Anuradha Kumar’s new book Wanderers, Adventurers, Missionaries: Early Americans in India (Speaking Tiger) is a well-researched exploration of Americans who arrived in India from 1700 to 1950. Unlike the English, who were backed by the royal charter and came for the purpose of the (East India) Company trade, the Americans landed up driven by “their own spirit of search,” Kumar notes. Before she began writing about them, she had been working on essays about South Asians in America.

“I have lived in the US for several years now. While the history of the interaction between South Asians and Americans is relatively new, there’s been a wealth of research done in recent decades by historians like Vivek Bald, Maia Ramnath, Hugh Johnston and Uzma Quraishi. I read history at university, and I got interested in this history as well.” This made her think of those who had made the journey in reverse: “The early Americans who came to India, at a time even before the United States had come into being,” she explains.

Bombay Sorosis. Pic courtesy/The History of the Woman’s Club Movement in America