Between 1600 and 1900, several thousand Indians of many different classes traveled to Britain, yet only a relatively small number of Indian accounts of Britain and Europe have come to light. One of the very best is by Mahdi Hasan Khan Fath Nawaz Jang (1852-1904), a Hyderabadi civil servant of Lucknow origin. His fascinating observations of British and European society, with Khalidi's introduction and notes, provide an all too rare Indian perspective on western life in the nineteenth century as seen by an easterner.
