Author(s): Nandini Das

History | India

A profound and ground-breaking new history of one of the most important encounters in the history of colonialism- the British arrival in India in the early seventeenth century.

'A sparkling gem of a book. Beautifully written and masterfully researched, this has the makings of a classic' Peter Frankopan, bestselling author of The Silk Roads

'Captures the mixture of excitement, prejudice, anxiety, misunderstanding and mutual interest that characterised an encounter that did so much to shape the contours of the modern world' Professor Andrew Hadfield

When Thomas Roe arrived in India in 1616 as James I's first ambassador to the Mughal Empire, the English barely had a toehold in the subcontinent. Their understanding of South Asian trade and India was sketchy at best, and, to the Mughals, they were minor players on a very large stage.

Roe was representing a kingdom that was beset by financial woes and deeply conflicted about its identity as a unified 'Great Britain' under the Stuart monarchy. Meanwhile, the court he entered in India was wealthy and cultured, its dominion widely considered to be one of the greatest and richest empires of the world.

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. 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.

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.

"A triumph of writing and scholarship . . . 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 . . . Her style, while nuanced and erudite, is also jaunty and often witty. The book is as full of lovely passages of prose and finely shaded pen portraits as it is of new archival research, of which there is a great deal . . . It is hard to imagine anyone ever bettering Das's account of this part of the story." —William Dalrymple * Financial Times *
"A fascinating glimpse of the origins of the British Empire . . . The picture that emerges of the first official encounter between Jacobean England and Mughal India is a vivid one, drawn in dazzling technicolour. Courting India is as much about Britain as India, a glimpse of one of history's turning points, and the start of a relationship that would change not just England but the world." —Sam Dalrymple * Spectator *
"The story of the very earliest years of British activity on the Indian subcontinent, Das's book goes to the heart of the initial, heady meeting of courts and cultures and presents a novel look at the roots of colonialism." —* Financial Times *
"Skilfully reconstructs the slights and stand-offs, the escalating tensions . . . Courting India is a scholarly biography with an antiquary's eye for detail . . . Das's leisurely diversions into the world of Jacobean fashion, food and curiosities are fascinating." —Pratinav Anil * The Times *
"An utterly absorbing narrative . . . What makes Das's account of Roe's experiences in India so fascinating is the depth of her research. She has mined the East India Company archives . . . as well as Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and, particularly, Mughal sources, to present Roe's four years in the round . . . Das has portrayed Roe and the unfamiliar world of the Mughal court in which he found himself with the piercing detail of a miniature painted with the finest squirrel-hair brush." —Lucy Moore * Literary Review *
"Captivating . . . A truly impressive work of scholarship and an enthralling read . . . Makes a major contribution to our understanding not just of the origins of empire in India, but of the seventeenth-century world." —Andrea Major * History Today *
"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 ... 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 ... Das does not flinch from this difficult history of the spread of European dominance. Yet she remains admirably evenhanded in her appraisal, revealing the subtle change of views and blurring of boundaries in this unpropitious moment of intercultural contact." — * New York Times *

"A sparkling gem of a book. Beautifully written and masterfully researched, this has the makings of a classic." — Peter Frankopan

Author Biography: Nandini Das is professor of Early Modern Literature and Culture in the English faculty at the University of Oxford. Brought up in India, she was educated at the Jadavpur University in Kolkata, before moving to England for further study. Among other books, she is co-editor of The Cambridge History of Travel Writing. A BBC New Generation Thinker, she regularly presents television and radio programmes, including Tales of Tudor Travel: The Explorer's Handbook on BBC4.