“Thuggee in London!”: Metropolitan Sensationalism and the Invention of the Thug

The word “thug” entered the common English language in a slew of texts published in London across the 1830s. These works—narrative accounts as well as social histories—cataloged the so-called cult of Indian thugs, a newly “discovered” band of highway robbers believed to operate throughout the Indian subcontinent. This essay traces a literary and cultural history of these representations; yet, I argue, many of their roots are to be found less in Indian social history than in the existing discursive structures of London. In particular, medico-literary frameworks of sensibility—in existing use to construct and mediate metropolitan sensationalism—came, consequentially, to inform both these imperial representations and the associated conceptualizations of national boundaries.