What was an Indian prince doing in the retinue of a French envoy at Constantinople in 1796? When Sultan Selim III, struck by the unusual sight of a fellow Muslim in a French cortège, asked how this prince had come to be there, Ahmad Khan began to tell him his extraordinary story. A Passage to Europe traces Ahmad Khan’s journey from Gujarat to Constantinople, revolutionary France, London and back again. His voyage began with the annexation of Broach by the East India Company. Twenty years later, he reached London to seek redress. The British government paid his expenses, but although his tale was true, Khan was not the man he claimed to be. Branded a spy, he was arrested, and then simply vanished. Following the elusive paper trail, Rahul Markovits brings to life the astonishing odyssey of this unlikely traveller, revealing a story of empire, intrigue and deception at the dawn of the modern age.
In A Passage to Europe, Rahul Markovits traces Ahmad Khan’s journey from Gujarat to Paris during the Reign of Terror. Through petitions and encounters across colonial India, the Ottoman Empire and Revolutionary France, he offers a counter to Eurocentric histories, revealing the global politics of mobility.
