Further thoughts on an enigma

The article seeks to re-examine the career and work of a celebrated ‘adventurer’ of the seventeenth and early eighteenth century, the Venetian Nicolò Manucci (1638–c. 1720). Manucci's work, translated into English in the early twentieth century by William Irvine of the Indian Civil Service, but never published in the original, has evoked much controversy over the years. Some have treated it as a valuable and authentic source on events in Mughal India and elsewhere, while others—notably historians of music and culture—have pointed to its flagrant inaccuracies and exaggerations. In recent times, some have also claimed for it the status of a history of popular perceptions of the Mughal dynasty. This article returns, as it were, to the sources, looking to the original manuscripts that Manucci left, as well as recent and valuable research conducted on him by Italian scholars. A complex portrait emerges of a tortuous and fascinating career in which alienation is a central theme.