A peaceable kingdom in the east: Favourable early seventeenth-century representations of the Moghul empire

Renaissance and Reformation

Volumn 27, Issue 3, 2003, Pages 5-36

  Sapra, Rahul ^a  

^a RYERSON UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

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EID: 60949693935     PISSN: 0034429X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (82)

1. Jyotsna G. Singh, Colonial Narratives / Cultural Dialogues: "Discoveries" of India in the Language of Colonialism (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 23
2. Kate Teltscher, India Inscribed: European and British Writing on India 1600-1800 (Delhi: OUP, 1995), p. 3
3. W.W. Hunter, A History of British India. 2 vols. (London: Longmans Green and Co., 1899), vol. 1, p. 237
4. Bailey W. Diffie, and George D. Winius, The Foundations of the Portuguese Empire, 1415-1580 (Minnesota: Minnesota UP, 1977), p. 313. A feltor, or factor, was a representative of the Portuguese king, whose task "was both to deal with foreign governments as the king's ambassador and to rule the Portuguese merchant community..." (also p. 313)
5. Diffie, p. 198
6. Luis Vaz de Camões, The Lusiads, trans. William C. Atkinson (Middlesex: Penguin, 1952), pp. 65, 58, 64, 85, 164, 168-70
7. Diffie, p. 224
8. R.S. Whiteway, The Rise of the Portuguese Power in India, 1497-1550 (Patna: Janaki Prakashan), 1979, pp. 60, 65-66
9. W. W. Hunter, vol. 1, p. 237
10. Hunter, vol. 1, pp. 237, 239-41
11. Shankar Raman, Framing "India": The Colonial Imaginary in Early Modern Culture (California: Stanford UP, 2002), p. 5
12. Raman, p. 244
13. Nabil Matar, Islam in Britain 1568-1685 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998), pp. 11, 9
14. Philip Lawson, The East India Company: A History, (London: Longman, 1993), pp. 20, 23
15. Quoted in J. Courtenay Locke, ed., The First Englishmen in India: Letters and Narratives of Sundry Elizabethans (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1930), pp. 31-32
16. John Keay, The Honourable Company: A History of the East India Company (London: Harper Collins, 1991), p. 10
17. David Armitage, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000), pp. 141-42
18. Thomas Roe, The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to the Court of the Great Mogul (1615-1619), ed. William Foster, vols. 1 & 2 (London: Bedford, 1899), vol. 2, p. 344
19. Singh, p. 22
20. Armitage, p. 61
21. Drayton is quoted in Armitage, p. 62
22. Armitage, p. 96
23. Singh, p.30
24. Roe, vol. 2, p. 283
25. Singh, pp. 38-39
26. Roe, vol. 1, pp. 113, 168
27. Roe, vol. 2, p. 312
28. In later writers who visited "India" in the latter half of the century, we see a highly complex portrayal of the Hindus. John Ovington admires the Hindus both for their intellect and the spiritual lives they lead: "[The Hindus] maintain a good habit of body, are as comly and proportionable as other people, and live to reckon as many years as those that pity their spare food. But in their thoughts they are often more quick and nimble, by that course of living they choose to delight in which renders their spirits more pure and subtle, and thereby greatly facilitates their comprehension of things." J. Ovington, A Voyage to Suratt in the Year 1689. India in the Seventeenth Century. ed. J.P. Guha. (Delhi: Associated Publishing House, 1984), p. 141
29. Keay, p. 99
30. Roe, vol. 1, p. 120
31. William Foster, "Introduction," The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to the Court of the Great Mogul (1615-1619), ed. William Foster, vols. 1 & 2 (London: Bedford, 1899), vol. 1, p. vi
32. Quoted in Foster, "Introduction," vol. 1, p. vi
33. Roe, vol. 2, p. 358
34. From a footnote by Foster on p. 134 of Roe's journal, vol 1. In fact the Company had almost taken it for granted that Roe would be getting an allowance from Jehangir, since it is made clear in the Company's agreement with Roe that part of his salary will be withdrawn when he gets an allowance from Jehangir. See Roe, vol. 2, p. 547
35. Roe, vol. 1, pp. 134, and vol. 2, 393
36. Roe. vol. 1, p. 183
37. Keay observes that the farman was "a grant, confirming all the Company's commercial and territorial privileges under the imperial seal, [which] would elevate its legal standing to a constitutionally equivalent to that of the various Nawabs and Governors with whom it was habitually embroiled" (Keay, p. 222)
38. Roe, vol. 2, pp. 350-51
39. Roe is quoted here in Foster's "Introduction," vol. 1, p. xxxvi
40. William Foster, ed., English Factories in India: 1618-21 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906), pp. 59, 79
41. Foster, ed., English Factories in India: 1618-21, pp. 215-16
42. Roe, vol. 1, p. 97
43. Roe, vol. 2, pp 343, 350-51
44. Roe quoted in Foster's "Introduction," vol. 1, p. xiii
45. Keay, p. 87
46. Roe, vol. 1, pp. 119-20
47. Keay, p. 100
48. Roe, vol. 1, pp. 163, 179
49. Keay, p. 96
50. Edward Terry, A Voyage to East-India (London: T.W. for J. Martin, 1655), pp. 394-96
51. Roe, vol. 1, pp. 108-109
52. Roe, vol. 1, pp. 97, 119
53. vol. 2, pp. 322, 324
54. Ovington, A Voyage to Surat in the Year 1689, p. 140
55. Terry, p. 350
56. Samuel Purchas, Haklutyus Posthumus or Purchas His Pilgrimes: Containing a History of the World in Sea Voyages and Lande Travells by Englishmen and others. vols. 3 & 4. 20 vols. (Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons, 1905-1907), vol. 3, p. 72
57. Purchas, vol. 3, p. 14
58. Foster, ed., English Factories in India: 1624-29 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909), p. 29
59. Alexander Hamilton, A New Account of the East Indies, Intro. William Foster, 2 vols. (London: Argonaut Press, 1930), p. 96
60. Michael Strachan, The Life and Adventures of Thomas Coryate (London: Oxford UP, 1962), p. 224
61. Thomas Coryat, Mr Thomas Coriat to his Friends in England Sendeth Greeting: From Agra the Capitall City of the Dominion of the Great Mogoll in the Easterne India, the laft of October, 1616, fiche 3
62. Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures (Delhi: Oxford UP, 1992), p. 189
63. Singh, pp. 23, 31
64. For a critique of Said's Orientalism in the context of my paper see Richmond Barbour, "Power and Distant Display in Early English, 'Ambassadors' in Moghul India," Huntington Library Quarterly, 61. 3 & 4 (1998), pp. 343-68
65. and his book Before Orientalsim (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003). Richmond Barbour in "Power and Distant Display in Early English 'Ambassadors' in Moghul India" observes that instead of representing the Mughal empire in barbaric or exotic terms, the travellers "left and saw that they left, their Mughal audiences with an impression of England as a peripheral and trifling realm. For domestic confidence in spectacles of state prompted envoys into performance that looked rather small abroad, at the same time their own theatricality equipped the English to read in Mogul spectacles the signs of an overestimating power" (347). In his recent book Before Orientalism Barbour has adjusted his position and deals in greater detail with representation of the Mughal empire and Jehangir in Roe's writings, by highlighting Roe's contradictory portrayal of the Mughal empire. However, Barbour docs not deal with the representations of the Mughal empire by other seventeenth-century English travel writers in any detail, which is needed for a more comprehensive understanding of Orientalism in the seventeenth century. Besides Roe, he argues that Edward Terry highlights the "unmanliness and effeminacy" of the "Indian" natives, when Terry states that Mughal soldiers "dare not look a man of courage in the face" (159). But, as I have argued, Terry's portrayal of life in the Mughal empire is far more comprehensive than simply representing the natives as effeminate or unmanly
66. Roe, vol. 1, pp. 238, 240-41
67. Roe, vol. 1. pp. 12-14
68. Terry, pp. 327, 331-33
69. Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart, (Oxford: Heinemann, 1958), p. 148
70. Terry, pp. 376, 419
71. Teltscher, pp. 24, 26
72. Quoted in Teltscher, p. 18
73. Terry, pp. 371-73
74. Teltscher, p. 19
75. Terry, p. 371
76. Terry, pp. 405, 409, 392
77. Terry, p. 410. Because of the abundance of quotations from Terry that follow, page numbers will appear in brackets after each, all from the same text
78. For all the eight commandments see Terry's A Voyage to East-India (London: T.W. for J. Martin, 1655), pp. 420-21
79. Roe, vol. 2, pp. 382, 313, 367
80. Hawkins, p. 45
81. Purchas, vol. 4, pp. 474, 492-93
82. Purchas, vol. 4, p. 475