tipu Mania: Narrative Sketches of the Conquest of Mysore’, in Marg, Vol. 40 (1989), pp. 53–70 (p. 53).

18. Denys Forrest, Tiger of Mysore: The Life and Death of Tipu Sultan (London: Chatto & Windus, 1970), pp. 2–3.

19. Anne Buddle, Tigers Round the Throne: The Court of Tipu Sultan (1750–1799) (London: Zamana Gallery, 1990); Anne Buddle, with Pauline Rohatgi and Iain Gordon Brown, The Tiger and the Thistle: Tipu Sultan and the Scots in India (Edinburgh: National Gallery of Scotland, 1999); Mohammad Moienuddin, Sunset at Srirangapatam: After the Death of Tipu Sultan (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2000); Maya Jasanoff, Edge of Empire: Conquest and Collecting in the East, 1750–1850 (London: Fourth Estate, 2005), pp. 177–96; Susan Stronge, Tipu’s Tigers (London: Victoria & Albert Museum, 2009); Sarah Longair and Cam Sharp Jones, ‘Prize Possession: The “Silver Coffer” of Tipu Sultan and the Fraser Family’, in Margot Finn and Kate Smith (eds), The East India Company at Home, 1757–1857 (London: UCL Press, 2018), pp. 25–38; and Malcolm Mercer, ‘Collecting Oriental and Asiatic Arms and Armour: The Activities of British and East India Company Officers, c.1800–1850’, in Arms and Armour, Vol. 15 (2018), pp. 1–21.

20. Lately, Ursula Sims-Williams has written about Tipu’s library for the British Library’s Asian and African Studies blog [https://blogs.bl.uk/asian-and-african, accessed 17 March 2020]. For earlier discussions, see M. Hidayat Hosain, ‘The Library of Tipu Sultan (A.H. 1197–1214/A.D. 1782–1799)’, in Islamic Culture, Vol. 15 (1940), pp. 139–67; and Anne Buddle, ‘Books and Manuscripts: Tipu Sultan and the Scottish Contribution’, in Aniruddha Ray (ed.), Tipu Sultan and His Age: A Collection of Seminar Papers (Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 2002), pp. 46–60.

21. P.T. Nair, ‘Decline of Persian Studies in Calcutta’, in Indo-Iranica, Vol. 52 (1999), pp. 1–42 (pp. 26, 30); and Jasanoff, Edge of Empire, p. 185. A former member of Tipu’s court was also under the impression that the whole library travelled to Europe. Mir Hussain Ali Khan Kirmani, History of Tipu Sultan, Being a Continuation of the Neshani Hyduri, W. Miles (trans.) (Calcutta: Susil Gupta, repr., 1958 [1864]), p. 129.

22. Rajeshwari Datta, ‘The India Office Library: Its History, Resources, and Functions’, in Library Quarterly, Vol. 36 (1966), pp. 99–148 (p. 102); and Mohibbul Hasan, History of Tipu Sultan (Calcutta: World Press, 2nd ed., 1971), p. 380.

23. Charles Stewart, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Oriental Library of the Late Tippoo Sultan of Mysore (Cambridge: The University Press, 1809), p. v.

24. David Price, Memoirs of the Early Life and Service of a Field Officer on the Retired List of the Indian Army (London: Wm. H. Allen & Co., 1839), p. 446. Another officer on the spot counted ‘many thousand volumes’. See ‘Curious Particulars Relative to the Capture of Seringapatam’, in Asiatic Annual Register…for the Year 1799 (1800), ‘Supplement to the Chronicle’, pp. 277–84 (p. 282).

25. William Kirkpatrick (ed. and trans.), Select Letters of Tippoo Sultan to Various Public Functionaries (London: Cox, Son, and Baylis, 1811), p. v.

26. Price, Memoirs of the Early Life and Service of a Field Officer on the Retired List of the Indian Army, p. 446.

27. Edward Moor, Oriental Fragments (London: Smith, Elder, and Co., 1834), p. 42; and Moienuddin, Sunset at Srirangapatam, pp. 117–9.

28. Buchanan’s fellow surveyor Colin Mackenzie may also have received materials from the collection. See William Taylor, A Catalogue Raisonnée of Oriental Manuscripts in the Government Library, Vol. 3 (Madras: United Scottish Press, 1862), p. 693.

29. Zain-ul-Abidin Shustari, Fath-ul-Mujahidin (1782/3), MS C210, Victoria Memorial Hall, Kolkata; and A. Sprenger, A Catalogue of the Arabic, Persian and Hindu’sta’ny Manuscripts, of the Libraries of the King of Oudh (Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press, 1854), p. 178.

30. For the distinction, see ‘Curious Particulars Relative to the Capture of Seringapatam’, p. 282; and Francis Buchanan, A Journey from Madras through the Countries of Mysore, Canara, and Malabar, Vol. 1 (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1807), pp. 72–3.

31. Price, Memoirs of the Early Life and Service of a Field Officer on the Retired List of the Indian Army, p. 445.

32. Little is known about the physical arrangements of other early modern Indian court libraries. For close studies of two such libraries, see John Seyller, ‘The Inspection and Valuation of Manuscripts in the Imperial Mughal Library’, in Artibus Asiae, Vol. 57 (1997), pp. 243–349; and Keelan Overton, ‘Book Culture, Royal Libraries, and Persianate Painting in Bijapur, circa 1580‒1630’, in Muqarnas, Vol. 33 (2016), pp. 91–154.

33. ‘Curious Particulars Relative to the Capture of Seringapatam’, p. 282.

34. Munshi M. Qasim (trans.), ‘Account of Teepoo Sooltan’s Hall of Public Audience’, Mss Eur C10, pp. 209–10, British Library; and Hasan, History of Tipu Sultan, p. 331, n. 5.

35. Kirkpatrick (ed. and trans.), Select Letters of Tippoo Sultan to Various Public Functionaries, pp. 276–7.

36. Price, Memoirs of the Early Life and Service of a Field Officer on the Retired List of the Indian Army, p. 446; see, similarly, Moor, Oriental Fragments, p. 25.

37. Alexander Beatson, A View of the Origin and Conduct of the War with Tippoo Sultaun (London: W. Bulmer and Co., 1800), p. 179. Beatson’s account is supported by Price’s recollection that ‘the library and depôt of manuscripts’ were housed in the same room. Price, Memoirs of the Early Life and Service of a Field Officer on the Retired List of the Indian Army, p. 445.

38. For details, see Stewart, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Oriental Library of the Late Tippoo Sultan of Mysore, pp. 87–94, 144–52.

39. On the origins of the library, see Stewart, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Oriental Library of the Late Tippoo Sultan of Mysore, p. v. Other holdings had been plundered by Tipu’s father and predecessor, Haidar Ali.

40. See Kate Brittlebank, Tipu Sultan’s Search for Legitimacy: Islam and Kingship in a Hindu Domain (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997).

41. Kirkpatrick (ed. and trans.), Select Letters of Tippoo Sultan to Various Public Functionaries, pp. 348–9, 379.

42. Stewart, Descriptive Catalogue of the Oriental Library of the Late Tippoo Sultan of Mysore, pp. 97, 113.

43. For details, see Mark F. Watson and Henry J. Noltie, ‘Career, Collections, Reports and Publications of Dr Francis Buchanan (Later Hamilton), 1762–1829: Natural History Studies in Nepal, Burma (Myanmar), Bangladesh and India (Part 1)’, in Annals of Science, Vol. 73 (2016), pp. 392–424 (pp. 396–8, 408).

44. Irfan Habib, ‘Introduction’, in Irfan Habib (ed.), Confronting Colonialism: Resistance and Modernization under Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan (London: Anthem Press, 2002), pp. xvii–xlvii; Partha Chatterjee, The Black Hole of Empire: History of a Global Practice of Power (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), pp. 85–93; and Kaveh Yazdani, India, Modernity and the Great Divergence: Mysore and Gujarat (17th to 19th C.) (Leiden: Brill, 2017), pp. 115–360.

45. Burrish Crisp (trans.), The Mysorean Revenue Regulations (Calcutta: E. Jeffery, 1792), in Charles Francis Greville, British India Analyzed, Vol. 1 (London, 1793), pp. li–94 (p. liii).

46. P.J. Marshall, ‘“Cornwallis Triumphant”: War in India and the British Public in the Late Eighteenth Century’, in P.J. Marshall (ed.), Trade and Conquest: Studies on the Rise of British Dominance in India (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1993), pp. 57–74; and P.J. Marshall, ‘“A Free Though Conquering People”: Britain and Asia in the Eighteenth Century’, in P.J. Marshall (ed.), ‘A Free Though Conquering People’: Eighteenth-Century Britain and Its Empire (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), pp. 1–19. For a reminder that Calcutta residents took part in long-distance imperial debates, see Ben Gilding, ‘The Rise and Fall of Hicky’s Bengal Gazette (1780–2): A Study in Transoceanic Political Culture’, in Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Vol. 47 (2019), pp. 1–27.

47. Greville, British India Analyzed. Greville evidently took the phrase from John Bruce, Historical View of Plans for the Government of British India (London: Bruce: J. Sewell, 1793).

48. For a full account of the dispute, see Joshua Ehrlich, ‘The East India Company and the Politics of Knowledge’, unpublished PhD dissertation, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA, 2018, chap. 3.

49. Colonel Close to Major General Popham, 2 Jan. 1800, Mss Eur E196, f.55r, British Library.

50. See Peter Gordon, The Oriental Repository at the India House (London, 1835), pp. 1–5.

51. Public despatch to Bengal, 25 May 1798, in Selections from the Calcutta Gazettes, Vol. 4 (Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1868), pp. 25–6.

52. ‘Extract from the Proceedings of the Committee of Prize, May and June 1799’, Mss Eur E196, f.51r, British Library. Most of the duplicate works were to be lodged with the Asiatic Society of Bengal. Others were to be presented by the directors to repositories in Britain; sent to the Persian Translator’s Office at Bombay for the purposes of instructing officials in the language; and, only as a last resort, put up for sale. See Bengal Public Proceedings, 11 Sept. 1800, no. 47, pp. 2599–601, National Archives of India, New Delhi.

53. Neil Benjamin Edmonstone (ed.), Official Documents, Relative to the Negotiations Carried on by Tippoo Sultaun (Calcutta: The Honorable Company's Press, 1799).

54. Ibid., pp. ix–xx.

55. Major General Popham to Colonel Ogg, 11 Jan. 1800, Mss Eur E196, f.59r, British Library.

56. Lord Grenville to Wellesley, 1 Mar. 1800, Add MS 70927, ff.51v–52r, British Library.

57. On the political and ideological significance of the college, see Ehrlich, ‘The East India Company and the Politics of Knowledge’, chap. 3.

58. C.A. Bayly, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 150.

59. Richard Wellesley, ‘The Governor-General’s Notes with Respect to the Foundation of a College at Fort William’, 10 July 1800, in Robert Montgomery Martin (ed.), The Despatches, Minutes, and Correspondence, of the Marquess Wellesley, K. G., During His Administration in India, Vol. 2 (London: Wm. H. Allen and Co., 1836), p. 353.

60. Ehrlich, ‘The East India Company and the Politics of Knowledge’, chap. 4.

61. As a later memorandum put it, the ‘primary object of the East India Company for [endowing a] museum at the India House, was, to bring toge[ther]…the varied natural productions and manufactures of India as…a means for opening new Channels in Commerce and Manufacture’. See Memorandum [c. 1838–58], Mss Eur F303/54, British Library. On this lineage, see Michael Hunter, Science and Society in Restoration England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 74; Jessica Ratcliff, ‘The East India Company, the Company’s Museum, and the Political Economy of Natural History in the Early Nineteenth Century’, in Isis, Vol. 107 (2016), pp. 495–517 (p. 500); and Arthur MacGregor, Company Curiosities: Nature, Culture and the East India Company, 1600–1874 (London: Reaktion, 2018), pp. 168–9.

62. Hastings to Charles Wilkins, 1799, cited in Ray Desmond, The India Museum, 1801–1879 (London: British Museum, 1982), p. 10, see also pp. 11–3.

63. Wellesley, ‘The Governor-General’s Notes with Respect to the Foundation of a College at Fort William’, pp. 327, 329, 339, 353.

64. Draft public despatch to Bengal, 19 July 1803, IOR H/487, p. 526, British Library.

65. Public despatch to Bengal, 15 June 1805, IOR E/4/658, p. 32, British Library.

66. In 1838, after the College of Fort William was wound down, the remaining holdings from Tipu’s library passed to the Oriental Repository in London. See A.J. Arberry, The Library of the India Office: A Historical Sketch (London: British Library, repr., 1967 [1938]), p. 80.

67. Public despatch to Bengal, 28 Feb. 1806, IOR E/4/659, pp. 568–78, British Library.

68. Stewart to Charles Wilkins, 30 Sept. 1807, IOR J/1/23, pp. 410–1, British Library.

69. Margaret Morris Cloake (ed. and trans.), A Persian at the Court of King George, 1809–10: The Journal of Mirza Abul Hassan Khan (London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1988), p. 74; see also ‘The Persian Ambassador’, Morning Post (London) (30 Dec. 1809), p. 3. The ambassador later borrowed at least nine Persian-language works from the repository, some of which may have belonged to Tipu. See Arberry, The Library of the India Office, p. 46.

70. For numerous remarks by contemporaries to the effect that East India House was fit for merchants but not sovereigns, see John McAleer, ‘Exhibiting the “Strangest of All Empires”: The East India Company, East India House, and Britain’s Asian Empire’, in Stephanie Barczewski and Martin Farr (eds), The Mackenzie Moment and Imperial History: Essays in Honour of John M. Mackenzie (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), pp. 25–46 (pp. 30–2).

71. Arberry, The Library of the India Office, pp. 29–30. This protégé, Alexander Beatson, also published incriminating translations from the journal in London. Beatson, A View of the Origin and Conduct of the War with Tippoo Sultaun, Appendix, pp. cix–cxiii.

72. Mark Wilks, Historical Sketches of the South of India, Vol. 1 (Wilks: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1810), p. xxv; and William Kirkpatrick, ‘Preface’, in Kirkpatrick (ed. and trans.), Select Letters of Tippoo Sultan to Various Public Functionaries, p. xxiv.

73. Kirkpatrick, ‘Preface’, p. xviii.

74. Review of Viscount Valentia, Voyages and Travels to India, Ceylon, the Red Sea, Abyssinia, and Egypt, Vols. 1–3 (London: William Miller, 1809), in Asiatic Annual Register…for the Year 1809 (1811), pp. 492–3; and see Valentia, Voyages and Travels to India, Ceylon, the Red Sea, Abyssinia, and Egypt, esp. Vol. 1, pp. 235–6, 415.

75. The directors also claimed other Tipuiana in defiance of Wellesley and at a similar risk. See ‘Description of Various Articles Found in the Palace at Seringapatam’, in Asiatic Annual Register…for the Year 1800 (1801), pp. 338–44.

76. Gordon, The Oriental Repository at the India House.

77. For a sketch of Gordon’s life, see J.M. Bulloch, The Gay Gordons: Some Strange Adventures of a Famous Scots Family (London: Chapman & Hall, 1908), pp. 220–9.

78. Peter Gordon, ‘The Oriental Repository at the India House’, in Alexander’s East India and Colonial Magazine, Vol. 10 (1835), pp. 542–53 (pp. 546–7). The son’s name can be gleaned from a newspaper account of the visit. The Times (London) (29 May 1835), p. 2.

79. Seema Alavi, ‘Lost Treasures’, The Hindu Sunday Magazine (27 Aug. 2000), reprinted in The Fragrance of East, Vol. 2 (2000), pp. 85–91 [http://the-fragrance-of-east.nadwa.in/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/July-Sep-2000.pdf, accessed 17 March 2020]. Unlike the Company’s plunder, according to this argument, that of Indian rulers was ‘recycled within the country’.

80. See Trevor-Roper, The Plunder of the Arts in the Seventeenth Century, pp. 58–9; and Trevor-Roper, Princes and Artists, p. 162.