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India: Land of the Black Pagoda
Lowell Thomas
A sweeping travelogue of colonial-era India by Lowell Thomas, the celebrated American broadcaster and adventurer who made Lawrence of Arabia a household name. Setting out for a four-month visit, Thomas stayed two years and covered some sixty thousand miles, from the southern tip of the subcontinent to the foothills of the Himalayas. The book, illustrated with photographs by H. A. Chase and the author, delivers the panoramic, incident-packed reportage that made Thomas famous: temples and palaces, holy men and maharajas, bazaars and wilderness. Published in 1930, it is vivid and readable, but unmistakably a product of its imperial moment, freely trading in the exotic contrasts — splendor and squalor, sanctity and sensuality — that Western readers of the day expected. It survives as an entertaining period artifact and a window onto how interwar America imagined India.
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The author
Lowell Thomas (1892–1981) was one of the most famous American journalists of the twentieth century — a pioneering radio broadcaster, newsreel narrator, author, and traveler. His wartime films and lectures created the legend of "Lawrence of Arabia," and for decades his was among the most recognized voices in America. He built a career on bringing far-off places to a mass audience.
The book
India: Land of the Black Pagoda (The Century Co., 1930) recounts his extended journey across British India, illustrated with his and H. A. Chase's photographs. The title refers to the great Sun Temple at Konark. It is travel writing in the grand popular style: brisk, colorful, and built for narrative momentum.
How it has aged
The reporting is lively, but modern readers should approach it critically. Written at the height of the British Raj by an outsider writing for Western consumption, it leans on orientalist tropes — the recurring pairing of "unimaginable luxury" with "indescribable squalor," sanctity with "sensuality beyond belief." These framings tell us as much about interwar Western attitudes as about India itself. Taken as a period document and a specimen of golden-age travel journalism, it is engaging; taken as an account of India, it should be read against the grain and supplemented by Indian voices.
For more context
Pair with histories of the late Raj and with Indian writers on the same period.
Sources
- Type
- Book
- Author / Maker
- Lowell Thomas
- Publisher
- The Century Co.
- Place of publication
- New York
- Year
- 1930
- ISBN
- None
- Shelf
- Travel & Exploration
- Location
- Colorado