In the late eighteenth century, scores of American merchant vessels sailed to India. They returned with cotton and silk textiles, sugar, indigo, ginger, and jute—goods sold in American shops and re-exported to Europe, South America, and Africa. In the early decades after American Independence, this trade fuelled federal revenues, eased war debt, and financed emerging industries. Its impact, interestingly, went beyond commerce. In coastal towns, especially, India and Indians captured American imaginations. In Yankee India: American Commercial and Cultural Encounters with India in the Age of Sail, 1784-1860 (2001), scholar and curator Susan S Bean notes, “An unexpectedly rich record of this first encounter between India and America survives in mariners’ logs, journals, and letters.” The Peabody Essex Museum, in Salem, Massachusetts, holds one of the largest collections of such logs, documenting nearly 300 voyages to India. Imports such as Kashmir shawls, gossamer cottons, statues of Hindu deities, and elaborate hookah stands reveal how Yankee mariners recorded and interpreted their experiences for family and community. How early US trade with India was made possible US trade …