Person · English ambassador to the Mughal court
Thomas Roe
Also known as Sir Thomas Roe
Sir Thomas Roe (c. 1581–1644) was the English diplomat whom James I, at the East India Company's urging, sent as royal envoy to the Mughal emperor Jahangir, at whose court he stayed until 1619. The embassy won no major trading privileges but secured permission and protection for the Company's factory at Surat, the start of a Mughal–Company relationship. Roe's journals are a valuable source on Jahangir's reign; Jahangir's own memoirs never mention him.
- Date
- c. 1581 – 1644
- Function
- Travel & migration
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
Worth knowing
Jahangir had his painters copy a European miniature until there were five versions, then challenged Roe to pick out the original; Roe could not, to the emperor's delight.
The Wikipedia articles on Roe and Jahangir say he resided at Agra for three years, but the Ajmer article records Roe witnessing executions at Ajmer's Akbari Fort, where Jahangir read out the firman permitting the Company to trade; where the embassy was based should be checked against Foster's edition of the journal.
Connections (3)
- Court associationJahangir
Roe was James I's royal envoy to Jahangir from 1615 to 1619. He arrived with gifts that included many crates of red wine, explained to the emperor what beer was and how it was made, and allegedly became a favourite and drinking companion. His journals describe how petitioners could pull the chain of justice to reach the emperor at darshan, yet Jahangir's own voluminous memoirs never mention the ambassador at all.
- Historical linkSurat
The concrete result of Roe's embassy was permission and protection for an East India Company factory at Surat. Jahangir conceded no major trading privileges, but the arrangement is described as the beginning of a Mughal–Company relationship that grew into something approaching a partnership and gradually drew the Company into the Mughal nexus. Roe had come out with the Company fleet by the East African coast, meeting the Somali pilot Maalim Ibrahim in the Comoros in 1615 and declining his invitation to Mogadishu so as not to split the fleet.
- Historical linkLondon
Roe's Indian embassy was a London commission. Elected MP for Tamworth in 1614, he married Eleanor, Lady Beeston, only weeks before sailing, and it was the East India Company that persuaded King James to send him to the Mughal court as a royal envoy. Several of his manuscripts are now in the British Museum collections, and his embassy journal was re-edited for the Hakluyt Society in 1899 by William Foster.
Sources
Wikipedia, "Thomas Roe"; "Jahangir"; "Ajmer". William Foster (ed.), The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to the Court of the Great Mogul, 1615–1619 (Hakluyt Society, 1899); Michael Strachan, Sir Thomas Roe, 1581–1644: A Life (1989); Nandini Das, Courting India (2023).
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