The connected worlds of Haji Mustapha (c. 1730–91)
A Eurasian cosmopolitan in eighteenth-century Bengal
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8961659 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Robert Travers (Cornell University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2015 |
| Volume | 52 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 297-333 |
| Publication date | 2015-07-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Indian Economic & Social History Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0019-4646 • E-ISSN: 0973-0893 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0019464615588426 |
| OpenAlex | W2242270797 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 25 |
Haji Mustapha (d. 1791), sometimes also referred to by the French name Raymond, or by his pen name ‘Nota Manus’ (‘a known hand’), is best known as the translator and publisher of one of the most celebrated Indo-Persian histories of the eighteenth century, the Seir Mutaqherin, published in Calcutta in 1789–90. Situating Mustapha’s life story within a growing historiography concerned with early modern forms of cosmopolitanism, ‘trans-imperial subjects’ and ‘go-betweens’, this essay presents new evidence about the origins and longer trajectory of Mustapha’s remarkable career. It explores his family background in the trans-imperial networks of merchants and dragomans that connected the French and Ottoman empires in the early modern period. It shows how Mustapha reinvented himself in Bengal as a political informer to the British Empire, cultivating a persona as a Eurasian cosmopolitan who could mediate between European and South Asian political cultures. Treating Mustapha as an interesting political thinker in his own right, the essay examines his adaptationist view of imperial politics and his efforts to conjugate and cross-fertilise the political and intellectual traditions of European and Islamic empires. It also shows how Mustapha’s Eurasian cosmopolitan style struggled to contend with the changing forms of British imperial patriotism
Ancient history · BENGAL · Cosmopolitanism · Empire · Patriotism · Political science · Politics · Classics · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Islamic Studies and History · Law · Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East
Orientalism in Early Modern France
Persian Literature
The Transition in Bengal, 1756–1775
Ideology and Empire in Eighteenth-Century India
The Black Hole of Empire
Implicit understandings
East of Enlightenment
Sex and the Family in Colonial India
Brokering Empire
Ottomans-Safavids-Mughals
Journeys to Empire
The Inner Life of Empires
Climates and Constitutions
Dragomans and “Turkish Literature”
Orientalist JonesSir William Jones, Poet, Lawyer, and Linguist, 1746-1794
The Graves of TarimGenealogy and Mobility across the Indian Ocean
From the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean
Cultural flows and cosmopolitanism in Mughal India
History as Self-Representation
Cosmopolitan
The Graves of Tarim
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2025 (3) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |