Travellers in the third reich review

This is a remarkable book It combines a spellbinding account of the first forgotten half of the English encounter with India with a fascinating history of the Mughal Empire JOSEPHINE QUINN author of How the World Made the West A compelling highly readable account of the earliest phase of English presence in India NANDINI DAS author of Courting India When the first English travellers in India encountered an unimaginable superpower their meetings would change the world Before the East India Company and before the British Empire England was a pariah state Seeking better fortunes 16th and 17th century merchants pilgrims and outcasts ventured to the kingdom of the mighty Mughals attempting to sell coarse woollen broadcloth along the silk roads playing courtiers in the Mughal palaces in pursuit of love or simply touring the sub continent in search of an elephant to ride Into this golden realm went Father Thomas Stephens a Catholic fleeing his home the merchant Ralph Fitch looking for jewels in the markets of Delhi and John Mildenhall an adventurer revelling in the highwire politics of the Mughal elite It was a land ruled from the palatial towers by women the formidable Empress Nur Jahan Begim the enterprising Queen Mother Maryam al Zamani and the intrepid Princess Jahanara Begim Their collision of worlds helped connect East and West launching a tempestuous period of globalisation spanning from the Chinese opium trade to the slave trade in the Americas Drawing on rich original sources Lubaaba Al Azami traces the origins of a relationship between two nations one outsider and one superpower whose cultures remain inextricably linked to this day Travellers in the Golden Realm How Mughal India Connected England to the WorldIn her book Travellers in the Golden Realm Lubaaa Al Azami mentions a mural in St Stephen s Hall at London s Palace of Westminster The painting imagines the embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to the court of the Mughal Emperor Jahangir in 1615 Painted by William Rothenstein in 1927 the mural shows Roe holding a scroll while standing in front of Jahangir who is seated on a throne amidst courtiers soldiers and attendants Though Roe stands while Jahangir sits the implication is clear they are on an equal footing It shows in Roe s stance and in the fact that the only two servitors bowing deeply bow behind Roe not in front of Jahangir Compare this to a contemporary Mughal painting depicting Roe at Jahangir s court Jahangir investing a courtier with a robe of honour watched by Sir Thomas Roe shows the English ambassador tucked away among the rank and file of the court He is not the centre of attention he is not the star of the show The difference between the two depictions is stark In Travellers in the Golden Realm Al Azami shows how skewed is the common perception created by centuries of erasure of the truth that the English and India were on a level footing This as Al Azami traces the evolution of English travellers to India is shown to be far from the truth Even the East India Company of which this book almost comprises a history ended up in India accidentally Their primary target were the spice islands of the Far East but since thick English broadcloth about the only thing they could offer in exchange had no market there the East India Company the EIC turned its gaze India wards from where it could source Indian calicos much prized to be sold in the Far East for the nutmeg mace and cinnamon the English needed And yet as Al Azami shows long before the EIC s arrival in India there had been other travellers too making the long arduous journey from England to India Thomas Stephens for instance who arrived as part of a Jesuit mission during the reign of Akbar and spent the rest of his life in India Or Ralph Fitch the first Englishman to spend a considerable time travelling across India There are well known names here such as Captain William Hawkins and the world s first backpacker as travel writer Ed Peters dubs him Thomas Coryate Equally however there are lesser known but equally interesting characters John Mildenhall for one who called himself Elizabeth I s ambassador without being anything of the sort or the arrogant and peacocky William Norris who wrecked an already doomed embassy to the court of Aurangzeb While the stories of these varied men who journeyed to Mughal India are fascinating equally fascinating is the story of how England s fortunes were changing through this period How politics across Europe and as far away as the Ottoman Empire and Persia were shaping England s motivations and how that translated into England s dealings with India both through the EIC and outside of it Woven into the story of England and the EIC are other histories Of the Mughals their empire so wealthy that England was of no account to them Of conflicts between the English the Portuguese and the Dutch over and in India Of women who stood out in a world dominated by men powerful Mughal women like Noorjehan and Jahanara of course but also less famous women like Maryam Khan an Armenian Christian of the Mughal court and the Circassian born Persian Lady Teresa Sampsonia Sherley both of whom accompanied their English husbands to England. Epub travellers in the golden realm free And there is the way Mughal India connected England to the World the subtitle of this book Through her exposition of the EIC s evolution and growth Al Azami shows the even darker underbelly of the trade On the one hand the EIC s need for Indian goods compelled them to transport silver from the Americas and Japan to India on the other the Indian demand for ivory made them turn to West Africa from where they soon launched into an extremely lucrative and reprehensible slave trade The subtitle of this book is perhaps a little inaccurate While the book does describe how England s greed for India s wealth pushed it to forge links with lands around the globe that comes across as a secondary element of the book What dominates is the story of English travellers to India the EIC and their interactions with India during the reigns of the first five Mughal emperors A meticulously researched well written book Travellers in the Golden Realm is both immensely informative as well as entertaining a must read for anybody interested in India s colonial history From my review for The New Indian Express Lubaaba Al Azami