East Indies · Modernised and illustrated edition
Count Duprat's Voyage to India
Modernized, illustrated English edition of Voyage du comte Duprat dans l'Inde by Pierre-Antoine Duprat (1773-1774).
Hiding behind a false London imprint, Count Duprat publishes his own journey to India in 1780.
Read more ↓- 146 pages
- Paperback
- English
- 18th century
Countries covered: India
About this book
In November 1773, Count Duprat arrives at Mahé, a small French trading post on the Malabar Coast, with a colonel's commission, a handful of soldiers and one conviction: in a land where gold abounds, good faith will achieve more than money.
All around him, the princes of Malabar are giving way before the army of Hyder Ali, Nawab of Mysore, whom Duprat calls a former sepoy corporal from Pondicherry. The Zamorin of Calicut, at bay, is looking for a protector. Duprat seizes the opportunity. Letters written at three in the morning, an ambassador, hurried interpreters: in less than three weeks, an entire kingdom agrees to submit to the King of France. Then the frigate Belle Poule drops anchor offshore, and daring turns into spectacle: one hundred and fifty men, three cannon, an enemy fleet held at bay before Calicut, and the keys of the kingdom presented on a soldier's shield.
But can a treaty signed in haste hold against an army on the march? Back at Mahé, Duprat still wages a pepper war against the King of Cartenatte, fortifies the colony and confronts the Mappilas of the coast.
Written in the first person by a vain, brave and impatient officer, this plea addressed to the King brings back to life a French ambition in India that history has forgotten. How far can one go, on the Malabar Coast, with a hundred invalided soldiers and a great deal of nerve?
Product details
- Publisher
- Itinerarium Éditions
- Series
- East Indies
- The author
- Pierre-Antoine Duprat
- Date of the journey
- 1773-1774
- Modern edition by
- Thierry Ruolz
- Language
- English
- Format
- Paperback, 6 × 9 in (15.2 × 22.9 cm)
- Pages
- 146
- ISBN
- 978-2-489331-54-7
The author
Pierre-Antoine Duprat
Pierre-Antoine Duprat, known as Count Duprat, is a French officer whose exact dates of birth and death are unknown to the Bibliothèque nationale de France, which places him between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A colonel of infantry, he is appointed at the end of 1772 to the command of Mahé, a French trading post on the Malabar Coast, where he arrives in November 1773. In January 1774, without waiting for approval from Pondicherry, he obtains from the Zamorin of Calicut a treaty placing his kingdom under the protection of the King of France, before the advance of Hyder Ali's army brings everything to nothing. He leaves his command in May 1774 and in 1780, under a London imprint, publishes the account of his actions, the only work that made him known.
All books by Pierre-Antoine Duprat →The journey mapped
In the Same Place, Through the Centuries
-
Paolino da San Bartolomeo, A Voyage to the East Indies (1796)
Arriving on the Malabar Coast in the mid-1770s, when the echoes of Duprat's venture have not yet died away, this Austrian Carmelite stays there until 1789.
Read a free edition → -
Francis Buchanan, A Journey from Madras through the Countries of Mysore, Canara, and Malabar (1800-1801)
Twenty-six years after Duprat, the Scottish physician travels on behalf of the English Company through the territories taken from Tipu Sultan, Hyder Ali's son, killed in 1799.
Read a free edition → -
Richard Francis Burton, Goa and the Blue Mountains (1851)
In 1847, the young Lieutenant Burton, on sick leave, travels down the west coast of India: Goa, then Calicut, then the Nilgiri hills.
Read a free edition → -
Pierre Loti, Mahé des Indes (dans Propos d'exil) (1887)
More than a century after Duprat's time there, the naval officer Pierre Loti stops for a few days at Mahé, a small French trading post that has stood almost still beneath the coconut palms.
The modern editor
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