What is metaphysics?

Mobility, Gender and Empire in Maria Graham's Journal of a Residence in India (1812)

“…Europe -'where the mind of man seems to flourish in preference to any other land' -represented a geographical space, a cultural performance and identity. 70 Amongst the people with whom Graham lived and socialised in Bombay, Madras and Calcutta, she appreciated most those 'whose society reminded me of that we have enjoyed together in Britain'. 71 Yet the majority of the colony's colonial residents, despite their white skin and European heritage, did not conform to this model of Western, bourgeois sociability.…”

“…'The avarice, the prodigality, the ignorance, and the vulgarity of most of the white people [in India]', placed them, Graham claimed, on the same level as the 'passive submission of the Hindoos [sic]; the more active fanaticism of the Mussulmans', all of whom were 'infinitely below that of the least refined nations of Europe'. 72 Again, Graham conceptualised the inferiority of 'most of the white people' using the language of mobility. Describing a typical day in the life of 'all the gentlemen and ladies of Madras' (the white people to whose 'vulgarity' she referred), Graham presents an image that resonates with her discussion of the Black Town in Bombay or the processions of the Peshwa in Pune:…”