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but much less so in the Bahamas, (“supernatural practice beyond religious spheres” is the
focus of chap. 6).
Finally, chapter 7 considers how the immigrants thought of Africa, of exile and return,
always an important issue in diaspora studies. Adderley’s interesting discussion considers
both folklore and oral tradition—for instance, the idea of “flying back” to Africa, or spiritual
return after death, found all over the Americas—and more formal, textual evidence, such
as newspaper discussions in Trinidad and the Bahamas about Africa and the “progress of
the race” throughout the diaspora, and the petition, addressed to the king of the Belgians
in 1888, from the Congo No.1 Friendly Society, Nassau—men who self-identified as “Con-
gos” yet who were also active Baptists—requesting him to help them return to the Congo.
This interesting and well researched book makes a valuable contribution to our under-
standing of the multifaceted experiences of the “liberated Africans” who were brought in
the nineteenth century to the Caribbean and, through them, to the cultural history of the
African experience in the Americas.

Bridget Brereton, University of the West Indies

WILLIAM DALRYMPLE. The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty; Delhi, 1857. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 2007. Pp. 534. $30.00 (cloth).

The “Sepoy Rebellion” of 1857, which marks the formal beginning of British colonial rule
over India, has long been the subject of historical inquiry. Colonial historiography has
portrayed the rebellion as a disorganized uprising among Indian natives in need of British
governance, while nationalist historiography has referenced the rebellion as a significant
move in the direction of independence. William Dalrymple uses documents from India’s
National Archives to draw out the voices of the poets, craftsmen, shopkeepers, and citizens
of Delhi whose lives were irrevocably altered by the uprising, and who witnessed the loss
of both their cherished city and a familiar way of life. Central to these voices is the haunting
figure of the last Mughal king, Bahadur Shah Zafar, himself a poet and a reluctant symbol
around which both Hindus and Muslims organized their opposition to British rule. Dal-
rymple’s carefully researched portrayal of the events of 1857 is poignant, startling, and
evocative.
Dalrymple argues that the uprising of 1857 was neither cohesive nor singular; rather,
several acts and theaters of resistance took place concurrently. Many citizens of Delhi initially
saw the uprising as a series of riots and disturbances and did not welcome the sepoys from
the United Provinces and Oudh into a city they believed to possess a degree of sophistication,
history, and majesty that distinguished it from the rest of India. Even though he lacked
actual power, Bahadur Shah Zafar’s presence in Delhi added to the city’s fierce pride in its
past. As the uprising gained momentum, the act of invoking the name of the king and,
implicitly, the charisma of the Mughals, much to British surprise, served to unite disparate
populations across India. However, even though the uprising drew supporters across India
among both Hindus and Muslims, the results of the uprising were increasing British hostility
toward Muslims and a divide between Hindus and Muslims caused by a combination of
jihadi elements and the use of British evangelical rhetoric to justify a Christian war. Dalrymple
uses his reading of religious justifications for war among British evengelicals and Muslim
jihadis as a means of drawing a parallel with the existing state of conflict between Western
imperialist interests and modern-day jihadis.
Dalrymple’s argument about the role of religious language in inciting divisiveness is well
supported by his sources. What is difficult to support is the parallel he draws between the
events of 1857 and religious rhetoric today. It is not entirely clear who Dalrymple means
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by the blanket term jihadi, nor does Dalrymple substantiate his claim that there was a link
between movements for Muslim educational reform such as the madrassa at Deoband and
the rhetoric of al-Qaeda jihadis. The taking of bàyat (oaths of spiritual discipleship) among
Dalrymple’s jihadis, according to him, is similar to the taking of bàyat among men who
have sworn their allegiance to Osama bin Laden. On the contrary, bàyat were sworn at all
times, by Mughal kings to local saints, by members of the king’s court and household to
the king, and by people of different faiths to those they believed to possess spiritual authority.
These oaths served several social and political functions and were one of many ways in which
loyalties were forged as a means of holding together the fabric of empire. Drawing a historical
continuity between two unrelated sets of circumstances partly based on the taking of such
oaths is likely to lead to criticisms of Dalrymple’s otherwise well-researched and eloquent
work.
More troubling is Dalrymple’s assertion that there exists a timeless battle between Islamic
orthodoxy and heterodoxy and that the Mughals represented a tolerant face of Islam, one
that was eventually to be erased by the call to arms in the name of religion. Given that we
live in a world in which we read daily allegations of Islam’s links to acts of violence, it is
tempting and convenient to look to the past as embodying better times in which tolerant
Muslim kings presided over shimmering cities woven of peaceful syncretism. But by doing
so, we are giving neither the present nor the past its just due. Arguments about timeless
battles, whether between East and West or between tolerant and jihadi groups within Islam,
tend to obscure historical specificity and, consequently, offer little in the way of understand-
ing the present through readings of the past.
Aside from these two contentions regarding Dalrymple’s arguments about the present,
his reading of the many threads of the everyday in nineteenth-century Delhi shows the
author at his most deft and imaginative. From his account of the different spaces and time
frames in which the city of Delhi functioned, to the individual voices of the people caught
up in the events of 1857, and, finally, to the voice of Bahadur Shah Zafar himself, Dalrymple
writes a moving account of the end of a way of life and of a king who was unable to alter
the course of events that took place in his name.

Taymiya R. Zaman, University of San Francisco

LINDA M. AUSTIN. Nostalgia in Transition, 1780–1917. Victorian Literature and Culture

Series. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2007. Pp. 248. $39.50 (cloth).

In Nostalgia in Transition, 1780–1917, Linda M. Austin charts the transition of the term
“nostalgia” from its eighteenth-century usage, when it denoted a pathological homesickness,
to its modern sense of pining for a romanticized past. Revising our own prejudices about
memory is key to understanding this shift; accordingly, Austin links the development of
nostalgia to nineteenth-century models that located memory in the body’s neurosensory
functions. Memory in these models became a physiological act associated with habit and
repetition rather than a mental act of cognition and recall. By placing nostalgia within this
tradition of physiological memory, Austin demonstrates that in its transition from pathology
to cultural aesthetic, nostalgia “became a sensory-motor habit with communal appeal” (22).
This physical, communal nature leads Austin to conclude that nostalgia, a form of remem-
bering that permeates Victorian culture, “defied the forces of high modernism” by refusing
to concede to the high/low culture divide produced by a post-Freudian model of memory
that privileges the mental activity of recalling the past (199).
Austin divides the book into two sections, the first exploring personal uses of nostalgia
and the second considering nostalgia’s role in public memory. In chapter 1, she reads Emily