Journey
Sir Thomas Roe — the first English embassy (1615–19)
James I's ambassador rather than the Company's servant, a distinction the Mughal court declined to recognise. He followed Jahangir's moving court from Ajmer to Mandu to Burhanpur for three years, was outbid in gifts by the Portuguese throughout, and left in 1619 sure he had failed. The firmans he got founded British India.
Stops (6)
- London · home · commissioned 1614
The Company was chartered in London on the last day of 1600 and directed from Leadenhall Street, and it paid for this embassy while James I commissioned it — so Roe arrived as the King's ambassador rather than the Company's servant, a distinction the Mughal court declined to recognise. The Company's own records of it are now in the British Library.
- Surat · Surat, 1615
Landed at Surat in September 1615 and began a long argument with local officials about customs searches and precedence — he refused to have his baggage opened and refused to pay duty on gifts for the emperor. The Company's foothold here, and the trading terms, were the whole reason for the embassy.
- Ajmer Sharīf · Ajmer, 1616–17
Ajmer, where Jahangir's court then sat. Roe spent most of his embassy here, attending the jharokha appearances and finding that gifts, English painting and a case of wine interested the emperor far more than treaties did. His journal's complaints about being outbid in gifts by the Portuguese are the clearest account of how Mughal diplomacy actually worked.
- Mandu · Mandu, 1617
Mandu, when the court moved to the Malwa plateau for the Deccan campaign; Roe followed it and kept negotiating. The twelve-kilometre walled plateau had been a sultanate capital two centuries earlier and his journal describes it half-ruined already, with the court camped among the ruins. The court camped among the ruins of a sultanate capital, which is what his journal actually describes.
- Khooni Bhandara, Burhanpur · Burhanpur, 1617–18
Burhanpur, the Mughal forward base for the Deccan, on the same restless progress — the court moved as an army, which is why his journal doubles as an itinerary of the imperial camp. The town's underground qanat system, cut for that base by a Persian engineer, still supplies part of it.
- Agra Fort · Agra, 1618–19
Agra, before taking his leave. He got firmans permitting English factories rather than the formal commercial treaty he had been sent for, and left in 1619 convinced the embassy had failed. Those firmans were enough: they are the legal foundation of every English factory that followed, and of everything after that.