A disparaging term describing employees of Britain's East India Company in the late 18th century,
nabob
was literally an Anglicized transliteration of the term
nawab
, a title for aristocratic regional leaders within the Mughal empire.
In the late eighteenth century, Britons labeled East India Company employees Nabobs and sharply criticized their newfound Indian wealth, arguing that it was reshaping Britain's political and economic institutions. This article seeks to understand how these debates resonated with the British public. It will argue that domestic Britons felt the return of nabobs and their nabobish fortunes in mundane economic ways, namely the increasing prices they paid when they went to buy daily commodities. It will also argue that Britons used another commodity—Indian diamonds—as a concrete demonstration of the connection between nabobs, their wealth, and the rising prices of consumer goods and of the fact that Indian money was tangibly foreign.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.