Travel writing as a Source of Historiography : Reading Dean Mahomet’s Travel Account

Abstract

Historiography gained prominence in the 1960s and  1970s as a result of the critical turn of theory in most of the academic  disciplines which lead to selfreflexivity. The critical turn forced the disciplines to  question the assumptions of their methods and  truth claims. It exposed the personal and professional biases of the disciplines and its practitioners and brought in greater awareness of the tenuousness of the truth claims made by them. Historiography emerged as a major self-reflexive exercise to look for the contradictions in the historians, their methods, and the object of study and the relationship of the  historian to the object of study. Historiography brought into prominence many historical materials which were denied the status of historical evidence by the pre-critical turn historians. Using insights from post-structuralism, cultural studies, and critical history the practice of historiography started using materials such as diaries, local newspaper reports, folklores, travel accounts etc. to write  a history of the common people living their daily life in their time and space. By critical analysis of the late 18th century travel account of Dean Mahomet, this paper argues that travel accounts  are important tools of historiography. They perform the function of bringing to life the reality of everyday living of the common people of the time and space of the narrative. The paper argues that this will allow for a more complicated historiography of the sociopolitical,  cultural, and economic life of the society to emerge in historical narratives.