ENGLAND, MUGHAL INDIA AND THE ORIGINS OF EMPIRE
Bloomsbury, 480pp, £30
In 1614, Sir Thomas Roe led the first English embassy to the Indian subcontinent, but his meeting with the Mughal Emperor. ‘For at the time, as Das shows, England was a place of little consequence, least of all to the mighty Mughals… Born in Bengal, Das is now a professor of early modern English literature at Oxford and is as sure-footed and knowledgeable about the politics and arts of Jacobean London as she is about those of the Mughal court.
