ABSTRACT
This working note analyzes the social and ideological salience of lithographic book design in the context of quasi-colonial Indian ‘princely’ or ‘native’ states in the late nineteenth century. Focusing on two Muslim-ruled princely states, it argues that local publishers and patrons used lithographic aesthetics to communicate both engagement with the ideal of colonial modernity and Indo-Islamic prestige to book consumers. The working note provides a preliminary analysis of the degree to which lithographic design can be used to trace localized hybridities in colonial and quasi-colonial India. State-sponsored presses in princely states like Rampur and Bhopal exchanged lithographic designs with the prominent presses in directly-administered colonial cities and worked to attract lithographic talent trained in those centers. At the same time, princely state presses sometimes hewed closely to Indo-Islamic manuscript traditions to communicate local prestige. Lithographic book design communicated the political and social claims of princely state patrons to book consumers, including both claims to the embrace of colonial modernity and claims to princely state difference. Through a close analysis of several lithographs produced at the state-sponsored presses of Rampur and Bhopal, the working note proposes methods and models to analyze the intersections of the aesthetic decisions and socio-political claims of lithographic publishers and patrons.
