Between Boston and Bombay examines the commercial ties between American and Parsi traders and the resulting, broader cultural connections and understandings. The Parsis of India are one of the smallest ethno-religious communities in the world today, numbering approximately 100,000 individuals. The Parsis of India are descendants of the Zoroastrians of Iran who migrated to India, by Parsi tradition in the eighth century to preserve their Zoroastrian religion. A small and little-known group among the communities of India for much of their stay there; the Parsis emerge as major historical actors largely, from their trade and commercial ties to Europeans, especially the British, from the eighteenth century; and by the nineteenth century are a highly educated and prosperous community in colonial India. The author notes, although British and Parsi commercial and cultural interactions are well documented, her book elucidates a largely unknown and scantly studied aspect: the ties between northeastern American traders and the Parsis of India. The book provides a captivating look into the two cultures’ contacts, their respective perceptions, and community and national identities.
The book is chronologically organised, beginning in 1771 with an early American translation of Zoroastrian texts and the beginning of American interest in Zoroastrianism and the awakening of Parsi interest in the wider world. The book culminates shortly after the end of the President Lincoln's death in 1865, at which time relations have reached the highpoint of contact.
Chapter One posits that Parsi migrants to India and early Puritan settlers to America had much in common, including founding myths. The founding story of the Parsis, the Qesse-ye Sanjan and that of the early Americans, Of Plymouth Plantation, Rose asserts established the commonality of religious ethos and moral values of the two communities and bases for their respective prosperity and historical renown. The chapter traces the Parsis’ settlement in India and their early contact with Europeans; it also discusses the early engagement of Parsis with the newly founded America via trade with India.
Chapter Two notes the beginnings of American awareness of the Parsis and Zoroastrianism that commenced with the French translation and publication of Avestan and Middle Persian Zoroastrian texts by the French scholar A. H. Anquetil-Duperron. The book emphasizes how in America knowledge of the East emerged as an exercise in independent scholarship by such individuals as Benjamin Franklin. Over time American librarians and antiquarians acquired Zoroastrian texts and Indological and Orientalist works, and a magazine press popularised tales of the East.
This chapter further explores early American trade with the East beginning in 1784, and how American traders, like Benjamin Joy and Elias H. Derby, demonstrated Americans’ ability to shape their own destiny on the world stage. The theme of identity formation through trade is a well-known one among the Parsis, whose traders historically established their prosperity and great family names via trade in the same period and through the same process. The chapter meanders between noting American lives and careers and Parsi equivalents, as it proceeds to detail how early American traders established commercial ties with Parsis, including members of the Wadia family. The Wadias are historically known for assisting the establishment of Bombay dockyard and providing vessels for the British and other traders. Here the Wadias’ commercial ties to Americans are noted. For example, Nusserwanji Maneckji Wadia was one of the first Parsis to be in touch with prominent New England merchants such as Elias Derby, Ichabod Nichols, Henry Elkins, and influential American officials. In 1795, Pestonji Bomanji Wadia is purported to be the first Parsi to advertise the sale of goods from American shippers in Bombay newspapers. The book contends the Parsi role as intermediary between Americans, Indians, and British forged an opening for American trade in India. Indeed, early Parsi traders constructed a network of Parsi and Indian contacts, and that led to American goods being traded across western India.
Chapter Three examines the cultural connections between America and India, and the role of the Parsis in this. A gift handkerchief from Nusserwanji Maneckji to Ichabod Nichols's son George demonstrates how commercial relations developed into personal bonds between merchants; and led to the spread of goods and cultural knowledge. Personal gifts and portraits are part of the treasures of the East India Maritime Society (EIMS) of Salem that Ichabod Nichols co-founded in 1799. Among the items are shawls, and a portrait of Nusserwanji and clothing belonging to him.
Chapter Four traces the arrival of American missionaries in Bombay. It explores the writings of Nusserwanji Maneckji and his meetings with American traders in Bombay like Captain John Johnson, who was the first American to describe Parsi hospitality. Parsi hospitality reflected the personal connections between parties, the growing social intercourse between Parsis and Westerners, and the importance Parsis ascribed to the socio-political bond between themselves and influential individuals and groups. We learn how Johnson and Nusserwanji discussed Zoroastrianism and Parsi traditions. The chapter then covers early American missionary efforts in India. American missionaries benefited from the revocation of the EIC charter in 1813, which prohibited missionary activity in India. It notes some aspects of the China Trade, which included the Parsi and American involvement in the opium trade. The chapter concludes by noting that HMS Minden was built at the Parsi-run Bombay Drydock. It played a role in the War of 1812, when on 13 September 1813 Francis Scott Key, held prisoner on the ship, wrote the poem that would later be set to music as the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’; a fitting crescendo to the Parsis’ contribution to America's most enduring expression of patriotism.
Chapter Five notes the parallel in the rise of the great Parsi merchant princes and the Boston Brahmins; it discusses the influence Parsi traders gained as leaders of the community on the Parsi Panchayat or communal body, as a result of their wealth and contacts with influential traders and officialdom.
Chapter Six examines the period from the 1830s to the 1850s. It opens with noting how on 23 March 1836 Salem, Massachusetts was incorporated as a city, and how essential the East was to America's growth, as evidenced in the town motto, Divitis Indiae usque ad ultimum sinnum (To the farthest port of the rich Indies). It proceeds to note the highpoint of civic development in Bombay, and the Parsis’ establishment of educational and other institutions. The chapter also notes how technology and social advancements privileged Parsis in forming global ties, as select Parsis began to travel the world and document their sojourns in travelogues, such as those of the Wadia cousins Hirjibhoy Merwanji and Jehangir Nowroji (Journal of a Residence to Two Years and a Half in Great Britain of 1841), and Ardashir Cursetji (Diary of an Overland Journey from Bombay to England, and of a Year's Residence in Great Britain of 1840).
Amidst their progress, however, the Parsis were challenged by Christian missionary activities in Bombay that deprecated Zoroastrian concepts, and more importantly sought the conversion of Parsi youth. In 1839 the Scottish Presbyterian Reverend John Wilson baptised two Parsi youths in Bombay. The book explains how from this episode onwards Western, including American, scrutiny fell on the Parsis. Their response to an attack on their religion and traditions was characteristically defensive, with an individual like Pestonji Manockji, the editor of the Parsi orthodox newspaper Jam-e-Jamshed defending Zoroastrianism from Christian missionary attacks. At the same time, the book intones how Parsi pluralism of thought was emerging, as for example the Parsi reformer Manockji Cursetji Shroff, the first Parsi member of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bombay in 1835, and later founder of the Alexandra Native Girls’ English Institution in 1863, befriended John Wilson and sought to educate him on Zoroastrianism. The chapter also details how in the 1830s Americans’ interest in Zoroastrianism continued, with the poet W. A. Emerson emerging an inquirer into Zoroastrian studies. Indeed, the 1830s marked a transitional decade in the history of the Parsis, as they passed from an insular community to a progressive and influential one. In 1839, the Parsis mounted one of the first ‘native’ legal challenges to Christian conversion. While the Parsis proved unsuccessful in their legal bid, they had become major participants in the civic atmosphere of Bombay. Post-1840 the Parsis were emerging a highly educated and socially progressive community safeguarding an orthodox faith.
The chapter continues in noting how technological advancements and ties between Parsis and Americans were symbolszed in the establishment of the Ice Trade between Boston and Bombay by Frederic Tudor. In 1834 Parsis were among the subscribers to finance the establishment of the first Ice House in Bombay at Marine Street (present K. R. Cama Institute). By the 1850s, Parsi ingenuity not only took advantage of the latest technological innovations to supply Bombayites with amenities such as ice and refrigerated goods, but also saw Parsis reach the ends of the Earth. The Parsi engineer Ardashir Cursetji Wadia, who had already travelled to Britain, is purported to be the first Parsi documented to reach America in 1851. Rustomji Hirjibhoy Wadia was the second Parsi to visit America, including the Essex Institute in Salem. Curiously, both competed with the fictious Parsi Fedallah of Melville's Moby Dick for American fascination with the East.
Chapter Seven details official connections between Parsis and Americans by noting Dossabhoy Merwanji Wadia, a trader who was involved with the American firm Augustine Heard & Co. for many years and caught the attention of American officials. In 1852, Dr. Edward Ely, the U.S. Consul to Bombay, advised President Fillmore to appoint Dossabhoy Merwanji acting U.S. Consul in his absence. Parsis continued to arrive in America for business. Unlike in Britain where Parsis and Indians ventured for educational as well as business opportunities, America's draw for Parsis remained business oriented, signifying how trade had forged international avenues for Parsis. The Civil War provided a boost to the value of Indian cotton and ice, as Rose notes, that led to an economic boom or bubble in Bombay, and which benefited many Parsis and Indians. By the end of the War, the boom turned to bust detrimentally affecting the Bombay cotton and financial sectors and many Parsis. The book ends with the death of President Lincoln. The Parsi Dossabhoy Framji Muncherji Cama reminisced about his time in the United States during the period, in a letter of 23 July 1865, and spoke of his amazement at the ‘energy, accomplishments and civilization of America,’ and his ‘warm interest in the welfare of the United States’; a fitting tribute to the connections between Boston and Bombay.
The Parsis of India today constitute one of the world's smallest ethnic groups and may even now be considered so small that they have transitioned from community to tribe. At the same time, the demographic decline of the community has led to a renaissance of academic research and writings on the Parsis by historians, religious scholars, and community researchers and members in the past two decades. Never has the field of Parsi studies been so fertile. Jenny Rose's book is both a major academic contribution to Parsi history and a cornucopia of fascinating insights on East and West encounters. It fills a gapping chasm within the research in Parsi studies: the Parsi experience and contact with America. The historian of religion J. R. Hinnells first documented the dispersion of the Zoroastrian diaspora worldwide, including Parsis in America, which Rose has taken her cue from and run. Between Boston and Bombay is a treasure of first-hand accounts, documentary sources never fully exploited previously, and colourful and interesting insights and vignettes into the relationship between Americans and Parsis. It is a major undertaking of primary source research, and Jenny Rose is to be commended for her painstaking efforts principally at the Peabody Essex Museum, on the Wadia letters. Rose's research methodology utilises the correspondences between the Wadias and American parties to detail the contemporary scene and explicate larger themes. Where other scholars have researched and written works based on the Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy papers, Dadabhai Naoroji and Pherozeshah Mehta papers, and the Cornelia Sorabji papers, Rose provides invaluable insights into various Wadia individuals. Not least of all, the book is an important addition to American studies that reveals pre-Civil War American encounters with the wider world.
As with works that provide copious archival research, take account of multiple histories and important events, and seek to satisfy divergent area studies, the book is packed with information. The material is grouped together in at times disparate historical, religious, intellectual, social and cultural subheadings in each chapter that overwhelm the reader with information and a twisting narrative. Not all the information is necessary to the book's purpose to note select aspects of Parsi and American commercial and cultural encounters. Furthermore, the author has chosen a chronological narrative when a chronological thematic narrative might better suffice. Parsi and American early encounters, economic ties, intellectual and religious openings, technological advancements, and diplomatic relations might better be separately presented in thematic or topical chapters. This would also allow the author to further reveal the subtle and clever theme of parallel histories and the mutuality of values and experiences that informed American-Parsi relations. The book is intended for both non-academic and academic readers interested in Parsi history and early America. The book largely focuses on Parsis and their exploits, hence the photo of Nusserwanji Maneckji Wadia on its cover, but its presentation tone and title appear to suggest the intention is to provide a history of American contacts, knowledge, and identity; and the two jockeying concentrations may confuse some readers as to the clear focus of the work. Additionally, the author has chosen not to engage the academic historiography on the Parsis, American encounters with the wider world, or delve into any theory within religious studies on comparisons and encounters. Albeit, Between Boston and Bombay is a highly recommended read and major contribution to Parsi studies, America history, and global encounters.
