The Sublime Raj

Early English descriptions of the Indian landscape are infused with aesthetics and the colonial ideology. Ideas of what was 'sublime' helped travellers articulate specific colonial themes. But in the period 1750-1820, there was a rhetorical transformation of the Indian landscape from a site of sublime desolation and danger to potential improvement. The negotiation of the landscape by the English traveller, as this article demonstrates by examining writings from various genre in this period, was marked by three 'moments' or phases, that of self-preservation, then affirmation and finally through acts of self-affirmation when the traveller moves from the threatened to the safe.