A Nabob's Progress: Rowlandson and Combe's 'The Grand Master', A Tale of British Imperial Excess, 1770--1830

The figure of the 'nabob' in British graphic satire of the late eighteenth century symbolized domestic anxieties concerning a foreign, ad hoc empire in India. Characterized through uncontrollable greed, untreatable diseases and uninhibited passions, India had been portrayed in Britain through a rhetoric of excess. Embodied in the nabob, these corruptive forces would travel to the West to infect the metropole. I argue that closer scrutiny of graphic satire reveals that British critics understood the true source of Indian excess to be Britain itself. Methodologically, Thomas Rowlandson's images in The Grand Master, or Adventures of Qui Hi? in Hindostan (1816) are considered as both a cohesive unit of nabob representation and as a foundation from which discussions of other nabob imagery can be launched. This approach reveals significant departures in how we view the reception of the imperial project in the metropole, the function of representations of Anglo-Indians, the production method of the 'illustrated book' and the characterization of Rowlandson's artistic production. Each chapter represents a step on the nabob's progress: In Chapter 1, Lord Moira is revealed as a bellicose representative of an overly ambitious class, bent on the ruin of the metropole through the destruction of India. In Chapter 2, depictions of nabobs engaged in excessive drinking, the results of excessive spending and in displays of excessive idleness are examined, illustrating the criticism of questionable imperial agents. In Chapter 3, the dominant strategies of representing imperial illness in India are examined, revealing the decline of the liminal, self-interested figure who could assume the physical and psychological characteristics of the East. In Chapter 4, the negotiation of British masculine identities, created through Company-state policies and processes and justified through conflict with allegedly Eastern excess, are juxtaposed with the reality and the complexity of Anglo-Indian relationships with women. Through this progress, the nabob is exposed as a modern figure created in order to negotiate British national identity amidst significant imperial anxiety. This dissertation contributes to postcolonial debates on empire by revealing a critical, metropolitan response to the ideological function of satirical representations of Anglo-Indians.