The campaign against thuggee in 1830s India produced aset of widely-circulated accounts of the origins andpractices of thugs. In these works (both popular andscholarly), a very small amount of primaryinformation was continually recycled throughout thenineteenth and twentieth centuries. The changesvisible in the manner of deployment of thisinformation are indicative of progressivere-formulations of the narrative of the history ofthuggee, and the larger history of British India.This process is examined through a study of theincorporation of an extract from The Travelsof M de Thévenot into the Levant into thehistorical archive, which concludes that anyre-appraisal of history must incorporate aconsideration of the narrative underlying theproduction of the records, as well as the recordsthemselves.