On Courting India

Abstract

Nandini Das, winner of the British Academy Book Prize 2023, discusses her experience of writing her prize-winning book Courting India: England, Mughal India and the Origins of Empire (Bloomsbury, 2023). Courting India offers a fascinating history of Thomas Roe, the first English ambassador to the Mughal Empire, and his four years in India (1615–19), a mission generally judged to be a failure, with Roe failing to make much headway in securing diplomatic relations or trade agreements. Roe did, however, leave an extensive account of his time in India in the form of a journal, which has proved helpful in reconstructing the nature of his encounter with the Mughal court. The Mughal emperor, Jahangir, and his courtiers, seem to have had little interest in Roe, who was regarded as something of an exotic curiosity or an irrelevance. This ground-breaking book provides an insider’s view of a Britain in the making, a country whose imperial seeds were just being sown. It is a story of palace intrigue and scandal, lotteries and wagers that unfolds as global trade begins to stretch from Russia to Virginia, from West Africa to the Spice Islands of Indonesia. At an event held at the British Academy in January 2024, Professor Das discussed the book with Professor Charles Tripp FBA, chair of the Book Prize panel of judges.