Masculinity on the move from Barcelona to Bombay: the men of the Catalan bourgeoisie and their bodily encounters in colonial India

Abstract

In 1908, two travelers from Barcelona embarked on a year-long world tour. Stage designer Oleguer Junyent and textile heir Marià Recolons’ trip took them across the British Empire, with India as their most significant stop. The chapter examines their bodily encounters in India through the written and visual sources produced around the tour. In the spaces of the emerging global tourism of the time—the restaurant, the hotel, the club—Recolons and Junyent interacted with British elites and with Indian men, both elite and subaltern. While the travelers immersed themselves into British elite bodily practices, it was Indians who were at the center of their most intimate connections. The chapter argues that metropolitan Spanish masculinity was fleetingly transformed by embracing the trappings of British imperialism while forging links with the colonized. In this way, it makes an original contribution to our growing understanding of the contact zone of European and Indian masculinities.