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68 results
Fortress of Dio: Plans of Plazas and Forts of Portuguese Possessions in Asia and Africa
This drawing shows the fortress of Diu, located on an island off the northwest coast of India. In 1509, the Portuguese defeated the forces of the Sultan of Gujarat in the Battle of Diu, thereby securing dominance over trade routes in the Indian Ocean. Construction of this fortress-garrison complex began in 1535, under an agreement with the sultan, but the agreement fell apart and the sultan’s troops attacked the fort in 1537. The fortress was reconstructed in 1545 by João de Castro (1500-48), a Portuguese naval commander and the ...
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National Library of Brazil
Fortress of Chaul: Plans of Plazas and Forts of Portuguese Possessions in Asia and Africa
This drawing shows the fortress of Chaul, one of Portugal’s defense complexes along the western coast of India. The Portuguese first settled at Chaul in 1521 and constructed a fort, which was rebuilt several times. The structure shown in this drawing most likely is the one built in 1613, which featured expanded defense works.
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National Library of Brazil
Map of India in the Age of the Mahabharata
This undated 20th-century map, published in Pune (formerly Poona), India, shows place names in India associated with the Mahābhārāta, one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India (the other being the Ramayana). The title of the map is in Marathi; the place names are in Sanskrit. Mahābhārata can be translated as "the great tale of the Bharata Dynasty.” Most likely composed between 200 B.C. and 200 A.D., this enormously long epic recounts the story of the dynastic struggle and civil war between the Pandavas and the ...
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Library of Congress
Overview of Afghanistan and the Countries on the Northwest Border of India
Carl Zimmermann was a first lieutenant in the Prussian Army who, in the early 1840s, developed a strong personal and professional interest in the conflict then being waged by the British Army in Afghanistan. In what became known as the First Anglo-Afghan War (1839-40), Britain tried to extend its control from India northwest into Afghanistan, but suffered a series of disastrous defeats at the hands of the Afghan tribes and eventually was forced to withdraw. In 1842 Zimmermann published Der Kriegs-Schauplatz in Inner-Asien (The theater of war in inner Asia ...
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Library of Congress
The Island and City of Metropolitan Goa of India
Jan Huyghen van Linschoten (1563-1611) was a Dutch traveler and explorer who spent six years (1583-89) in Goa, an important trading center on the west coast of India that Portugal annexed in 1510 and was to occupy for the next 450 years. Linschoten was employed as bookkeeper to the local archbishop. After returning to the Netherlands, he wrote two books containing valuable information about the people and geography of India. Translated into English and published in London in 1598, Linschoten’s works helped to stimulate Dutch and English interest in ...
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National Library of Brazil
Nepal and the Himalayan Countries
Isabelle Massieu (1844–1932) was a French writer and traveler who became the first French woman to visit Nepal. Beginning in 1892, she undertook a series of journeys from her native Paris that took her to nearly all parts of Asia and resulted in the publication of several popular books. Népal et pays himalayens (Nepal and the Himalayan countries) is a first-hand account of her 1908 voyage from the Sutlej Valley in northern India across Nepal, Bhutan, and Sikkim to Tibet. Massieu describes the people, landscape, and architecture of the ...
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Library of Congress
Journal of a Tour through Part of the Snowy Range of the Himālā Mountains, and to the Sources of the Rivers Jumna and Ganges
James Baillie Fraser (1783-1856) was a Scot who in 1813 went to Kolkata (Calcutta) to join the family firm of Becher and Fraser. He remained there until 1820. In 1815, he accompanied his brother William, who was taking part in the Anglo-Nepalese War of 1814-16, on an expedition into the Garwhal Hills to find the sources of the Jumna and Ganges rivers. James and William Fraser were the first Europeans to reach many of the places they visited, which James vividly described in this account of the journey. He characterized ...
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Library of Congress
Memoirs of the Revolution in Bengal, Anno Domini 1757
This work by William Watts (active 1737-58) is an account of the Battle of Plassey, which took place on June 23, 1757, near the village of Pâlāshir, some 150 kilometers north of Calcutta (present-day Kolkata). In this decisive encounter, the forces of the British East India Company, under Robert Clive, defeated Siraj Ud Daulah, the last independent Nawab of Bengal. The British victory and the treaty with the Moghul Empire that ensued brought the province of Bengal and its great wealth under the control of the company, thereby establishing the ...
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Library of Congress
A Voyage to the East Indies: Containing Authentic Accounts of the Mogul Government in General, the Viceroyalties of the Decan and Bengal, with Their Several Subordinate Dependencies
This two-volume work is the third edition of a book first published as a single volume in 1757, expanded to two volumes in 1766, and republished in 1772. The author, John Henry Grose (active 1750-83), was born in England and went to Bombay (present-day Mumbai) in March 1750, to work as a servant and writer for the British East India Company. The book contains Grose’s descriptions of 18th-century India, including his account of the war of 1756-63, in which the British East India Company largely eliminated France as a ...
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Library of Congress
Bhotan and the Story of the Dooar War
The Dooar (or Duār) War of 1864-65 began as an attempt by the authorities in British India to annex from Bhutan the territory known as Duārs in order to stop what they claimed were incursions into India from Bhutan. David Field Rennie, who participated in the conflict as a military surgeon, wrote this book on his four-month voyage back to England. Bhutan, which is located at the eastern end of the Himalaya mountain range, was at that time one of the world’s most isolated countries. Rennie’s intention was ...
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Library of Congress
Burma Under British Rule
Joseph Dautremer was a French scholar specializing in Asian languages who served for a time as the French consul in Rangoon, the capital of British Burma. Burma Under British Rule is a detailed study of Burma, with chapters devoted to the history, people, physical geography, economy, and international trade of the country. A brief concluding chapter deals with the Andaman Islands, where the British maintained a penal colony. Originally published in Paris in 1912, Dautremer’s book was translated from the French into English by Sir (James) George Scott (1851 ...
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Library of Congress
A Narrative of the Mission Sent by the Governor-General of India to the Court of Ava in 1855, with Notices of the Country, Government, and People
In December 1852, at the conclusion of the second Anglo-Burmese War, the British annexed the southern and coastal regions of Burma (known as Lower Burma). Pagan Min, and later his brother Mindon Min, continued to rule Upper Burma. In 1855, Arthur Phayre, the British commissioner for the annexed territories, visited the court of Ava in Upper Burma as part of an effort to improve relations with Mindon. Henry Yule was secretary to Phayre and accompanied him on the mission. This work, written by Yule, is a modified version of the ...
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Library of Congress
A Voyage in the Indian Ocean and to Bengal, undertaken in the Years 1789 and 1790: Containing an Account of the Sechelles Islands and Trincomale
Louis de Grandpré was a French army officer who made an extensive tour of the Indian Ocean region in 1789-90. This account of his voyage is an English translation of the original French version, which was published in Paris in 1801 under the title Voyage dans l’Inde et au Bengale fait dans les années 1789 et 1790, contenant la description des îles Séchelles et de Trinquemaly. Grandpré began his voyage in the French-controlled Île de France (Isle of France), as Mauritius was called, passed by the Maldives, and visited ...
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Library of Congress
The History of Persia
Captain John Stevens (died 1726) was a prolific translator and embellisher of Spanish and Portuguese works of history and literature who published this book in 1715. In his preface, Stevens explained: “Persia is at this time, and has been for several Ages, one of the Great Eastern Monarchies, and yet the Accounts we have hitherto had of it in English have been no better than Fragments.” The book is a translation of a work in Spanish published in 1610 by Pedro Teixeira (erroneously identified by Stevens as Antony), a Portuguese ...
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Library of Congress
Voyages and Travels in India, Ceylon, the Red Sea, Abyssinia, and Egypt, in the Years 1802, 1803, 1804, 1805, and 1806
George Annesley, second Earl of Mountnorris (1770-1844), was a British aristocrat who, in 1802-06, undertook an extensive tour of parts of Asia and Africa. He was accompanied by Henry Salt (1780-1827), a trained artist who served as his secretary and draftsman. Mountnorris published this three-volume account of his travels upon his return to Britain, under the name Viscount Valentia, the title by which he was known in his younger years. The work includes engravings based on paintings and drawings made on the voyage by Salt, as well as two very ...
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Library of Congress
The Constitution of India
This book is one of 1,000 photolithographic reproductions of the Constitution of the Republic of India, which came into effect on January 26, 1950, after being approved by the Constituent Assembly on November 26, 1949. The original of this elaborate edition took nearly five years to produce. It is signed by the framers of the constitution, most of whom are regarded as the founders of the Republic of India. The original of the book is kept in a special helium-filled case in the Library of the Parliament of India ...
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Library of Congress
A Voyage Round the World, Including an Embassy to Muscat and Siam in 1835, 1836, and 1837
In 1832, U.S. president Andrew Jackson, acting on the advice of Secretary of the Navy Levi Woodbury, dispatched Edmund Roberts as a “special agent of the government,” empowered to negotiate treaties of amity and commerce with countries in Asia. The objective was to expand trade between these countries and the United States. Between early 1832 and May 1834, Roberts circumnavigated the globe. In the course of his journey, he negotiated treaties with the Sultan of Muscat (Oman) and the King of Siam (Thailand). Following his return to the United ...
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Library of Congress
Indian Demons Attacking Fort Defended by European Troops
This unsigned watercolor by an unknown Indian artist depicts the events of the Third Mysore War (1790-92). The Anglo-Mysore wars were a series of conflicts in the late 18th century that were fought between the Kingdom of Mysore, located in southwestern India, and the British East India Company. After victories in the first two wars, Mysore, led by Tipu Sultan, invaded the nearby coastal state of Travancore, which was a British ally. This led to the Third Mysore War, which the British won. Although the royal family of Mysore was ...
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Brown University Library
The Cusp of Prophetic Lights from the Verified Traditions of Muhammad
This Arabic manuscript, dated 1775, is a collection of the sayings of Muhammad by the scholar as-Sagani (died 1252), who was born in India and served as a diplomatic representative of the caliph an-Nasirbillah to India. The traditions are arranged according to grammatical rules. The manuscript is from the Bašagić Collection of Islamic Manuscripts in the University Library of Bratislava, Slovakia, which was inscribed on the UNESCO Memory of the World register in 1997. Safvet beg Bašagić (1870-1934) was a Bosnian scholar, poet, journalist, and museum director who assembled a ...
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University Library in Bratislava
Seventy-two Specimens of Castes in India: "All people, nations and languages shall serve Him." ... Presented to the Reverend William Twining as a Token of Obligation by His...Friend Daniel Poor...
This illustrated manuscript made in southern India in 1837 consists of 72 full-color hand-painted images of men and women of the various castes and religious and ethnic groups found in Madura, India, at that time. As indicated on the presentation page, the album was compiled by the Indian writing master at an English school established by American missionaries in Madura, and given to the Reverend William Twining. The manuscript shows the Madura region's Indian dress and jewelry adornment, as they appeared before the onset of Western influences on South ...
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Yale University Library
Full Map of Tibet
This map, dated July 1904, shows Tibet and surrounding regions. It was originally published in Russian and was translated into Chinese by the cartographic establishment of A. Ilyin, a prominent St. Petersburg-based map-production company founded in 1859 by Alexey Afinogenovich Ilyin. The firm published numerous geographical materials, including detailed atlases of the Russian Empire, as well as maps of various regions of Europe and Asia. The legend and summary in the bottom left corner explain that the green bands on the map mark the borders of districts, provinces, and neighboring ...
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Library of Congress