ABSTRACT
Travel Guidebooks, Vade Mecums, or Ars apodemica, the genre of travel advice writing flourished across Europe from the 16th century onwards and gained much popularity with imperialism, improved transportation and the printing trade in the 18th and 19th centuries. As more and more merchants, mercenaries and missionaries travelled to distant lands, access to information on people and places was more for a practical purpose of survival rather than just self-development. Guidebooks on India, this chapter argues, were primarily for knowledge gathering, for absorbing and recording information, employing a rhetoric of usefulness for both the individual and state. The essay traces the development of guidebooks on India from the early vade mecums written by the English East India Company officials, to more corporatised travel guidance by Murray and Bradshaw. From simple survival advice books to a more confident ‘knowing’ of the land under possession, from a standardised way of seeing India to a grand spectacle for consumption, these guidebooks charted out the territorial sovereignty and hegemony of the British in India.
