Meeting the Mughals: England’s disastrous first embassy to India

HistoryExtra podcast

HistoryExtra

History

4.3 • 4.7K Ratings

🗓️ 6 March 2023

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 1616, when the first English embassy was installed in Mughal India, England was a minor player on the global stage rather than a leading actor. Nandini Das explores what the challenges of this embassy can tell us about England’s unequal relationship with India at the time – and reveals how the future dominance of the British empire was far from a foregone conclusion. (Ad) Nandini Das is the author of Courting India: England, Mughal India and the Origins of Empire (Bloomsbury, 2023). Buy it now from Waterstones: https://go.skimresources.com?id=71026X1535947&xcust=historyextra-social-histboty&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.waterstones.com%2Fbook%2Fcourting-india%2Fnandini-das%2F9781526615640 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Just Between Us, the podcast with all of the answers, some of the time.
0:05.0	A bit of a different thing going on this week.
0:07.3	You've been immature and you've lied.
0:10.3	And now you're trying to turn it on me and manipulate me and gaslight me.
0:13.9	I was trying to manipulate you.
0:15.7	Diana, you would be chucking their clothes out of the window.
0:18.1	I know, I'd be like, are you joking?
0:20.6	I don't know.
0:21.7	I guess you'd have to ask.
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0:26.2	And remember, it's just between us.
0:32.3	Welcome to the History Extra podcast.
0:35.7	Fascinating historical conversations from BBC History Magazine and BBC History Revealed.
0:48.1	In 1616, England's first ambassador to Mughal India, Sir Thomas Rowe, stepped onto the shores of the subcontinent,
0:58.2	ready to forge a bright relationship between the two nations and hammer out a trade deal.
1:04.3	But the embassy was doomed from the start.
1:08.8	In her new book, Corting India, the Oxford professor of early modern
1:13.1	literature and culture, Nandini Das, explores this early strained relationship between England
1:19.6	and the Mughal Empire. Rihanna and Davis spoke to Nandini to find out more.
1:24.6	As you write in your book, England's first embassy in India in 1616 wasn't a huge
1:30.4	success. So why did you choose to focus on it in courting India? It's interesting, isn't it? When we
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