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

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A profound and ground-breaking approach to one of the most important encounters in the history of the British arrival in India in the early seventeenth century. Brought up in India, she was educated at the Jadavpur University in Kolkata, before moving to England for further study. 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 . For Das the Roe mission is the lens through which to give sharp focus to a remarkably wide-ranging study that does much to illuminate the bigger story of the unpromising origins of British power – and initial powerlessness – in India .

It does seem however that Roe was greatly concerned with avoiding paying obeisance to the Mughal royals, and continuing to dress in hot English style clothing, neither of which made his job any easier. From the point of this time it must have seemed highly unlikely that Britain would go on to any significant level of interest, never mind to rule, in India. The youthful ambassador was hindered by his perfect ignorance of any Indian languages, entangled in bitter rivalries with other English officials and undercut by the behavior of his own staff: On the very day of his arrival, Roe’s personal chef drunkenly attacked a Mughal nobleman in the streets of the city.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. 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. It also highlights the complex relationships and power structures at Jahangir’s court, and the open way he conducted much government business, as well as sharing court gossip and intrigue.

Informative, educational and beautifully written, with hints of the absurdity of the merchant life, this has been one to savour. And while Roe kept a journal and wrote letters, I didn’t get the impression that he was particularly interested in any of this, unless it pertained to him obtaining privileges for British traders. Conflicts over precedence did nothing to advance his mission of securing trade rights, which was the real reason Roe had been sent across the Indian Ocean. Roe seemed more interested in his own pride than in really learning about the Mughal culture, for example, refusing to learn the local language.In this genuinely ground-breaking work, Indian-raised Das challenges our understanding of this pivotal pre-colonial period. Fascinating and comprehensive account of Thomas Roe’s embassy from the impoverished James I to the opulent Mughal Court of Jahangir. 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. By using contemporary sources by Indian and by British political figures, officials and merchants she has given the story an unparalleled immediacy that brings to life these early encounters and the misunderstandings that sometimes threatened to wreck the whole endeavour.

The announcement was made by Chair of the Book Prize judging panel, Professor Charles Tripp FBA, at a celebration at the British Academy.Nandini's] book makes us rethink the idea that Britain was always dominant in India -- Hannah Cusworth ― BBC History Magazine, 2023 Books of the Year --This text refers to the hardcover edition. I thought that Nandini Das did a wonderful job of describing life in the Mughal emperor's court and some of the wonders of the Mughal civilization at that time. as well as Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and, particularly, Mughal sources, to present Roe's four years in the round . In the face of a lavish court where relationships were built on exchange of gifts, Roe had to resort to handing over his most prized personal possessions to get a hearing.

For Das the Roe mission is the lens through which to give sharp focus to a remarkably wide-ranging study that does much to illuminate the bigger story of the unpromising origins of British power - and initial powerlessness - in India . This book does just that, drawing on the best of the academic and the literary traditions to shed light on how we are today. Drawing on a rich variety of sources – literature, the memoirs of the Mughal Emperor Jahangir, the journals and correspondence of Sir Thomas Roe, plus the archives of the East India Company – Das invites the reader to get to grips with the making of history, and its narration from both perspectives. Things began to go awry almost as soon as the squadron of ships bearing Thomas Roe, the first English ambassador to the Mughal Empire, sighted India’s western shores in September 1615.To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. 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. In Das’s telling, Roe was not a herald of the Company Raj to come as much as a product of 17th-century England, an island nation whose commercial ambitions were beginning to overshadow its royal court. Das] is the rare scholar who combines a sensitivity to the literature of Jacobean England with a sympathetic and nuanced understanding of the Mughal empire . Courting India, by Nandini Das, is a brilliant and insightful study of Thomas Roe's embassy at the Mughal court.