Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
This week we're going to talk about Dean Mohammad, who was born in Putna, which today is the capital of the state of Bihar in northeastern India. He was born in seventeen fifty nine, so that was about a century before Britain established direct rule over much of the Indian subcontinent. But he grew up as the British East India Company was in the process of taking control of more and more territory in India, and that's something that he himself
was actually part of. Dean Mohammad had just a fascinating life. It included at least three distinct careers, more if you count the times that he did civilian work that was really similar to what he had done done while attached to the Bengal Army. He was the first Indian person to publish a book in English, and he established what was probably England's first Indian restaurant. His life was so far ranging that we're going to cover him in two parts.
So today we will talk about his time in India and with the army, and then on Wednesday after he immigrated to Ireland and then England. At that point he became an entrepreneur. He had a restaurant. He also had steambaths in Brighton. I find all that really fascinating. I have a quick note on names before we get started, although this is a much clearer distinction written out than it is as audio. If Dean Muhammad were living today, his name would probably be transliterated as Din Mohammad so
Dn Muhammad. But English language spellings of his name from his lifetime were really all over the place, including variations in how he spelled his own name in his own published work, and then the spelling is also inconsistent in papers and books that have been published over the last couple of decades. It's like it's not consistently handled among American and English like white scholars, it's not spelled consistently within Indian scholars or Indian American scholars. It's kind of
all over the place. Most but not all, are using one of the two spellings that he used himself. I tried to just sort of pick one so for the sake of consistency in the written text. We are using the spelling that he was using later the later years of his life.
That is the spelling that we went with. De Muhammad described himself as Indian and referred to the place he was from as India. But we want to stress that this was not an established nation in the way that it is today. It was and still is a region of incredible religious and cultural diversity, home to hundreds of spoken languages and enormous cultural variations from one area to another.
When Di Muhammad was born, the Mughal dynasty had ruled much of what's now India for more than two hundred years, starting in the early sixteenth century. For much of that time, it had been one of the wealthiest, most powerful, and most stable political dynasties in the world.
But by the early eighteenth century, the Mughal Empire had started to fracture in the face of uprisings, economic instability, and other issues. Emperor Aaringzeb, who had ruled from sixteen fifty eight to seventeen oh seven, had expanded the empire to its largest size by annexing neighboring kingdoms, but he
had also become increasingly intolerant of its religious diversity. The dynasty was Muslim, but the people it was ruling over were predominantly Hindu, along with Christians, Boasts, six Jains, and adherents of other religions. In the later years of Arngzeb's reign, he started to really treat the empire's non Muslim population as inferior, including imposing taxes specifically on non Muslims. His rule just became increasingly theocratic. He was increasingly unable to
keep the support of this predominantly non Muslim population. As the Mughal Empires started to fracture, regional states and provinces arose, and conflicts arose among them. Multiple European nations had also established trading companies or East India Companies on the Indian subcontinent starting in the sixteen hundreds. These were focused on the production and export of goods like spices, indigo, cotton,
and saltpeter, which was used to make gunpowder. Another was opium, which some nations, especially England, wanted to trade with China in exchange for goods like tea, silk, and porcelain. Of course, the opium trade had horrific and devastating social and economic effects in China, but that is entirely its own subject. So these trading companies were competing with one another, and they saw the increasing division and instability within the Mughal Empire as a chance to just take control of more
territory and more wealth. The English East India Company in particular, took enormous advantage of this and did a massive land and power grab. A big motivation here was England's ongoing wars with France, which led England to see French efforts in both Southeast Asia and Northern Africa as a major threat.
So while the Mughal Empire still nominally existed until the mid nineteenth century, these European trading companies, especially the English East India Company, seized and wielded more and more power.
All of this had a direct influence on Dean Muhammad and his family beyond the general way of living in the middle of a massive and expanding European colonization effort. He was descended from Schieite Muslims who had immigrated to the Indian subcontinent from Central Asia generations before and had become part of the Mughal Empire's Muslim ruling class. He described himself as distantly related to Naabs or provincial governors
of Murshidabad on his father's side. That meant that his family was one of many who were forced to figure out where they fit in this rapidly changing power structure. Did they remain loyal to the Mughal leadership that their family had served and been part of for generations, or did they try to move into a role within the East India Company to try to preserve their power and status.
Either had risks, but by the mid seventeen hundreds it was clear that the British East India Company was overtaking the Mughal Empire. This is especially true after the Battle of Plasi on June twenty third, seventeen fifty seven. Briefly, the English East India Company had built up a major presence in Kolkata, which was then known to English speakers
as Calcutta. In June of seventeen fifty six, the Nowab of Bengal, Saraja Dalla had rallied a huge military force to take control of Kolkata and of the East India Company's fort there, Fort William. The Nawab had expelled the British from Kolkata and had imprisoned everyone who remained in the fort in a cell that became known as the Black Hole of Calcutta. We actually talked about this cell and the sensationalized accounts of what happened there on the show. Back in twenty fifteen.
Robert Clive led a British force to retake Kolkata and install a puppet Noab, who the English thought would be more compliant and accommodating. Clive then tracked down Saraj ad Dowla, who had moved on to Plasi. Saraj fled after a brief skirmish and was later killed. And after all this, the English East India Company really started expanding its military presence in India. This military presence was predominantly Indian, under
the command of British or other European officers. Many of the Indians who were recruited into the English East India Company's forces already had military experience in the armies of various Mughal leaders, or they'd been working basically as guards at English factories and warehouses. These recruits basically became a new type of soldier in the East India Company's army, known as the sepoy from the Persian term sapai or soldier.
Indian soldiers of a number of religions served in the East India Company's army, but as had been the case with the Mughal Empire's leadership, the officers were more likely to be Muslim. Roughly a quarter of the population of the Indian subcontinent was Muslim, although that number varied widely from region to region, but Muslims made up about half of the army's highest ranking officers and about two fifths of the lower officers. These Indian soldiers had specific European
style uniforms and specific ranks. They were trained according to European military methods, and they were issued mass produced European style weapons, and this training and weaponry made a huge difference in how effective they were against other Indian military units. Indian firearms could be really high quality, sometimes superior to the standard issue firearms that were used by the East India Company's infantry, but they were also usually hand crafted
A lot of the times they used customized ammunition. Meanwhile, the East India Company's weapons used standardized, mass produced ammunition that was widely available within the company and really easy
to distribute to soldiers in large quantities. The combination of training, discipline, and standard weaponry meant that the East India Companies Indian infantry units could often defeat other Indian armies that were dominated by cavalry and artillery, holding their formations and rapidly responding to changing battle conditions carrying out the orders and
strategies of European officers. Much of this was formalized and standardized in seventeen sixty four as the East India Company tried to cut down on disorganization and reduce the likelihood that dissatisfaction within the Indian units would lead to mutinies. These Indian military units were absolutely critical to England's efforts
to control and colonize the Indian subcontinent. England simply did not have the manpower to keep a standing army of just Europeans in India, especially as so many soldiers were needed for various ongoing wars that were happening in Europe. Later also in North America, England struggled just to keep a European officer calls or to command its Indian units in India, resorting to hiring contractors from any European country
to deploy to India. The voyage from Europe to Southeast Asia was difficult and a lot of people died on the way or got there too sick to work, and then Moore died after arriving due to the dramatically different climate and exposure to different diseases than Europeans already had
experience with. By way of example, when Dean Muhammad first became connected to the Bengal Army which we are about to get to, it had twenty seven thousand, two hundred seventy seven active Indian officers and men working under five hundred twenty two European officers and two thousand, seven hundred twenty two European soldiers. This same pattern existed outside of
the East India Company's army as well. During this period, there were fewer than two hundred British civil officials overseeing thousands of Indian bureaucrats and administrators in areas the East India Company had taken over.
Over time, the English East India Company established three armies in three different places that it had the biggest presence. Those were Bengal, Madras and Bombay. The Bengal Army was the last of these to be established, but it became the biggest of the three after Robert Clive started a massive recruitment effort in April of seventeen fifty eight that
was in the wake of the Battle of Plassey. It's likely that Dean Mohammad's father joined the army during this recruitment push, and Dean Mohammad was born about a year later, and we'll get to that after we pause for a sponsor break. Dean Mohammad was born in May of seventeen fifty nine. As we said earlier, his father had joined the English East India Company's Bengal Army about a year before, since he was already among the higher ranks of society.
Mohammad's father seems to have started out as an officer, although one of the lower ranking officers. He was repeatedly promoted though, and ultimately became a Subadar, which was equivalent to lieutenant. That was the second highest rank that an Indian could hold in one of the East India Company's armies. In addition to trying to take over more territory and consolidate its power and influence in India, the English East India Company was trying to fund itself by demanding taxes
of the local people, especially landowners. Landowners and villagers alike resisted this taxation, sometimes violently. Dean Muhammad's father was killed in seventeen sixty nine while trying to enforce one of the East India Company's taxes. According to Muhammad's account, there were two rajas or local princes who were resisting this tax and his father's company had taken one of them prisoner.
The other had fought back, and quote, my father remained in the field, giving the enemy some striking proofs of the courage of their adversary, which drove them to such measures that they strengthened their posts and redoubled their attacks with such ardor that many of our men fell, and my lamented father among the rest, but not untill he had entirely exhausted the forces of the Rajah, who at length submitted the soldiers animated by his example, made chorusing
a prisoner, and took possession of the fort. Thus have I been deprived of a gallant father, whose firmness and resolution was manifested in his military conduct on several occasions.
Mohammed had an older brother who requested to be placed in their late father's post. This request was granted, so he basically inherited their father's position and rank in the army. For a time, Mohammed and their mother remained in Patna, living off of money that she had inherited after her husband's death. They lived in a place where Mohammed could always see people coming and going outside their home, and he was fascinating by the soldiers, both Indian and European,
that he saw passing. By one evening, he managed to follow a group of people into the Raja's palace, where European men gathered in the evening for coffee and tea, dancing and audiences with the Raja, and various food and amusements. One particular soldier caught Mohammed's attention. That was an Anglo Irish cadet named Godfrey Evan Baker, who was a new recruit. Baker was eighteen or nineteen, so about eight years older than Dean Mohammed, who was around eleven. Later, Mohammad wrote.
Quote, I was highly pleased with the appearance of the military gentleman, among whom I first beheld mister Baker, who particularly drew my attention. I followed him without any restraint through every part of the palace in tents, and remained in a spectator of the entire scene of pleasure till the company broke up, and then returned home to my mother,
who felt some anxiety in my absence. When I disco the gayety and splendor I beheld the entertainment, she seemed very much dissatisfied and expressed from maternal tenderness her apprehensions of losing me.
His mother's concerns were valid. Mohammed ran into Baker again at a tennis party and soon after became part of Baker's entourage. Baker's unit was a European one, not an Indian one, so Mohammed wasn't enlisting at this point. He was basically a camp follower. Mohammed's mother was not happy at all about this and tried to get her son returned to her, but Mohammed refused to go. He wrote
of this quote, her disappointment smote my soul. She stood silent, yet I could perceive some tears succeed each other, stealing down her cheeks. My heart was wrung at length, seeing my resolution fixed as fate. She dragged herself away and returned home in a state of mind beyond my power to describe. Mister Baker was much affected, and with his brother officers endeavored to find immune for me.
Mohammed's mother sent his brother to try to convince Baker to make the young Mohammed go back home, but Mohammed again.
Refused to go.
Baker offered his mother four hundred rupees to try to smooth this, over, which she refused to take. Baker finally promised to make sure that Mohammed would visit her as often as possible, although that was only feasible while the unit was still in the vicinity of where they were living. Mohammed's own writing sounds excited to be part of Baker's retinue, but also conflicted about the separation from his mother and
the grief that this caused her. He later said of Baker, quote ingratitude to the revered memory of the best of characters, I am obliged to acknowledge that I never found myself so happy as with mister Baker, Insensible of the authority of a superior I experienced the indulgence of a friend and the want of a tender parent. Was entirely forgotten
in the humanity and affection of a benevolent stranger. But he also describes the kindness of other officers as being instrumental, to quote, dispelling the gloom which in some pensive moments hung over my mind since the last tender interview. Once Baker's unit moved away from Putna, his life involved months and months of marching, covering hundreds of miles of territory,
mostly in what's now northeastern India. His accounts of his experiences illustrate some of the complexities of being a Muslim in India and attached to the Bengal Army. He was still generally welcomed when he was able to visit his home, but sometimes started to feel kind of like an outsider because of how close he had become to this East
India Company, Army and the European soldiers. The reactions of other Indians could also really vary, depending on things like their religion, their caste, whether they supported or resisted the expansion of British power and influence in India, and whatever their past experiences were with the East India Company and its armies. In seventeen seventy two, Baker's unit arrived in Kolkata, about four hundred miles or six hundred forty kilometers southeast
of Mohammad's birthplace of Patna. This was Mohammed's first time in the city, and he described it as having quote a number of regular and spacious streets, public buildings, gardens, walks and fish ponds, and from the best accounts, its population has advanced to upwards of six hundred thousand souls. He also described its markets, public buildings, and a bazaar that was home to English, French, Dutch, Armenian, Abyssinian and
Jewish merchants and traders. Their initial stay in Kolkata was brief, but five years later they returned following an eight hundred mile march, this time to defend the city from the possibility of a French invasion. By that point, England had started fighting the Revolutionary War against its North American colonies and the Anglo French War against France and its Spanish allies. This time, Baker's unit stayed in Kolkatta for three years.
Because Mohammed was a camp follower rather than a soldier, and because Baker was a quartermaster rather than in a combat role, Mohammed's account of these years with the Bengal Army doesn't include a lot of combat. One exception is from seventeen eighty when he describes a victory by Colonel William A. Bailey in the Second Anglo Mysore War.
This war was between the East India Company and the Kingdom of Mysore, and while it ended in a return to the status quo, this particular battle was a really clear defeat, with Bailey's entire unit being captured or killed. Yeah.
Well, we can talk about a possible reason for this weird discrepancy next time. The fact that they weren't usually actively in combat did not mean they didn't face danger though. As Quartermaster, Baker could be buying provisions from suppliers when they were in cities and towns, but he could also be commandeering or looting whatever it was that was needed
to keep the unit going. This was of course disruptive and really damaging to the communities they were moving through, and sometimes to the point that it endangered their ability to stay alive. Baker and his unit often faced resistance as they did this, and at one point Muhammad was kidnapped. In January of seventeen eighty one, Baker was promoted to captain and placed in command of a battalion of Indian soldiers, and at this point Muhammad officially became part of the
army rather than being a camp follower. We'll talk more about that after a sponsor break. When De Muhammad was a camp follower in Godfrey Evan Baker's retinue, he wasn't officially part of the Bengal Army, but he did play a progressively more important role in sort of Baker's household and staff. Basically, as Baker rose through the ranks and became more prominent, he was expected to have a bigger staff supporting him, so Mohammed's importance within that staff also increased.
In turn, when Baker was promoted to captain, Mohammad became an official provisioner in the Bengal Army. Like Baker, Mohammad went through a series of promotions, although when he was promoted to jemadar, which is equivalent to ensign, this hadn't followed the regular rules of seniority, so he had some misgivings about it. Eventually, he was promoted to subadar, equivalent to lieutenant, the same rank that his father had held.
Due to the changes in each of their positions, Baker and Muhammad were in more combat more often during this phase of their careers that included fighting against the Maratha Empire. As the East India Company continued to try to expand its territory, at other points, they fought again people who had previously been considered the company's allies or at least
relatively supportive of them. For example, one of the ways that the East India Company tried to fund its incredibly expensive army in India was to basically hire it out to local leaders. Raja shit Singh had been making annual payments for the purpose of keeping East India Company units at the ready for his use. The company had demanded that these payments be increased, and shit Singh had refused, saying that that violated their earlier agreement and also that
he couldn't afford it. Governor General Warren Hastings deployed an Indian company to arrest him, but for unclear reasons, they weren't issued any ammunition, so they had no way to defend themselves. When Shaitsng fought back, one hundred and seventy four men were killed or seriously injured, and Mohammed's unit was one of the ones that tried to regain control.
This was another example of the East India Company installing puppet leaders to try to retain control of a region and its people, in this case installing Raja Scheit Singh's infant nephew in his place with a regent selected by the company.
Baker and Mahammet's military service didn't last long after this. In July of seventeen eighty two, Baker was ordered to arrest three men who had been accused of murder. Allegedly, he instead tried to seize an entire village and hold it for ransom. This was not the first possible issue during his military service. Before being promoted to captain, he
had also faced a court martial for insubordination. Baker was recalled from service in July of seventeen eighty two, and then he officially resigned on November twenty seventh, seventeen eighty three, after about fifteen years of service. Mohammed's book about this time with the Bengal Army does not mention these allegations at all.
When Baker Mohammad decided to leave the Army as well. In his words quote, Baker disclosed his intentions of going to Europe, having a desire of seeing that part of the world, and convinced that I should suffer much uneasiness of mind in the absence of my best friend, I resigned my commission of Subadar in order to accompany him. Mohammed seems to have had some mixed feelings about leaving India, but also did not want to be separated from the man he had spent so many years working for.
We don't really have more personal reflections from either of them about their decisions to leave the service. Even if Baker had not been facing this extortion allegation, he might have felt like it was becoming time to leave. A lot of the wars that England had been fighting, both in India and elsewhere, had either ended or they were kind of in their final phases at that moment, and officers, at least for the time being, weren't being promoted as
often as they had been. Also, although his promotion to captain had been technically an upward move, he had gone from working as a quartermaster to commanding battalions of Indian soldiers. As quartermaster, he had had more opportunity for personal game, both by conducting trading of his own and by sort
of turning a prophet on anything he provisioned. I'm not saying this was a great thing for him to be doing, but on paper that meantis was a promotion, but in some ways it also could feel like a step down.
I also suspect it would be more work. P Yeah, a little more effort. Baker and Mohammad spent about a year in Kolkata, with Muhammad apparently taking a position in Baker's household. They set sail for Cork, Ireland in January seventeen eighty four, and we'll get to what happened after that next time. We'll also be talking more about the book that he wrote about all of this, which we read some selections from today.
As we nodded to at the top of the episode, muhammad time in the Bengal Army illustrates so much about British efforts to colonize India in the eighteenth century, like just how much Britain exploited and relied on the labor of Indian soldiers during this whole process. And it's clear that Mohammed's relationship to the East India Company could be
ambivalence or conflicted at the same time. Though, what we know of his thoughts on this comes from a book that he wrote for an English speaking European audience, specifically people who might go to India. So he was writing a book that he thought would be acceptable to that audience, not one that necessarily reflected all of his thoughts and feelings on what was happening.
We should also be clear that this book does not touch on everything. For example, Mohammed's account of his time in the East India Company does not touch on the company's involvement in slavery at all, and overall, Mohammad's book is a generally positive and pretty sanitized view of the
East India Company. And of course, the company continued to exploy and colonize the Indian subcontinent for decades after he left, until England took direct control in eighteen fifty eight, establishing the British Raj, which lasted until Indian independence in nineteen forty seven. We will get to Dean Muhammad's life in Europe next time. Do you have a little bit of listener, mail I?
Do I have two things that are both about Australia the first. I am not sure how this person pronounces their name. I think low key or locky maybe, but wrote to say hey Tracy and Holly. Not sure if you've heard, but in October, here in Australia, we are holding a referendum on whether to change the Constitution to establish an Aboriginal and Tourus Strait Islander Voice to Parliament. Here's a link that can explain it better than I ever can, and that link is a voice dot gov
dot au. As you can imagine, it's been split down the middle since the day it was proposed. There's been a strong no campaign, spreading misinformation and division among the country. I thought perhaps that it would be a nice opportunity for your podcast to do something on Australian Indigenous or Australian history. Some things that come to mind are the Black War slash Black Line, the attempted genocide of Aboriginal
people in Tasmania. The life of John Batman, founder of Melbourne and participant in the Black War and namesake for many Melbourne streets. Not the nicest person, creation of the Constitution slash Federation of the Colonies, and founding and building of a new Capital camera. I would also urge you to listen to Professor Meghan Davis read out the Uluru
statement from the heart. It started the conversation about the voice when it first came out back in twenty seventeen, and that is at Ularustatement dot org slash the dash statement. Thank you, Flocky love the podcast, pet tax attached. So we've got a dog and a cat. The is Elaine, who is just making a very big eye kind of face, and then we have a cat, George. Both of them are demons according to the email. Because there's some great
pictures of this dog and cat, I love them. I wanted to go ahead and read this because the vote on this referendum is happening on October fourteenth.
Twenty twenty three.
Our calendar for the podcast is sort of already full between now and then, so I wanted to go ahead and read this email. Even though the topic suggestions here aren't something that could happen before the vote on this takes place. I did not know that any of that was happening. Thank you so much for sending the note about it. I'm sorry I don't know how to pronounce your name correctly, and I did not send a note to ask before we got in here to record today.
Our other quick Australian email is from another person whose name I should have asked how to say I'm so sorry, Anita, I think who wrote about silicosis and said thanks for your great recent episode covering silicosis. At the end, you discuss some of the industries that are still facing this disease. Engineered stone used for bench tops, particularly when it is dry cut, is causing a rise in silicosis. Australia is looking at banning these bench tops due to the risk.
I'm hoping this band gets implemented soon. And then we also have pictures of two tuxedo cats, Ziggy and Mooney Pees and some additional Australian themed topic suggestions. I think the word bench is being used here in the way that Holly and I would say counter, so like these are countertops for kitchens and bathrooms and things. Did not know that was happening in Australia either, So thank you so much for both of these emails. I love to hear from folks in Australia. It's an area whose history.
I think we don't cover quiet as often as maybe you would like, because often there is an enormous cultural context, which is as is obvious from the fact that I had nothing, no idea of what was going on either of these two emails, Like, we don't necessarily know. Sometimes it feels like we miss stuff because we just that's not our background that we have as much familiarity with. So thank you so much to both of you for
both of those emails. I wish I had sent a note back to say, Hey, can you tell me how you pronounce your name before I try to do that on the air. If you would like to send us a note about this or any of the podcasts, we're at history Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com. We have some social media, at least theoretically on Facebook and Instagram and the thing that's called x Now. You can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app and wherever else you
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