Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in Indian Religions
Episode: Danna Agmon, "A Colonial Affair: Commerce, Conversion, and Scandal in French India" (Cornell UP, 2017)
Description: People sometimes forgetâif they are even awareâthat Franceâs empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries included a colonial presence in South Asia, a presence that at one time rivaled that of the British. Danna Agmonâs A Colonial Affair: Commerce, Conversion, and Scandal in French India (Cornell University, 2017) zooms in on the 1716 arrest and conviction of a Tamil commercial agent and employee of the French East India Company, a legal case that resonated throughout the empire for decades, even centuries, afterward. The âNayiniyappa Affairâ at the heart of this microhistory is Agmonâs way into a complex web of...