Edge of Empire: Conquest and Collecting in the East 1750–1850. Maya Jasanoff

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Edge of Empire: Conquest and Collecting in the East 1750–1850 - Maya  Jasanoff


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very first months. For the next two decades, his province would be split by bitter feuds between his mother’s faction in Faizabad and the Lucknow court. It would be paralyzed by Company pressure on its borders, treasuries, and policies. And it would be ruled by a nawab who didn’t much want to govern.

      But Asaf ud-Daula’s move to Lucknow signaled change for the better in one substantial way. He may not have cared about administration, but he adored the arts, and had plenty of money to indulge in them. And though as a ruler he was weighed down by Company demands, responsibilities to the emperor, and his father’s legacies, Asaf ud-Daula enjoyed complete control, for once, over cultural matters. By establishing a new capital for himself, he could look to the great Mughal emperor Akbar as a model. As a young ruler, Akbar had abandoned Delhi, the capital of his ancestors, in favor of Agra and the new city of Fatehpur Sikri, where he assembled the very finest talents in the arts, sciences, philosophy, and letters. What Akbar had done for Fatehpur Sikri, Asaf now set out to do for Lucknow. With a stupendous program of monumental building, patronage, and court entertainments on a scale so lavish they put Orientalist fantasies to shame, Asaf ud-Daula transformed Lucknow into the new cultural capital of North India.


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