LANGLEY, Edward Archer.
Narrative of a residence at the court of Meer Ali Moorad; with wild sports in the valley of the Indus ...
London, Hurst and Blackett, 1860.
2 vols, 8vo, pp. [8], 306 + 4 p. advertisement for W.H. Smith & Son’s subscription library dated January 1862, engraved frontispiece, engraved portrait to title; [6], 300 + 4 p. advertisement for W.H. Smith & Son’s subscription library dated February 1862, engraved frontispiece, engraved portrait to title; occasional slight foxing; very good in original cloth, covers blocked in gilt and blind, spines lettered in gilt; spine ends and hinges neatly repaired, slightly rubbed; W.H. Smith & Son’s subscription library labels to front pastedowns.
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Narrative of a residence at the court of Meer Ali Moorad; with wild sports in the valley of the Indus ...
First edition of this important work on Sindh by Langley, a captain in the Madras cavalry who served as secretary to Mir Ali Murad, ruler of Khairpur (a princely state of British India on the Indus River) from 1842 to 1894. Langley’s Narrative gives a detailed picture of the region around the time of the Indian Mutiny, including its geography, flora and fauna, natural resources, transport system, arts and architecture, commerce and manufactures, agriculture, educational and legal institutions, religion, culture, language and legend. The narrative takes in, among other important figures, Lord Elphinstone, Sir Bartle Frere, Lord Bentinck, Ranjit Singh, and Sir Charles Napier, who had annexed Sindh in 1843.
Described by the author as ‘the best specimen of an Eastern sovereign that I ever came across’, Ali Murad had mixed relations with the British: initially winning Napier’s favour, being stripped of his territories in Upper Sind in 1852, but cooperating with the British during the 1857 rebellion.
Langley is critical of British colonial policy, writing that Ali Murad ‘certainly deserved better treatment than he had had from those whom he had so faithfully served in perilous emergencies’, and putting the Mutiny down to ‘our continued misgovernment, our grasping policy of annexation, our repeated breaches of faith, and the humiliation of native princes by British functionaries’.
