as well as Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and, particularly, Mughal sources, to present Roe's four years in the round . What followed in India was a turning-point in history, a story of palace intrigue, scandal, and mutual incomprehension that unfolds as global trade begins to stretch from Russia to Virginia, from West Africa to the Spice Islands of Indonesia. Nandini Das's rich, absorbing account of a critical juncture of global history, the Englishman Sir Thomas Roe's embassy to the court of the Mughal emperor Jahangir, charts both a remarkable personal narrative and the prehistory of colonial expansion, told from the perspective of an imperial go-between.

The book has since been acquired by Netflix in association with the Chilean production company Fábula, and a feature film entitled La Homicida is to be released in 2024. 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 .Conflicts over precedence did nothing to advance his mission of securing trade rights, which was the real reason Roe had been sent across the Indian Ocean. India was a huge continental empire, England a minor maritime kingdom on the fringe of Europe; but with their itchy feet the English were pushing to expand global trade.

Thomas Roe was James I first ambassador to India where he spent four years (1616-19) at the court of Jahangir. It does seem however that Roe was greatly concerned with avoiding paying obeisance to the Mughal royals, and continuing to dress in hot English style clothing, neither of which made his job any easier.

And while Roe kept a journal and wrote letters, I didn’t get the impression that he was particularly interested in any of this, unless it pertained to him obtaining privileges for British traders. The British Academy Book Prize, formerly known as the Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize, was established in 2013, to reward and celebrate the best works of non-fiction that demonstrate rigour and originality, and have contributed to public understanding of other world cultures and their interaction. By using contemporary sources by Indian and by British political figures, officials and merchants she has given the story an unparalleled immediacy that brings to life these early encounters and the misunderstandings that sometimes threatened to wreck the whole endeavour. A profound and ground-breaking approach to one of the most important encounters in the history of the British arrival in India in the early seventeenth century.