ABSTRACT

This chapter shows that perceptions of Indian topography, economy, and ecology among early Company employees were not driven by ecologically naive expectations of finding infinite resources elsewhere to displace environmental anxieties stirred by the experience of dearth or famine in their own land. It focuses on perceptions of space and place as driving factors for early modern British understandings of alternating dearth and plenty in India. The chapter discusses key elements of the discourse of space, place, and mobility in early modern Britain and Mughal India, prvoides attention to their potential intersections as well as radical differences. It examines how local English discourses of space, mobility, and dearth were reapplied to describe travel in India, using Peter Mundy’s text and narration during the notorious Gujarat famine of 1630–32 as a case study. The chapter looks at overlapping modes of representing place and processes of mobility in a famine context, extrapolating facts about places from accounts and related sources.