Calcutta ‘In These Degenerate Days’: The Daniells' Visions of Life, Death and Nabobery in Late Eighteenth‐Century British India

Abstract

This article examines how the British landscape artists Thomas and William Daniell composed and circulated aquatints depicting the European sector of Calcutta in 1786‐8. The Daniells' streetscapes challenged metropolitan stereotypes and condemnation of Europeans in India. During the eighteenth century Britons described the otherness of both Indians and the lower orders of Britain in terms of oriental qualities. These aquatints presented visual equivalences between the Britishness and orientalness of Calcutta and London. By mystifying dissimilarities between London and Calcutta, the Daniells' aquatints suggested to viewers that the two cities and their populations were intertwined branches of a global British social landscape.