Captain Nemo is a freedom fighter who resisted first the British colonization of his subcontinental fiefdom and then all European and similar colonial era expansionists. His great wealth was turned to the production of extremely advanced technology, chief amongst which was his atomic submarine, the Nautilus. Nothing concerning his past is revealed in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, except his having reason to hate the countries of the world and the loss his family at some point in the past. In The Mysterious Island, it is revealed that Captain Nemo is Prince Dakkar, son of the Hindu Raja of the Kingdom of Bundelkund in India, and also a descendant of the Muslim Sultan Fateh Ali Tipu of the Kingdom of Mysore in India. The latter famously fought a series of wars with the British, employing artillery rockets, which led to the introduction of military rocketry in the west. He was deeply antagonistic to the British Empire, due to its conquest of India. After the bloody Indian Rebellion of 1857, one of the most devastating wars of the Victorian Era, in which he lost his family and his kingdom, he devoted himself to scientific research and developed an advanced submarine, the Nautilus. He and a crew of his followers cruise the seas, battling injustice, especially imperialism, by preying on the shipping of the European colonial empires. They derive bullion from the various shipwrecks that dot the ocean, their most notable plundering ground being the Spanish wrecks in the Bay of Vigo.
First Appearance Magasin d’éducation et de récréation (1869) serial “Vingt mille lieues sous les mers”
First Publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel
Appearance List Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870), The Mysterious Island (1875), Journey Through the Impossible (play, 1882)
Sample Read Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas: An Underwater Tour of the World (1870) [PG]
Description Captain Nemo is a freedom fighter who resisted first the British colonization of his subcontinental fiefdom and then all European and similar colonial era expansionists. His great wealth was turned to the production of extremely advanced technology, chief amongst which was his atomic submarine, the Nautilus. Nothing concerning his past is revealed in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, except his having reason to hate the countries of the world and the loss his family at some point in the past. In The Mysterious Island, it is revealed that Captain Nemo is Prince Dakkar, son of the Hindu Raja of the Kingdom of Bundelkund in India, and also a descendant of the Muslim Sultan Fateh Ali Tipu of the Kingdom of Mysore in India. The latter famously fought a series of wars with the British, employing artillery rockets, which led to the introduction of military rocketry in the west. He was deeply antagonistic to the British Empire, due to its conquest of India. After the bloody Indian Rebellion of 1857, one of the most devastating wars of the Victorian Era, in which he lost his family and his kingdom, he devoted himself to scientific research and developed an advanced submarine, the Nautilus. He and a crew of his followers cruise the seas, battling injustice, especially imperialism, by preying on the shipping of the European colonial empires. They derive bullion from the various shipwrecks that dot the ocean, their most notable plundering ground being the Spanish wrecks in the Bay of Vigo.
