An Englishwoman who sketched India before photography took hold

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2drrv6q54o

by 1659447091 • 9 days ago

225 41 9 days ago

js2• 9 days ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Eden

Her book, Portraits of the Princes and People of India, was published in 1844. It contained 24 lithographs that were drawn from her sketches of important Indian subjects such as Dost Mahomed Khan and Ranjit Singh.

https://www.rct.uk/collection/1070252/portraits-of-the-princ...

https://archive.org/details/Eden30538

xtiansimon• 8 days ago

Several of the pictures looked like lithographs. I wonder what the originals looked like. Though the “watercolor” of the deck of the ship appears original (maybe).

pm90• 9 days ago

Besides the sketches, she has written extensively about Indian rulers at the time (e.g. Ranjit Singh). If you found this interesting, you would love the Empire Podcast... I believe they talk about Emily in the episode on Afghanistan (https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/79-invading-afghanista...); Dalrymple's book on the subject (Return of a King, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_of_a_King) is also a masterfully well researched, delightful read.

fillskills• 9 days ago

+1 to Empire Podcast. They have excellent series on a bunch of empires (well researched with references). Its one of those light, informative, non-boring podcasts: - The British Empire & The Raj - The Ottoman Empire - The Russian Empire - The United States as an Empire etc

ebbi• 9 days ago

William Dalrymple's books are great reads. Makes reading history enjoyable. Highly recommend all his books, particularly his most recent 'The Golden Road'

sbmthakur• 9 days ago

Reading that one now. I finished The Anarchy before that and it was a great intro to the 18th century and how it made the ground fertile for upcoming colonial period.

21asdffdsa122• 9 days ago

Great podcasts. Also gives you more of an idea why empires started existing. Basically keep the lights on at home at the price of somewhere else going dark. Empire is a life support mechanism for civilization, because when the exponential of life runs out on the linear of physics, social machinery is needed to be more than a riotous blob of ever-warring starving people.

Basically a civilization scale heat-pump, similar to a central state, but over several countries. Which makes rebellion against the empire - a not so noble act, once things actually get scarce- decomplexification prevents the opening up of empire subsidized discovery of new energy sources. At the same time, empires can be unproductive, basically rentseeking and abandoning the purpose the heatpump originally was build for.

Of course to the post colonialists, the existence of any heat pump is pure evil. And for the individual it is. But then again this ignores that the situation is evil. If the selfish drive to have all the offspring, maxes out the ressources, dissolves all the institutions and decomplexifies all things, a empire structure is needed to build a weather-satellite rocket from the food of to many peasants. Its horrifying, and was not necessary in recent memory due to the surplus productivity of capitalism. But if you decomplexify the beast that allows you to only have good situations - you restore the need to create the beast that handles only

GJim• 9 days ago

All empires were not created equal!

gadders2• 9 days ago

I think it's a bit rude to claim India has gone dark. It seems like a pretty vibrant economy.

where-group-by• 8 days ago

I'm very not much for anti-intelleciualism, but this reads terribly. Maybe being used to this kind of metaphor rich language comes with the territory, which I'm unfamiliar with.

ks2048• 9 days ago

Amazing work and historical artifacts.

Something about this era - I have an interest in Frederick Catherwood and his work at basically the same time in mesoamerica (although he focused more on ruins than modern people), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Catherwood

dudemap• 9 days ago

Looked like an entirely different world!

dyauspitr• 9 days ago

It honestly still looks like this. The afghans look the same, the Sikhs still dress this way.

raws• 9 days ago

I think it looks like I'm only seeing rich individuals of the times are there more sketches of other classes as well?

ggm• 9 days ago

Rich and/or employed by rich people.

throwfaraway135• 9 days ago

Considering who is on today's magazines, this is not surprising.

codeduck• 9 days ago

There are a few more images omitted from the BBC article in her actual works: https://archive.org/details/Eden30538/page/n5/mode/2up

Cthulhu_• 9 days ago

Isn't this usually what happens? More depictions, records, stories and possessions of rich people end up surviving long term.

Which is why I think it's important that if one is a creator, author, artist, photo/videographer, etc, that they also log the mundane, the common.

My grandfather was a hobby photographer, he'd go out during e.g. local (traditional) events like "ring running" [0] (note that this was in the mid-1900s, not the 1500s from the linked article) and make photos / videos about it. A lot of his stuff is now archived at the local history museum.

(also note that this was very much a small village on the far side of the country (NL), while it was spared the worst of the war it also lagged a bit in development)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Running_at_the_ring

djklfhdsbv• 9 days ago

I love it, the English can be there to exploit India and enslave its people but we treat their work as art. If it was anyone else like the Ottomans, we would treat it as barbarianism.

seesawtron• 9 days ago

Oh boy, you haven’t read enough about the British rule in India.

leosanchez• 9 days ago

Please educate

fennecfoxy• 9 days ago

Lmao, really? England has famously been judged for its industrial colonisation, even if it was still in an era where _everyone_ was colonising _everyone_.

Interesting how Genghis Khan got away with it, to most he's now just a "badass" historical figure, I don't think most people could tell of all the terrible things he was responsible for.

vintermann• 9 days ago

Genghis Khan had the "decency" of failing pretty badly at producing an institution outliving him, whereas the English royal family are keeping a shockingly big share of the loot to this day.

nyeah• 8 days ago

In what sense does Genghis Khan get away with it? He was a monster.

yomismoaqui• 9 days ago

The winner writes the history.

E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Legend

modo_mario• 8 days ago

I think the ottomans typically catch much less flack than the english.

Only more recent stuff against greeks, armenians and kurds catches flack and those are around to amplify it.

zkmon• 9 days ago

The English those days had some raw skills and strength. Jim Corbett traveled from Englad on a request to hunt a tiger, camped in the forest on a tree in the nights to deal with the beast. CP Brown studied Telugu and South Indian languages in a high detail. So many other Emglish men impacted India in many ways - irrigation, engineering and adminitrative framework etc. Second world War changed the course.

randysalami2• 9 days ago

I like to think WW1 and WW2 was the collective suicide of the West, at least in Europe. So much power lost, both in terms of empire and people, impossible to ever recover. I guess from my learning, it was inevitable, there was no other path where they could have not killed each other and blown up their empires. Alas.

randysalami2• 8 days ago

Sorry rethinking this was a very insensitive way to put things. Too late to edit or delete. But it is a complete human tragedy that set the stage for generational trauma like no point before in human history due to rapid industrialization among other things.

gadders2• 9 days ago

Also - James Prinsep - decoded the ancient Brahmi script, unlocking a lot of Indian history.

And as an English person, it pains me but I should mention a lot of the Empire was run by random Scots people as well. They should share the credit/blame.

abhiyerra• 8 days ago

The Irish too… though they were given things like prisons.

Scots legacy of the empire can still be seen in the bank HSBC. Unfortunately, history sort of forgets that the Scots were involved in some of the more egregious aspects such as slavery and opium.

(Studied British Empire/Indian History)

JR1427• 8 days ago

If you like this, check out the amazing works of Edwin Lord Weeks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Lord_Weeks

tinyplanets• 8 days ago

Wow, you're right. His paintings are amazing!

An Englishwoman who sketched India before photography took hold

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