Courting India: England, Mughal India and the Origins of Empire

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This lucid and imaginatively written book tells us a great deal about the hesitant early days of the first British Empire, as a traditionally inward-looking island nation sought to engage with the wider world. It explored the beginning of Britain's imperial and colonial as well as the goings on and culture of Elizabethan England. Courting India is ostensibly a study of Sir Thomas Roe's time as the East India Company's representative to the Mughal court from 1615 to 1619, but it is so much more than that . Unable to match the lavishness of the Persian embassy for example or to make much headway against the Portuguese, already by this time better established on the subcontinent, he is forever complaining about lack of funds. In Nandini Das's fascinating history of Roe's four years in India, she offers an insider's view of a Britain in the making, a country whose imperial seeds were just being sown.

Das successfully rescues [Roe] from the stilted role of the progenitor of colonial rule and reveals something more interesting: an ambassador too honourable and too inexperienced to achieve anything much for either himself or his country . You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Courting India: England, Mughal India and the Origins of Empire by Nandini Das is today named as the winner of the 11th British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding. Although a micro history, this book shines a clear light on the wider times including on the mores and politics of the leaders the Mughal Court, including Shah Jahan, who would go on later to commission the Taj Mahal.Professor Charles Tripp was joined on the 2023 Book Prize judging panel by Professor Madawi Al-Rasheed FBA, Professor Rebecca Earle FBA, Fatima Manji, and Professor Gary Younge Hon FBA. A major debut that explores the art, literature, sights and sounds of Jacobean London and Imperial India, Courting India reveals Thomas Roe's time in the Mughal Empire to be a turning point in history – and offers a rich and radical challenge to our understanding of Britain and its early empire. There he found challenges aplenty - the lack of cooperation of the employees of the fledgling East India Company, the sometimes direct challenge from other European powers seeking to develop their commercial interests there, and the lack of any real interest shown by the Mughal court in granting the trading privileges Roe sought.

Das, a professor of English at Oxford University, is the rare scholar who combines a sensitivity to the literature of Jacobean England with a sympathetic and nuanced understanding of the Mughal empire. In September 1615, Thomas Roe—Britain’s first ambassador to the Mughal Empire—made landfall on the western coast of India. Thomas Roe was James I first ambassador to India where he spent four years (1616-19) at the court of Jahangir.

The power of good writing and a well-told story in getting people to understand each other should not be underestimated. What a joy to find the first official Indo-British encounter receiving the scholarly attention and enthralling treatment it deserves .

What followed in India was a turning-point in history, a story of palace intrigue, scandal, and mutual incomprehension that unfolds as global trade begins to stretch from Russia to Virginia, from West Africa to the Spice Islands of Indonesia. Alighting on land, Roe was incensed to see that the waiting party of officials of the great port of Surat in Gujarat did not rise from their tented carpets to welcome him. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Nandini Das's rich, absorbing account of a critical juncture of global history, the Englishman Sir Thomas Roe's embassy to the court of the Mughal emperor Jahangir, charts both a remarkable personal narrative and the prehistory of colonial expansion, told from the perspective of an imperial go-between. It's a great read for anyone who wants to learn more about the origins of Britain's link with India.All of this makes for a fascinating book - the wealth and power of the Mughals, their interest in novelty and luxury, and the failure at that time by the East India Company to provide Roe with the support he needed to secure favour with them. Small wonder, then, that by the end of the first month, the authorities had already prohibited the town’s merchants from dealing with the English. Courting India, by Nandini Das, is a brilliant and insightful study of Thomas Roe's embassy at the Mughal court.