Young Critic Review: NANDINI DAS – Courting India
The reign of James I is remembered for the mixing and clashing of cultures- Scottish and English, and Catholic and Protestant. I study his reign for A-Level History (as a precursor to the English Civil War) where it is still the case that the slimmest minority of available papers cover topics outside a European bubble. Courting India: England, Mughal India and the Origins of Empire, is a new book by Oxford professor Nadini Das, a specialist in early travel writing, amongst other interests. It is available to buy now. Her talk was more than just informative- it wove together themes as relevant to the 21st century as they are to the 16th and was engagingly and passionately discussed by her at Wade Street Church last week. Courting India deals with cultural exchange in a new and relevant way- a pleasing reminder that historical populations did not live in isolation from one another.
It concerns the first English ambassador to India, a man called Thomas Roe, and the four years he spent on the subcontinent. The British Empire, while somewhat established, would not become truly formidable for another century and, in her history of these four years, Das challenges stereotypical power dynamics. The cover of her book shows a painting of the Mughal court- Roe appears in European dress, but he is by no means the focus. When reading about an English man in India, it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking Empire was inevitable. On the contrary, Das suggests the English had no way of knowing if they would still be operating in India the next month, let alone over the following centuries. The account is fascinating for its otherness- it offers an outsider’s perspective on a sophisticated and opulent court, and makes us question our own cultural ideals and place in the world.
Not only is Roe European, but the Mughal court Roe encounters as a whole is also vibrantly multicultural and multilingual. While the main faiths are Hinduism and Islam, a variety of religions are practiced. In her talk, Das suggested that it is easy to assume someone like Roe couldn’t have begun to understand what he saw, yet reminded us we each decode unfamiliar sights through our own cultural lenses. This, the process of interpreting and factchecking, is what makes Roe’s diaries so fascinating to a historian (members of the East India Company were required to keep detailed diaries.) Roe seems to have had a largely positive time, as it would be years before British colonialism really sunk it’s teeth into the region, however his account still had biases, such as towards women. Seemingly a turning point in Roe’s perception of India, Das told us of a moment Roe witnessed, wherein the great Mughal emperor gave half his flatbread to a homeless, naked hermit. I wonder if Roe quietly compared it to the English court, where James was busy trying to establish the Divine Right of Kings and such a human action might have been inconceivable.
Roe failed in his main task, to secure a permit for the East India Company to build a factory in Surat, but his story is interesting for other reasons. At the beginning of her talk, Das discussed the hyperfamiliarity of India, known in a garbled sense from passages in the Bible and Chaucer, and in many ways, Roe’s expectations must have been defied again and again. I enjoyed Das’ talk immensely, especially as I rarely get to hear about history away from Europe in school. Roe’s journey was more than a trading venture- it was a lesson in disguise, for both the 17th and the 21st century.
By Isla B