FROM ETERNITY TO APOCALYPSE

TIME, NEWS, AND HISTORY BETWEEN THE MUGHAL AND BRITISH EMPIRES, 1556–1785

Abhishek Kaicker

History and Theory 64, no. 2 (2025)

The eighteenth-century origins of colonial orientalism in India spurred not just the translation of Indian texts but the production of interstitial histories, works that were forged in the intellectual culture of the Mughal Empire and created by individuals who explicitly sought to inform and influence their new colonial patrons. Turning to one such interstitial text, Muhammad Bakhsh Ashob's History of the Martyrdom of Farrukh Siyar and the Reign of Muhammad Shah (1782), which was produced at the behest of the East India Company orientalist Captain Jonathan Scott, this article explores the origins of the pervasive misconception that Mughal historical thought had faded to insignificance in the eighteenth century. It examines Ashob's representation of Mughal historiography for Scott in order to propose the existence of three discrete modes of historical writing over the course of the empire, modes that were each marked by a distinct temporal imagination. The article briefly discusses the first two modes—the “millenarian” mode of the late sixteenth century and the “eternal” mode of the seventeenth century—before focusing on the “apocalyptic” mode that became widespread in the early eighteenth century. This article argues that, against the influential and still widespread sense of the decline of historical production in that era, the Mughal bureaucracy (particularly its intelligence infrastructure) spurred the elaboration and efflorescence of historical writing outside the traditional ambit of the imperial court in a period of political turbulence. This article concludes by reflecting on the recasting of the apocalyptic sensibility of late-Mughal historical thought into a vision of imperial decline by men, such as Scott, who were involved in the foundation of British colonial rule in India.

Credit: Johann Zoffany, portrait of Jonathan Scott and an unidentified Indian, 1784. Courtesy of The Worshipful Company of Innholders, London, United Kingdom.