Through literary and historical documents from the early sixteenth to late seventeenth centuries epic poetry, private correspondence, secular dramas, and colonial legislation Carmen Nocentelli charts the Western fascination with the eros of "India," as the vast coastal stretch from the Gulf of Aden to the South China Sea was often called. If Asia was thought of as a place of sexual deviance and perversion, she demonstrates, it was also a space where colonial authorities actively encouraged the formation of interracial households, even through the forcible conscription of native brides. In...
Through literary and historical documents from the early sixteenth to late seventeenth centuries epic poetry, private correspondence, secular drama...
