Wanderers Adventurers Missionaries : Early Americans in India

In 1833 Frederic Tudor an American businessman made history when he shipped 180 pounds of ice harvested from Walden Pond in Boston to Calcuttathis luxury item being much in demand amongst the elites of British India. Tudor was deservedly christened the Ice King and soon built a flourishing trade exporting American ice to India. Others were drawn to the country by less materialistic goals. Like the medical missionaries who were deeply concerned with the womens condition in India. Ida Scudders efforts in the 1900s resulted in the setting up of the Christian Medical College in Vellore which continues to save lives till this day; in 1873 Doctor Miss Sahiba Clara Swain set up the first hospital for women and children in Asia in Bareilly on land donated by the Nawab of Rampur. There were also those who came to stay. Twenty-two-year-old Samuel Evans Stokes came to Kotgarh in the Himalayan foothills in 1904 embraced Hinduism and became Satyanand Stokes. He revolutionized apple cultivation in the area now in Himachal Pradesh by introducing the Red Delicious apples of Missouri; today his descendants still live and work in the region. Likewise the Alter family. Martha and David Emmet Alter arrived in Mussoorie in 1917 to spend the summer studying at the Landour Language School; in 1941 Emmet became principal of Woodstock School just around the hillside. Twenty-five years later his son Robert occupied the same position. Roberts son Stephen continues to live in Mussoorie pursuing a successful writing career; his cousin Tom Alter was a much-loved actor in Indian films until he passed away in 2017. These are just some of the first Americans in India who came here beginning in the 1700s with different motives and dreamsas adventurers traders reformers writers and artists. All of them without exception were fascinated astonished moved and in the end profoundly changed by their Indian experience. Anuradha Kumars skilful and well-researched account of these early visitors makes this an important and engrossing book that informs surprises and amuses in equal measure.