Henry Meredith Parker and the Miserable Hour of a World’s Desolation

A different liberal-imperialist vision of technology, global capitalism, and British-Indian nationalism emerges from the activities, friendships, and writings of Henry Meredith Parker, a prominent figure in Calcutta’s commercial, literary, theatrical, and social scenes. Presenting original research fleshing out his life and career, I trace his friendship with Dwarkanath Tagore, who in 1833 became a Director of the New Bengal Steam Fund, of which Parker was Chairman. Relying on a hitherto undiscussed source in which Parker describes himself as “differing entirely from Mr. [James Silk] Buckingham in politics,” the chapter presents Parker as a nonpartisan patriot and a loyal Company servant. Parker’s politics and sociability merge in “Calcutta Pococurante Society” (1833), the curious proceedings of a mystic dinner club. From the Society’s debate over “Utilitarianism versus poetry,” I turn to Parker’s “tale of the nothingness of man,” in which the world as we (will) know it ends on May 10, 2054. Parker’s and Goodeve’s visions of a future liberated by machines differ in more than just the opposite outcomes of technological dominion they depict. Parker’s tale, I argue, is a BurkeanBurke, Edmund response to reckless transformations of the earth in the service of maximal postnationalist global capitalism.