Geographies of the Book

Charles W.J. Withers, Miles Ogborn

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138267930
• eBook ISBN: 9781317128977
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

The geography of the book is as old as the history of the book, though far less thoroughly explored. Yet research has increasingly pointed to the spatial dimensions of book history, to the transformation of texts as they are made and moved from place to place, from authors to readers and within different communities and cultures of reception. Widespread recognition of the significance of place, of the effects of movement over space and of the importance of location to the making and reception of print culture has been a feature of recent book history work, and draws in many instances upon studies within the history of science as well as geography. 'Geographies of the Book' explores the complex relationships between the making of books in certain geographical contexts, the movement of books (epistemologically as well as geographically) and the ways in which they are received.

PART I
GEOGRAPHIES OF PRODUCTION

Chapter 1
The Amusements of Posterity: Print Against Empire in Late Eighteenth-Century Bengal

Miles Ogborn

In what ways might the geography of a book affect its success? That depends, of course, on what is meant by the geography of a book, and also what is meant by success. If we take the former to be the nature of the places, spaces and networks of production, distribution and consumption we can try to gauge the ways in which they shape the book that is produced, where it goes, and what readers make of it. As for “success,” that will have to be assessed differently in different cases. For example, is the successfulness of a work of fiction to be measured in terms of sales, literary prizes or subsequent influence? Matters may be more straightforward in the world of science where notions of objectivity at least mean that subjective judgements cannot be acknowledged to be the final resolution of disputes. What makes one version of the truth of the natural world win out over others, at least temporarily? What part does the geography of knowledge as written and read in books have to play in the process whereby truth is questioned, established and questioned again?¹ Between literature and science we might locate the domain of politics which must be equally committed to both truth and expediency, and which must appeal to both the objective and the subjective. Success here lies in the ability to shape the terms of the debate, and to effect change in ideas, policy or practice. To what extent is that sort of success in politics shaped by the geography of the book?

In each of these situations – the literary, the scientific and the political – it is, of course, the case that the role of books, and therefore the successes that they can hope to meet, differ over time and space. We need to understand what authors’ and publishers’ expectations were and are before we can judge their successes and failures. It is evident that a literary, scientific or political culture dominated by the publication of printed books is different from one based on the primacy of speech or manuscript. Even where the printed word holds sway we should not expect any simple relationship between politics, print and the public sphere.² We can, however, anticipate that the sorts of influence that a book may have would be quite different than in contexts where the spoken or hand-written word is the key to enduring influence.

On a grander scale, it is possible to imagine a complex historical geography of the changing ecology of speech, manuscript and print which would contain these contexts. This variegated landscape would be shaped by the different forms, technologies and uses of print as they developed in Asia and Europe; the increasing dominance of print for some purposes in many places (although always accompanied by speech and other forms of the written word) which has been fashioned, although not determined, by capitalism and Western colonialism and imperialism; and perhaps the subsequent decline, stronger in some places than others, of the power of print to shape literature, science and politics in favour of other media.³ Each part of this landscape has its distinctive geography of places of speech, writing and print: the marketplace, the coffee house, the print shop, the debating chamber, the scriptorium, the study, the library.⁴ These places are linked in complex networks that connect texts, speakers, writers, readers and the materials they need to do their work. Some parts of this landscape are more complex than others, some change faster than others. It is important to know where we are on this map in order to judge the fortunes of any book, and the part played in that by its particular geographies of production, distribution and consumption.

This chapter addresses these issues in relation to a single work produced within the nascent political print culture of late eighteenth-century Bengal. This was an historical treatise in Persian critical of British imperial rule the translation of which was put into print and into circulation in Calcutta in 1789 under the title Seir Mutaqherin.⁵ It will be shown that the manuscript and then its printed translation should be understood in terms of a particular configuration of speech, writing and print situated at the intersection of two different modes of political communication in imperial north India. Telling the story of the production of the Seir Mutaqherin vividly illuminates the changing topography of part of the landscape described above as the extension of the British empire in India meant that spoken, written and printed words shifted their relative positions in the domain of politics depending on who the audience was and what purpose was intended.⁶ Understanding this, and trying to account for the fortunes of this particular text in that context, also means focusing in on the details of the geography of this book. This requires consideration of how the spaces in which it was produced and read, and the distribution networks that it sought to use, worked through the social relations of empire in ways that shaped what the book was and what it could do. The historical geography of this book was, as we shall see, played out as both tragedy and farce. The book’s title was, at the time, rendered in English as “A View of Modern Times.” Its chequered history will show that its translator’s preferred version – “The Amusements of Posterity” – perhaps rather better described its fortunes.

Seir Mutaqherin, Manuscript Culture and the Critique of Empire

The Seir Mutaqherin, a chronicle of Indian history, was written in Persian by Ghulam Husain Khan Tabatabai in 1781–82. The author was a high-born Bihari official whose Persian father had served the Mughal emperor and whose mother was related to Alivardi Khan, the nawab of Bengal. Ghulam Husain had grown up at Alivardi’s court, and held official bureaucratic positions in Delhi and Patna before entering the service of the nawab of Awadh. He was part of a class of elite Mughal administrators whose world was profoundly disrupted by the consolidation of territorial rule by the East India Company in Bengal and Bihar after 1757.⁷ He was forced to seek the patronage of both the English and their Indian allies and opponents.⁸ His history, which may have been written at the instigation of British officials allied to the English Governor General of Bengal, Warren Hastings, offered a stern critique of Company rule in Bengal and, with the exception of Hastings and a few others, its turning away from Mughal traditions of legitimate governance.⁹

Ghulam Husain’s criticisms of the ‘hat-wearers’ highlighted the dangers of according power to the landowning zamindars, the disabling effects of party politics, the lack of appropriate justice offered by a British-instituted Bengal Supreme Court that trespassed on local traditions, and, most importantly, the distance that had grown between the governors and the governed.¹⁰ Rule by committee and constant changes in personnel, from the Governor General downwards, meant that ‘this country seems to have had no master at all’.¹¹ The hatred British gentlemen showed for appearing in public audiences, and their ‘extreme uneasiness, impatience and anger’ when they did so, meant that they were unable to govern either effectively or legitimately since the people ‘never see any thing of that benignity and that munificence which might be expected from people that now sit on the throne of kings’. He criticized the English for only listening to the self-interested advice of the ‘newmen’ whom they had put at ‘the summit of power’.¹² Singled out for particular criticism was Muhammed Reza Khan, the chief administrator of the nawab of Bengal in the 1760s, and crucial intermediary in the Company’s attempts to establish effective territorial rule and revenue collection. The ups and downs of his political career – including imprisonment under Warren Hastings, and reinstatement by the Governor General’s opponents – reflected the problems of working between different modes of rule, Mughal and British, and different conceptions of how they might be brought together.¹³ From the perspective of displaced officials like Ghulam Husain, Reza Khan was part of the problem. Ghulam Husain called him ‘blunt and thoughtless’, a man who ‘does not seem to have right notions about truth and falsehood’, and one who ‘shewed the utmost disregard to every matter of chastity and decorum; still less did he know the value of men, of learning, and merit’.¹⁴ In his own attempts to hold the British to a reworked version of Mughal administrative politics it seems that Reza Khan did not know the value of men like Ghulam Husain.

This critique of imperial rule needs to be understood as the product of a particular localized culture of political communication in Bengal. As C.A. Bayly has argued, northern India possessed a vibrant and well-organized manuscript culture that shaped literature, religion and politics in the region. The Mughal emperors had elaborated systems of information gathering that, along with mercantile and sacred uses of writing, provided the basis for a growing scribal elite who serviced a population well versed in the uses of the written word. This underpinned an indigenous public sphere of rational debate over the interlocking concerns of politics, religion and aesthetics.

This ‘Indian ecumene’, as Bayly calls it, without the printing press or the formal public meeting, worked through oral and scribal modes of communication. Its mechanisms were news, gossip and opinion passed around and debated at druggists’ stalls and sweetshops, around mosques and temples, and in discussions of poetry. In written form it worked through personal letter writing, newsletters read aloud to crowds in the street, and placards posted at significant sites. Within this, and orchestrated by a scribal administrative elite with an ethic of service to the state rather than to any particular ruler, there was a tradition of holding kingship to account by using ‘a well-tested arsenal of handwritten media’.¹⁵ Ghulam Husain’s historical chronicle was doing just that to the country’s new rulers, the British, and to those who worked with them.

Significantly, the forms of political communication at work within this indigenous public sphere also shaped the content of Ghulam Husain’s critique, and focused it on communication itself. The British rulers’ illegitimate distance from their subjects was, he insisted, effectively produced by their reliance upon certain writing practices:

[T]he English commenced acquiring a knowledge of the usages and customs of the country: for it was a standing rule with them, that whatever remarcable they heard from any man versed in business, or even from any other individual, was immediately set in writing in a kind of book composed of a few blanc leaves, which most of them carry about, and which they put together afterwards, and bind like a book for their future use.¹⁶

Englishmen were, he observed, only interested in becoming acquainted with ‘noblemen and other persons of distinction’ in order to pump them for knowledge of laws or revenue matters, and they ‘would immediately set it down in writing, and lay it up in store for the use of another Englishman’. As a result, ‘the Books and Memorandums composed by the English upon such interested reports’ ‘have come to be trust...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Notes on Contributors
• Preface
• Introduction: Book Geography, Book History
• PART I GEOGRAPHIES OF PRODUCTION
• PART II GEOGRAPHIES OF CIRCULATION
• PART III GEOGRAPHIES OF RECEPTION
• Index