Passage to Europe The Extraordinary Travels of an Indian Prince in the Age of Revolutions
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Biografisk notat
Rahul Markovits is Associate Professor (maître de conférences) in early modern history at the École normale supérieure, France. His work focuses on transnational cultural exchange during the 18th century. His PhD dissertation, Civiliser l’Europe. Politiques du théâtre français au XVIIIe siècle, was awarded the 2012 Baluze Prize in European history and won the Walker Cowen Memorial Prize 2016. He is based in Paris.What was an Indian prince doing in the retinue of a French envoy at Constantinople in 1796? When Sultan Selim III, struck by the unusual sight of a fellow Muslim in a French cortège, asked how this prince had come to be there, Ahmad Khan began to tell him his extraordinary story.
A Passage to Europe traces Ahmad Khan’s journey from Gujarat to Constantinople, revolutionary France, London and back again. His voyage began with the annexation of Broach by the East India Company. Twenty years later, he reached London to seek redress. The British government paid his expenses, but although his tale was true, Khan was not the man he claimed to be. Branded a spy, he was arrested, and then simply vanished.
Following the elusive paper trail, Rahul Markovits brings to life the astonishing odyssey of this unlikely traveller, revealing a story of empire, intrigue and deception at the dawn of the modern age.
In A Passage to Europe, Rahul Markovits traces Ahmad Khan’s journey from Gujarat to Paris during the Reign of Terror. Through petitions and encounters across colonial India, the Ottoman Empire and Revolutionary France, he offers a counter to Eurocentric histories, revealing the global politics of mobility.
‘A fascinating and scholarly epic of trans-cultural sleuthing. This intriguing research tracks a Mughal prince’s progress across two continents and explores his elusive identity. Was he really a Mughal prince? Was it really his brother in the coffin? In unearthing the story behind the story, A Passage to Europe challenges Euro-centric accounts of imperial endeavour.’