Sir Thomas Roe went to Jahangir's Court

Sir Thomas Roe went to Jahangir's Court

            Sir Thomas Roe, Was a Merchant and a Diplomat with the EAST INDIAN COMPANY and England's first official ambassador to India. Roe arrived in 1615 with a letter from King James I To the reigning Mughal Emperor, Jahangir, Seeking a trade agreement. When he was finally granted an audience, and had made his obeisance, Roe wanted to get to the point and raise the subject of trade and preferential customs duties, but the aesthete Emperor could barely conceal his boredom at such conversations. Jahangir was an enormously sensitive ,curious and intelligent man: observant of the world around him and a keen collector of its curiosities.

        This event in modern Indian history as it was the first step towards establishing the British East India Company as a paramount power in the Indian subcontinent.

      This year, 2019, marks 400 years since the return of Sir Thomas Roe, merchant diplomat with the East India Company and England’s first official ambassador to India. Roe arrived at the port of Surat in September 1615 with a letter from King James I to the then reigning Mughal Emperor, Jahangir, seeking a trade agreement. The ambassador would go on to spend four years of negotiations at the Mughal court, eventually returning to England in 1619 without the trade agreement he sought. Nonetheless, it would be a first formal introduction that would mark the beginning of a relationship spanning centuries, the significance of which cannot be overstated.

      So, Important was the embassy that a mural depicting Roe’s audience with Emperor Jahangir is featured in St Stephen’s Hall at the Palace of Westminster. The political and economic fallout following the break with Catholic Rome would see Queen Elizabeth I seeking to trade with the Islamic empires of the early modern world, establishing the Levant Company to trade with the Ottoman Empire and the East India Company to trade with Mughal India.

References:

1. Book: Tuzuk-e-Jahangiri (Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri) The autobiography of Mughal Emperor Nur-ud-din Muhammad Jahangir (1569–1627)

2. St Stephen's hall History:- https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/building/palace/estatehistory/the-middle-ages/early-chapel-st-stephen/