Gentil: Diplomat, Writer, Patron and Collector A Page in the History of Eighteenth-century Indo-French Cultural Relations

Jean-Baptiste Joseph Gentil（1726-1799）是一位居住在独立前印度的法国人，被认为是印度最大和最多样化的收藏品。该系列包括关于印度政治历史，货币和宗教的插图论文，印度各省的插图地图集，Gentil回忆录的插图专辑，以及印度历史和文化的绘画专辑。为了编纂这些作品，让蒂尔与当地学者和艺术家进行了接触，并完全依赖第一手资料，这对在印度的欧洲收藏家来说是一种罕见的做法。这一语料库将使我能够揭示被忽视的跨文化材料，这些材料是土著艺术家和学者与欧洲赞助人和收藏家之间互动的结果。通过照亮网络（演员，对象和做法），这一集合的生产和他们的互动模式在地方和区域层面，我的目标是产生一个新的框架来研究这种跨文化创作。它将有助于印度-法国文化史的学术研究，因为大多数学术关注已经支付了外交，军事和政治方面。东方主义和印度学的框架不适合研究这些材料（拉丰，2000;潘迪，2019），因为这些研究将文化视为同质实体，并假设每个文化在接触之前的“纯度”，传播陷入欧洲中心分裂的普遍“全球”历史的宏大叙事。由于18世纪的印度先于殖民主义、民族国家和工业化，霍米·巴巴的“第三空间”（2004年）似乎不足以解释印度殖民前的早期现代跨文化创造。通过这本文集和让蒂尔的回忆录，我将通过一个不同Vantage，使用文化转移的框架来研究印法文化史（Espagne和Werner，1985年）和连接的历史（Subrahmanyam，1997年）作为开始时的指导原则。在我将要解决的问题中，有以下几个：让蒂尔为什么要编纂他的印度文集？什么是他的本土来源（人，文本等）？谁参与了让蒂尔的印法文化网络（印度艺术家，学者，其他法国收藏家等）？他们在收藏中扮演什么角色？在语料库中，这个网络的互动模式的痕迹在哪里？这些藏品如何代表/介导法国社会的印度文化？让蒂尔是如何成功地将印度文化翻译/中介到法国的？这些问题将引导研究考虑行为者、对象及其做法之间的不同互动模式，揭示地方一级看不见的联系。我将分析插图论文中的文字与图像之间的相互作用，以及微型艺术专辑中的绘画与其详细解释之间的相互作用，揭示Gentil与当地艺术家之间的合作实践。我还将通过与当地学者和古代文献的互动，研究让蒂尔与土著知识接触的方法。在这里，对让蒂尔的著作（回忆录和信件）和相关档案文件的文本分析将提供重要的背景。我将从赞助人的角度记录这些藏品，同时将其置于印法文化网络的背景下（Gentil，当地艺术家，翻译，其他法国收藏家，当地印度历史专家等）。这项研究将阐明在个人和他们的战略，从而超越政治边界的水平上的地方网络之间的多方面的相互作用。在这样做的时候，这个语料库将重新评估既定的历史“事实”和叙述，在共同的历史，法国和印度在十八世纪

Jean-Baptiste Joseph Gentil (1726-1799), a French resident in pre-independent India, is accredited with the largest and most diverse collection on India. The collection consists of illustrated treatises on Indian political history, currency and religion, an illustrated atlas of provinces of India, an album of illustrations for Gentil's memoirs, and albums of paintings on Indian history and culture. To compile them, Gentil engaged with local scholars, artists and depended wholly on first-hand knowledge, a rare practice for European collectors in India.This corpus will allow me to shine a light on overlooked intercultural material that is specifically the result of interactions between the practices of indigenous artists and scholars on the one hand, and European patrons and collectors on the other. By illuminating networks (actors, objects and practices) that underlie the production of this collection and their modes of interaction at the local and regional level, I aim to produce a new framework to study such intercultural creation. It will contribute to the scholarship of Indo-French cultural history, as most of the scholarly attention has previously been paid to the diplomatic, military, and political aspects.This study is urgently needed as existing methodologies are inadequate. Frameworks of Orientalism and Indology are unsuitable to study such material (Lafont, 2000; Pandey, 2019) because such studies regard cultures as homogeneous entities and presume the "purity" of each culture before contact, propagating grand narratives of universal 'global' histories trapped in Eurocentric divides. Since eighteenth-century India precedes colonialism, nation-states, and industrialisation, Homi Bhabha's 'third space' (2004) appears insufficient to explain pre-colonial early modern intercultural creation in India.Through this collection, and Gentil's memoirs, I will study Indo-French cultural history through a different vantage point, using frameworks of cultural transfers (Espagne and Werner, 1985) and connected histories (Subrahmanyam, 1997) as guiding principles at start. Among the questions I will address are the following: Why did Gentil compile his collection on India?What were his indigenous sources (people, texts etc.)? Who were involved in Gentil's Indo-French cultural network (Indian artists, scholars, other French collectors etc.)?What are their roles in the making of the collection?In the corpus, where and what are the traces of the modes of interaction of this network?How did did this collection represent/mediate Indian culture for the French society? How did Gentil succeed in translating/mediating Indian culture to the French?These questions will orient the study to consider different modes of interaction between the actors, objects and their practices, exposing unseen connections at the local level. I will analyse the interplay between text and image in the illustrated treatises and between the paintings and their detailed explanations in the miniature art albums, revealing the practices of collaboration between Gentil and the local artists. I will also look at Gentil's method of engaging with indigenous knowledge, through his interaction with local scholars, and ancient texts. Here, textual analysis of Gentil's writings (memoirs and letters) and the relevant archival documents will provide essential context. I will document the collection from the point of view of patronage, while situating it in the context of the Indo-French cultural network (Gentil, local artists, interpreters, other French collectors, local experts on Indian history etc.)This study will illuminate multifaceted interactions between local networks at the level of the individual and their strategies, thereby transcending political boundaries. In doing so, this corpus will re-assess the established historical "facts" and narratives in the shared history of France and India during the eighteenth century