A postcard from India: How a colonial worldview travelled the Empire and beyond

By the early 1900s, there were many India-based publishers of postcards. Clifton & Co. in Bombay was one of the first firms to publish a series of all-India views. Others were Higginbotham & Co. (Madras and Bangalore) and Thomas Paar (Darjeeling). Between 1900 and 1905, Clifton’s archaeologically themed postcards of temples, mosques and various ruins amounted to about 20 per cent of the firm’s repertoire.

Postcards moved from the colony to the centre of the Empire. ‘England was among the last to take up the tale,’ wrote one observer. Postcards of India were widely sold by India-based publishers well before those in Britain. Hartmann & Co. was the first London-based publisher to widely advertise India ‘View Cards’ in December 1902, in The Picture Postcard and Collector’s Chronicle, a two-year old magazine that charted the growing popularity of postcards as art and business. Frederick Hartmann, a former indigo planter in India, was the man reputed to have forced the British post-office to accept the ‘divided back’ postcard in 1902. Common on the continent, the format left the entire front available for the image and permitted a full message to be written on the back. Hartmann’s pioneering India series included a number of archaeological postcards, including...

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