Note on Transliteration and Translation Note on Currency Conversion List of Abbreviations List of Figures Acknowledgements Introduction 1: The Threads that Bind: South Asian Textiles and Networks of Exchange between India, France, and the West Indies A Homespun Empire: Indian Textiles in Their Local Contexts Eastern Persuasions Trade Goods as Cross-Cultural Interlocutors Of Aristocrats and Slaves: The Double Life of Guinea Cloth The Antecedents of Industrialization 2. Coromandel Craft and European Natural History: Lessons Learned and Lost in Mutual Intelligibility across Cultures Botanical Beginnings Antoine de Jussieu and the Ambitions of French Bioprospecting Nature in Images/The Nature of Images: Tapping Local Medical Knowledge in Early Modern India Uncommon Ground: South Asian Aesthetics and L'Empereur's Jardin de Lorixa Jungles and Gardens 3: Shifting Terrains: Negotiating Kingship as a Tamil Dubash in Eighteenth-Century Pondichéry Travails and Portrayals of the Family Pillai Ananda, N?yak of Pondichéry 4: Faith and Fortunes: The Use and Abuse of Material Artifacts in the Evolving Coromandel Seeing and Believing: Iconoclasm, or the Limits of Mutual Intelligibility Obligatory Presents: The Evolution of Gifting Epilogue: Crosscurrents in the Wake of the Seven Years War Appendix 1: Glossary Appendix 2: French Governors of Pondichéry Bibliography Index