The Orientalist Discourse of Nineteenth-Century Travel Guidebooks to India

The travel guidebooks emerged in the nineteenth century as a genre which apparently featured an objective source of information; yet, the guidebooks to India stemmed from the publishers’ own interpretation of the Orient, shaped by the Orientalist discourse of the time, as well as from their business interests, closely linked to the state apparatus. This paper will focus on the relation between tourism and the British Empire, and the role played by the early guidebooks in English, edited by John Murray and Thomas Cook, in the colonial endeavour to control all forms of indigenous knowledge.