Consuming India: The Influence of Nineteenth-Century Fiction on British Consumer Culture by David Alexander Wielusiewicz A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario ©2012 David Alexander Wielusiewicz Library and Archives Bibliotheque et Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du 1+1Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-94328-1 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-94328-1 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distrbute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non­ support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. 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Canada The Department of History recommends to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs acceptance of the thesis Consuming India: The Influence of Nineteenth-Century Fiction on British Consumer Culture submitted by David Alexander Wielusiewicz, BA. Hons. in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Danielle Kinsey, Thesis Supervisor James Miller, Chair Department of History Carleton University 17 January 2013 Abstract This thesis constructs a cultural biography of tobacco and opium, driven by their representations in six nineteenth-century fictions of India, in order to examine how the British consumption of these imperial commodities changed in the aftermath of the Rebellion of 1857. By engaging with novels by William Browne Hockley, William Delafield Arnold, Meadows Taylor, James Grant, and Wilkie Collins, a wide-range of metropolitan and Anglo-Indian perspectives will provide a sense of the diverse ways that India was represented to, and understood by, British audiences in the nineteenth century. Representations of tobacco and opium in these novels shifted from playing a weaker, metonymic role in the narrative to becoming heavily charged metaphors that associated these imperial commodities with “mutiny,” influencing modern British consumer culture in the last half of the nineteenth century. Acknowledgements I owe a great debt to numerous people who have helped me throughout the journey that has been writing my Master’s Thesis. First and foremost, I must thank my supervisor, Dr. Danielle Kinsey, for her patience and support during the entire process. Your advice, feedback, and expertise in this field have allowed this thesis to grow from the fuzzy idea I had at the beginning of my studies. I must also thank Dr. Alek Bennett for all of the academic and moral support she has given me throughout my undergraduate and graduate studies. I certainly would not be where I am today academically without her. 1 would also like to thank Dr. Chinnaiah Jangam, with whom I have had the privilege to be a Teaching Assistant for multiple times. My understanding of modern India has been bolstered by your passion for teaching and your incredible generosity with ideas, novels, monographs, and films. I must also recognize Dr. Sukeshi Kamra for giving me The Moonstone, which became an instrumental part of the thesis. This would not have been possible without the awesome work of Nadine Smith and everyone else at Carleton University’s Athletic Therapy department. I would not have been able to think, let alone write, without your caring and expertise. Joan White has also been an enormous help throughout my Graduate School experience, not only for helping me keep on track but also for her calming words when timelines were tight. To my friends, thank you for keeping me sane through this process and being patient with me when I actually had to be a hermit. Last but not least, I thank my parents, Dawn and Richard, and the rest of my family for their constant support and motivation in all my endeavors. Without your love and support, none of this would have been possible. Table of Contents Abstract................................................................................................................................................ii Acknowledgments ........................................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents..............................................................................................................................iv CHAPTER ONE: Introduction: Consumer Culture, Novels, and Nabobs........................1 CHAPTER TWO: India in British Fiction: Biography and Background .........................19 CHAPTER THREE: Hubble Bubble: “Oriental” Tobacco Consumption in the British Imaginings of India ...................................................................57 CHAPTER FOUR: From Medicine to Menace: Opium in Britain and the E m pire..............................................................................................100 CHAPTER FIVE: Conclusion ...............................................................................................141 APPENDIX: Novels and Novelists .............................................................................145 BIBLIOGRAPHY..........................................................................................................................146 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Consumer Culture, Novels, and Nabobs This thesis will trace how representations of tobacco and opium consumption in nineteenth-century novels shifted in the aftermath of the Rebellion of 1857, serving to reinforce the perception of a decisively Indian other, which had ramifications for the development of a modem British consumer culture. Though 1857, marked by a military and civilian uprising that unsuccessfully challenged East India Company [EIC] rule, is generally recognized as a watershed moment for British colonialism in India, it also had implications in the social and cultural lives of metropolitan and Anglo-Indian Britons.1 Prior to 1857, representations of tobacco and opium in these fictional works about India provided an obscured archive of background information relating to Indian, British, and Anglo-Indian history. After 1857, these imperial commodities were given agency in the narratives, becoming linked to “mutiny” and the “seditious orient.” This chapter will focus on establishing a theoretical and methodological base for the thesis in order to provide the necessary background for an analysis of nineteenth-century British imperial consumer culture and the novels under study. As scholars and literary critics such as Ralph Crane, Shailendra Dhari Singh, and Allen Greenberger have shown, the sheer volume of adventure novels and historical fiction centered on India during the nineteenth century played an integral role in firmly 1 For the purposes of this thesis, the term “Anglo-Indian” refers to someone of British descent who had served in India for an extended period of time or was bom on the Indian subcontinent. The term “Eurasian” would be used to describe someone of joint British and Indian descent. 1 entrenching India in the British imperial imagination.2 Popular fictions, mass-produced for the masses, were “the chief literary commodity read by the people,”3 acting as their British audience’s “major source of ideas concerning India.”4 In the orientalist framework laid out by Edward Said in Orientalism [1978], this enormous catalogue of literature was critical in creating, modifying, and propagating an understanding of India in the British imperial imagination that worked to sustain and justify the imperial project.5 In The British Image o f India [1969], Allen Greenberger argued that the novel can be used as a valuable primary source for historians as it represents a diverse and non-intellectual range of public opinion that served as a major source of information to the literate public. Greenberger stated that these messages did not just have repercussions for metropolitan perceptions of India, but also influenced those who would eventually leave the metropole to govern the empire.6 As a critical part of orientalist discourse, these