Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-25wd4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T18:56:14.767Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

THE DIPLOMATIC REPERTOIRES OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANIES IN MUGHAL SOUTH ASIA, 1608–1717

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2019

GUIDO VAN MEERSBERGEN
GUIDO VAN MEERSBERGEN*
Affiliation:
University of Warwick
*
Department of History, University of Warwick, Humanities Building, University Road, Coventry, cv4 7alg.van-meersbergen@warwick.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article presents the first survey of the full range of diplomatic interactions between the Mughal Empire and the English and Dutch East India Companies (EIC and VOC) in the period 1608–1717. It proposes a typology of the six different modes of diplomacy practised by the EIC and VOC as a means to understand better the distinct nature of corporate diplomacy. Moving its focus beyond exceptional embassies, this article demonstrates that by far the most common forms of Company diplomatic activity consisted of low-profile petitioning at the imperial centre and ongoing political interactions with provincial and local power-holders. It draws on c. fifty distinct episodes to chart how Dutch and English diplomatic repertoires in South Asia took shape in response to local demands and conventions. Both Companies petitioned Mughal emperors in much the same way as Indian subjects did, and both relied on Mughal patrons to do so. Cast in the role of supplicants seeking imperial favour and protection, Company envoys presented themselves as obliging participants in the ceremonial performance of an asymmetrical relationship. By tying commercial privileges to expectations of submission and service, the imperial government proceeded to incorporate these foreign actors into a domestic political framework.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 62 , Issue 4 , December 2019 , pp. 875 - 898
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

The research and writing of this article were made possible through the support of a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship (ECF–2016–477). I would like to thank the editors and two anonymous reviewers of the Historical Journal for their valuable comments which helped improve this article.

References

1 The principal source for all scholarship on Roe are the ambassador's detailed journals, whose ready availability in print was instrumental in achieving their canonical status: Foster, William, ed., The embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to the court of the Great Mogul, 1615–1619 (2 vols., London, 1899; 2nd edn London, 1926)Google Scholar. Citations are from the two-volume 1899 edition, with the exception of material which only appears in the one-volume 1926 edition.

2 For the embassy's fullest treatment, see Mitchell, Colin Paul, Sir Thomas Roe and the Mughal empire (Karachi, 2000)Google Scholar. As is often the case for Mughal–European diplomacy, there are no Mughal sources that recount Roe's embassy.

3 We lack a comparative synthesis of this important topic. Standard works on diplomatic history pay little attention to Euro–Indian relations before the mid-eighteenth century. For instance Black, Jeremy, A history of diplomacy (London, 2010)Google Scholar. The main exception is Alexandrowicz, C. H., An introduction to the history of the law of nations in the East Indies (16th, 17th and 18th centuries) (Oxford, 1967)Google Scholar.

4 Foster, ed., Embassy (1899), ii, p. 346.

5 See Teltscher, Kate, India inscribed: European and British writing on India, 1600–1800 (Delhi, 1995)Google Scholar; Singh, Jyotsna G., Colonial narratives/cultural dialogues: ‘discoveries’ of India in the language of colonialism (London and New York, NY, 1996)Google Scholar. Cf. Barbour, Richmond, Before Orientalism: London's theatre of the East, 1576–1626 (Cambridge, 2003)Google Scholar; Chida-Razvi, Mehreen M., ‘The perception of reception: the importance of Sir Thomas Roe at the Mughal court of Jahangir’, Journal of World History, 25 (2014), pp. 263–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 The idea that Roe radically misread Mughal political culture was first formulated by Bernard Cohn in 1985. See Cohn, Bernard S., Colonialism and its forms of knowledge: the British in India (Princeton, NJ, 1996), pp. 16–56Google Scholar; Teltscher, India inscribed; Singh, Colonial narratives/cultural dialogues. Critiques include Pinch, William R., ‘Same difference in India and Europe’, History and Theory, 38 (1999), pp. 389–407CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, ‘Frank submissions: the Company and the Mughals between Sir Thomas Roe and Sir William Norris’, in Bowen, H. V., Lincoln, Margarette, and Rigby, Nigel, eds., The worlds of the East India Company (Woodbridge, 2002), pp. 69–96Google Scholar; Das, Nandini, ‘“Apes of imitation”: imitation and identity in Sir Thomas Roe's embassy to India’, in Singh, Jyotsna G., ed., A companion to the global Renaissance: English literature and culture in the era of expansion (Oxford, 2009), pp. 114–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, Courtly encounters: translating courtliness and violence in early modern Eurasia (Cambridge, MA, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Siebenhüner, Kim, ‘Approaching diplomatic and courtly gift-giving in Europe and Mughal India: shared practices and cultural diversity’, Medieval History Journal, 16 (2013), pp. 525–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a partial return to the position of mistranslation, see Truschke, Audrey, ‘Deceptive familiarity: European perceptions of access at the Mughal court’, in Raeymaekers, Dries and Derks, Sebastiaan, eds., The key to power? The culture of access in princely courts, 1400–1750 (Leiden, 2016), pp. 65–99Google Scholar.

7 See van Gelder, Maartje and Krstić, Tijana, ‘Introduction: cross-confessional diplomacy and diplomatic intermediaries in the early modern Mediterranean’, Journal of Early Modern History, 19 (2015), pp. 93–105CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Osborne, Toby and Rubiés, Joan-Pau, ‘Introduction: diplomacy and cultural translation in the early modern world’, Journal of Early Modern History, 20 (2016), pp. 313–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sowerby, Tracey A., ‘Early modern diplomatic history’, History Compass, 14 (2016), pp. 441–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Another reason is the relative neglect of Portuguese diplomacy in Mughal India, which falls outside the scope of this article. A recent exception is Flores, Jorge, Unwanted neighbours: the Mughals, the Portuguese, and their frontier zones (New Delhi, 2018)Google Scholar.

9 Barbour, Richmond, ‘Power and distant display: early English “ambassadors” in Moghul India’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 61 (1998), pp. 343–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ogborn, Miles, Indian ink: script in the making of the English East India Company (Chicago, IL, 2007), ch. 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Das, Harihar and Sarkar, S. C., eds., The Norris embassy to Aurangzib (1699–1702) (Calcutta, 1959)Google Scholar; Subrahmanyam, ‘Frank submissions’. For brief but valuable discussions of the missions led by George Weldon (1689) and John Surman (1715–17), see Stern, Philip J., The company-state: corporate sovereignty and the early modern foundations of the British empire in India (Oxford, 2011), pp. 123–4, 199–203CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Fisher, Michael H., ‘Diplomacy in India, 1526–1858’, in Bowen, H. V., Mancke, Elizabeth, and Reid, John G., eds., Britain's oceanic empire: Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds, c. 1550–1850 (Cambridge, 2012), pp. 249–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Foster, William, ed., The English factories in India 1618–1621 [to] 1668–1669: a calendar of documents in the India Office, British Museum and Public Record Office (13 vols., Oxford, 1906–27)Google Scholar (EFI); Wilson, C. R., ed., The early annals of the English in Bengal, being the Bengal public consultations for the first half of the eighteenth century (3 vols., Calcutta, 1895–1917)Google Scholar.

11 Recent works with a South Asian focus include Lodewijk Wagenaar, ‘“Met eer en respect”: diplomatieke contacten tussen de VOC-gouverneur in Colombo en het hof van het koninkrijk Kandy, 1703–1707’, in Locher-Scholten, Elsbeth and Rietbergen, Peter, eds., Hof en handel: Aziatische vorsten en de VOC 1620–1720 (Leiden, 2004), pp. 227–50Google Scholar; Vink, Markus, Mission to Madurai: Dutch embassies to the Nayaka court of Madurai in the seventeenth century (New Delhi, 2012)Google Scholar; Bes, Lennart, ‘Sultan among Dutchmen: royal dress at court audiences in South India, as portrayed in local works of art and Dutch embassy reports, seventeenth–eighteenth centuries’, Modern Asian Studies, 50 (2016), pp. 1792–845CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 On Bacherus, see Scheurleer, Pauline Lunsingh and Kruijtzer, Gijs, ‘Camping with the Mughal emperor: a Golkonda artist portrays a Dutch ambassador in 1689’, Arts of Asia, 35 (2005), pp. 48–60Google Scholar; Meersbergen, Guido van, ‘Kijken en bekeken worden: een Nederlandse gezant in Delhi, 1677–1678’, in Wagenaar, Lodewijk, ed., Aan de overkant: ontmoetingen in dienst van de VOC en WIC (1600–1800) (Leiden, 2015), pp. 201–16Google Scholar. On Van Adrichem and Ketelaar, see Vogel, J. Ph., ed., Journaal van J. J. Ketelaar's hofreis naar den Groot Mogol te Lahore, 1711–1713 (The Hague, 1937)Google Scholar; Kempers, A. J. Bernet, ed., Journaal van Dircq van Adrichem's hofreis naar den Groot-Mogol Aurangzēb, 1662 (The Hague, 1941)Google Scholar; van Santen, Hans, Op bezoek bij de Groot-Mogol: twee hofreizen van de VOC naar de Groot-Mogol in India, 1662 en 1711–1713 (Leiden, 2016)Google Scholar; van Meersbergen, Guido, ‘The Dutch merchant-diplomat in comparative perspective: embassies to the court of Aurangzeb, 1660–1666’, in Sowerby, Tracey A. and Hennings, Jan, eds., Practices of diplomacy in the early modern world, c. 1410–1800 (New York, NY, 2017), pp. 147–65Google Scholar; Frank Birkenholz, ‘Merchant-kings and lords of the world: diplomatic gift-exchange between the Dutch East India Company and the Safavid and Mughal empires in the seventeenth century’, in Sowerby and Hennings, eds., Practices of diplomacy, pp. 219–36.

13 However, see Van Santen, Op bezoek, pp. 39–51.

14 The debate around the presumed incommensurability of Mughal and European diplomatic cultures goes back to Cohn, Colonialism and its forms of knowledge. For the principal counter-case, see Subrahmanyam, Courtly encounters.

15 This is true for the Atlantic as much as for Asia. See Meuwese, Mark, Brothers in arms, partners in trade: Dutch–indigenous alliances in the Atlantic world, 1595–1674 (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brauner, Christina, ‘Connecting things: trading companies and diplomatic gift-giving on the Gold and Slave Coasts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’, Journal of Early Modern History, 20 (2016), pp. 408–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 For ‘non-state’ and ‘sub-state’ actors, see Osborne and Rubiés, ‘Introduction’, pp. 318, 320. For ‘interpolity’, see Benton, Lauren and Clulow, Adam, ‘Legal encounters and the origins of global law’, in Bentley, Jerry H., Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, and Wieser-Hanks, Merry E., eds., The Cambridge world history, vi: The construction of a global world, 1400–1800 CE, part 2 (Cambridge, 2015), pp. 80–100CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Early exponents of the ‘New Diplomatic History’ are Frigo, Daniela, ed., Belton, Adrian, trans., Politics and diplomacy in early modern Italy: the structure of diplomatic practice, 1450–1800 (Cambridge, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Windler, Christian, Diplomatie comme experience de l'autre: consuls français au Maghreb (1700–1840) (Geneva, 2002)Google Scholar.

18 Jan Hennings and Tracey A. Sowerby, ‘Introduction: practices of diplomacy’, in Sowerby and Hennings, eds., Practices of diplomacy, pp. 1–21, at p. 5.

19 Goffman, Daniel, ‘Negotiating with the Renaissance state: the Ottoman Empire and the new diplomacy’, in Aksan, Virginia H. and Goffman, Daniel, eds., The early modern Ottomans: remapping the empire (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 61–74, at p. 66Google Scholar; Talbot, Michael, British–Ottoman relations, 1661–1807: commerce and diplomatic practice in eighteenth-century Istanbul (Woodbridge, 2017)Google Scholar.

20 This understanding accords with Michael Fisher's definition of diplomacy as ‘efforts at negotiating sustained political relations among polities’, but places greater emphasis on seeing the Companies as political entities operating within as much as outside the Mughal imperial framework. Fisher, ‘Diplomacy in India’, p. 250.

21 van Goor, Jurrien, Prelude to colonialism: the Dutch in Asia (Hilversum, 2004), pp. 7–25Google Scholar; Stern, The company-state.

22 Weststeijn, Arthur, ‘“Love alone is not enough”: treaties in seventeenth-century Dutch colonial expansion’, in Belmessous, Saliha, ed., Empire by treaty: negotiating European expansion, 1600–1900 (Oxford, 2015), pp. 19–44Google Scholar.

23 Robert Travers, ‘A British empire by treaty in eighteenth-century India’, in Belmessous, ed., Empire by treaty, pp. 132–60.

24 This process is best documented for the VOC, whose diplomatic presence outside the Indian subcontinent was most extensive: Matthee, Rudi, ‘Negotiating across cultures: the Dutch Van Leene mission to the Iranian court of Šāh Sulaymān, 1689–1692’, Eurasian Studies, 3 (2004), pp. 35–63Google Scholar; Wills, John E. Jr, ed., China and maritime Europe, 1500–1800: trade, settlement, diplomacy, and missions (Cambridge, 2011)Google Scholar; Clulow, Adam, The company and the shogun: the Dutch encounter with Tokugawa Japan (New York, NY, 2014)Google Scholar.

25 Stern, The company-state, p. 13.

26 Pettigrew, William A., ‘Corporate constitutionalism and the dialogue between the global and the local in seventeenth-century English history’, Itinerario, 39 (2015), pp. 487–501, at p. 490CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Clulow, Adam, ‘Gifts for the shogun: the Dutch East India Company, global networks and Tokugawa Japan’, in Biedermann, Zoltán, Gerritsen, Anne, and Riello, Giorgio, eds., Global gifts: the material culture of diplomacy in early modern Eurasia (Cambridge, 2017), pp. 198–216, at p. 205CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 Matthee, ‘Negotiating across cultures’, p. 37.

29 Fisher, ‘Diplomacy in India’, p. 254; Bührer, Tanja, ‘Cooperation and cultural adaptation: British diplomats at the court of the nizam of Hyderabad, c. 1779–1815’, in Bührer, Tanja, Eichmann, Flavio, Förster, Stig, and Stuchtey, Benedikt, eds., Cooperation and empire: local realities and global processes (New York, NY, and Oxford, 2017), pp. 90–114, at p. 106Google Scholar.

30 On ‘corporate sovereignty’, see Stern, The company-state. On the legal foundations of VOC diplomacy, see Somers, J. A., De VOC als volkenrechtelijke actor (Deventer, 2001)Google Scholar; van Ittersum, Martine Julia, Profit and principle: Hugo Grotius, natural rights theories and the rise of Dutch power in the East Indies, 1595–1615 (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 Nor did VOC representatives in the Mughal Empire carry letters from the prince of Orange, unlike in other parts of Asia. See Somers, De VOC, p. 53.

32 Heeres, J. E. and Stapel, F. W., eds., Corpus diplomaticum neerlando-indicum: verzameling van politieke contracten en verdere verdragen door de Nederlanders in het Oosten gesloten, van privilegiebrieven, aan hen verleend, enz. (6 vols., The Hague, 1907–55), i, p. 281Google Scholar.

33 Foster, ed., EFI 1661–1664, p. 315; translated farman by Aurangzeb, 23 Jumada al-Awwal in 31st year of reign [5 Mar. 1690], London, British Library (BL), IOR/E/3/48, fo. 156.

34 Regarding the Mughals, it has been argued that ‘[t]he entire notion of a treaty itself was foreign to them’: Ali, M. Athar, Mughal India, studies in polity, ideas, society, and culture (Oxford, 2006), p. 313Google Scholar.

35 Prakash, Om, The Dutch East India Company and the economy of Bengal, 1630–1720 (Princeton, NJ, 1985), pp. 43–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 For Mughal edicts in contemporary Dutch translation, see Heeres and Stapel, eds., Corpus diplomaticum, passim. For translated farmans granted to the EIC: Foster, ed., EFI 1655–1660, pp. 411–16.

37 For Roe's instructions: Foster, ed., Embassy (1899), ii, pp. 547–53. While the moral and legal status of treaties with non-Christians remained contested in seventeenth-century Europe, the VOC and EIC rejected such objections: Tuck, Richard, ‘Alliances with infidels in the European imperial expansion’, in Muthu, Sankar, ed., Empire and modern political thought (Cambridge, 2012), pp. 61–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 Roe first voiced these concerns within weeks of arriving at Jahangir's court: Foster, ed., Embassy (1899), i, pp. 119–20.

39 The classic statement is de Wicquefort, Abraham, L'ambassadeur et ses fonctions (Cologne, 1690), pp. 3–5Google Scholar; cf. Mattingly, Garrett, Renaissance diplomacy (Boston, MA, 1955)Google Scholar.

40 Foster, ed., Embassy (1899), i, p. 358; Gordon, Stewart, ed., Robes of honour: khil'at in pre-colonial and colonial India (New Delhi, 2003)Google Scholar.

41 Foster, ed., Embassy (1899), i, p. 73, ii, p. 508; Foster, ed., Embassy (1926), pp. 139–40.

42 On the tensions inherent in Roe's dual charge, see Mitchell, Sir Thomas Roe, pp. 147–8; Barbour, Before Orientalism, pp. 155–6; Mishra, Rupali, ‘Diplomacy at the edge: split interests in the Roe embassy to the Mughal court’, Journal of British Studies, 53 (2014), pp. 5–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 Das and Sarkar, eds., The Norris embassy, pp. 24–8, 40–52; Stern, The company-state, pp. 156–68.

44 William III to Aurangzeb, Kensington, 1 Jan. 1698/9, BL, Add. MS 31302, fo. 3r–v; cf. Foster, ed., Embassy (1899), ii, pp. 553–4, 557–60. Rather than seeking to conclude mutual articles, William III requested Aurangzeb to grant English merchants ‘yo.r Favour & Protection’.

45 Foster, ed., Embassy (1926), pp. 139–40.

46 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MSS Rawl. C. 912, fo. 33.

47 Foster, ed., Embassy (1899), i, p. 244; Das and Sarkar, eds., The Norris embassy, p. 313.

48 Das and Sarkar, eds., The Norris embassy, pp. 266–74, 307–8.

49 Bodleian Library, MSS. Rawl. C. 913, fo. 97.

50 Das and Sarkar, eds., The Norris embassy, pp. 271–4.

51 ‘The answer of the King of England the wearer of Hats, concerning what was demanded of the Ambassador by His Exalted Highness the Paymaster General of the Empire Rūhūllah Khan’, BL, MSS Eur. D. 1075.

52 Their ideological claims to universal rule notwithstanding, Mughal emperors acknowledged foreign sovereigns and engaged in diplomatic exchange particularly with the Safavids, Uzbeks, and Ottomans: Islam, Riazul, Indo–Persian relations: a study of the political and diplomatic relations between the Mughul Empire and Iran (Tehran, 1970)Google Scholar; Farooqi, N. R., ‘Diplomacy and diplomatic procedure under the Mughals’, Medieval History Journal, 7 (2004), pp. 59–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Athar Ali, Mughal India, pp. 311–12.

53 An earlier expression is Akbar's reference to a universal ‘family…of princes’ in his 1582 letter to Philip II: Koch, Ebba, ‘How the Mughal pādshāhs referenced Iran in their visual construction of universal rule’, in Bang, Peter Fibiger and Kolodziejczyk, Darius, eds., Universal empire: a comparative approach to imperial culture and representation in Eurasian history (Cambridge, 2012), pp. 194–209, at p. 196CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54 Prior to Oldenburgh's commission, the VOC relied for political representation at Jahangir's court on its agents in Agra, first Wouter Heuten and later Hendrick Arentsz. Vapour. The audiences of Pieter Gillis van Ravesteyn (1618) and Pieter van den Broecke (1627) at the court of Prince Khurram (the later Emperor Shah Jahan), in Ahmadabad and outside Surat respectively, are more accurately seen as examples of provincial diplomacy. See Terpstra, H., De opkomst der Westerkwartieren van de Oost-Indische Compagnie (Suratte, Arabië, Perzië) (The Hague, 1918), pp. 68–9Google Scholar; Coolhaas, W. Ph., ed., Pieter van den Broecke in Azië (2 vols., The Hague, 1962–3), ii, pp. 336–7Google Scholar.

55 Instruction to Marcus Oldenburgh by Philip Lucasz, Swally, 30 Apr. 1633, The Hague, Nationaal Archief (NL-HaNA), 1.11.01.01 (Aanwinsten), inv. no. 119, fos. 415–21.

56 Vogel, ed., Journaal, pp. 41, 72, 79.

57 Ibid., pp. 102, 348, 400.

58 For Bacherus, see NL-HaNA, 1.04.02 (VOC), inv. nos. 1475 and 1510.

59 Wilson, ed., Early annals, ii.2: ‘the Surman embassy’.

60 Ibid., pp. xx–iv.

61 Foster, William, ed., Early travels in India, 1583–1619 (Oxford, 1921), pp. 60–121Google Scholar.

62 Barbour, ‘Power and distant display’; Foster, ed., EFI 1618–1621, pp. xv–ix, xxxiii, 251.

63 Foster, ed., EFI 1624–1629, pp. viii, xvii; Foster, ed., EFI 1624–1629, p. 32; Foster, ed., EFI 1624–1629, pp. 171–4.

64 Foster, ed., EFI 1624–1629, pp. 204–6; Foster, ed., EFI 1634–1636, p. xxvi and passim; Foster, ed., EFI 1637–1641, p. xx; Foster, ed., EFI 1642–1645, p. x; Foster, ed., EFI 1646–1650, pp. xxii–iii; Foster, ed., EFI 1655–1660, pp. 317–18. For Weldon and Navarro, see BL, Western Manuscripts, Sloane MSS 1910, fos. 45–58.

65 Athar Ali, Mughal India, pp. 308–9; Hasan, Farhat, State and locality in Mughal India: power relations in western India, c. 1572–1730 (Cambridge, 2004), p. 42Google Scholar.

66 Foster, ed., EFI 1646–1650, p. 303; translated farman by Aurangzeb, 23 Jumada al-Awwal in 31st year of reign [5 Mar. 1690], BL, IOR/E/47, fo. 156.

67 ‘A List of the Priviledges and Immunitys desired for the Factorys belonging to the New English Society and Company Trading to the East Indies att Metchlapatam and other places its dependences’, n.d. [1701], BL, IOR/E/61, no. 7552.

68 Consequently, some Company agents looked towards tributary rajas’ dealings with the Mughal court for guidance: Edward Littleton et al. to William Norris, Hugli, 22 Apr. 1701, BL, IOR/E/61, no. 7549; Wilson, ed., Early annals, ii, p. 251.

69 Manuscript journals are available for the 1648, 1653, 1656, and 1677 missions: NL-HaNA, VOC, inv. nos. 1168, 1201, 1210, and 1323. See also van Santen, Hans Walther, VOC-dienaar in India: Geleynssen de Jongh in het land van de Groot-Mogol (Franeker, 2001)Google Scholar; Bernet Kempers, ed., Journaal, pp. 1–11; Van Santen, Op Bezoek, pp. 39–51; Coolhaas, W. Ph. et al. , eds., Generale missiven van Gouverneurs-Generaal en Raden aan Heren XVII der Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (13 vols., The Hague, 1960–2007), i, pp. 236, 381, 724, ii, pp. 144, 341, 415, 547–8Google Scholar.

70 Van Santen, Op bezoek, pp. 49–51.

71 Van Santen, VOC-dienaar, pp. 164–8; Van Santen, Op bezoek, pp. 41–5.

72 Roe called the arrangement an ‘inconvenience’ born of ‘necessitie’: Foster, ed., Embassy (1899), i, p. 181.

73 Coolhaas et al., eds., Generale missiven, ii, pp. 43–5.

74 About these noblemen, see Nawwāb Samsām-Ud-Daula Shāh Nawāz Khān and ‘Abdull Hayy, H. Beveridge, trans., The maāthir-ul-umarā: neing biographies of the Muhammadan and Hindu officers of the Timurid sovereigns of India from 1500 to about 1780 a.d., ed. Prashad, Baini (2 vols., Calcutta, 1911–52), i, pp. 295–9, 662–3, 767–70, ii, pp. 281–2Google Scholar.

75 Ibid., i, pp. 614–15.

76 Translated letter from Huri Khanam to Gerardo Pelgrom, received in Surat on 17 Oct. 1652, NL-HaNA, VOC 1201, fo. 771r; diary Joan Berckhout and Joan Tack, Agra and Delhi, 26 Dec. 1652 to 30 Mar. 1653, NL-HaNA, VOC 1201, fos. 759–70.

77 Vogel, ed., Journaal, pp. 65, 136–8; Zaman, Taymiya R., ‘Visions of Juliana: a Portuguese woman at the court of the Mughals’, Journal of World History, 23 (2012), pp. 761–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

78 Vogel, ed., Journaal, pp. 133–5, 197–8; Wilson, ed., Early annals, ii.2, pp. xx–iv; Bernet Kempers, ed., Journaal, pp. 91, 117–18, 122, 158, 176.

79 Petition John Child to Aurangzeb, Bombay, n.d. [Feb. 1689], BL, IOR E/3/47, fo. 224.

80 Foster, ed., Early travels, p. 80; Foster, ed., EFI 1651–1654, pp. 49–50; extract from the diary of Johannes Bacherus at the Mughal court in Delhi, 11 Sept. 1677, NL-HaNA, VOC 1323, fo. 630v.

81 Vink, Mission to Madurai, pp. 49–50.

82 Foster, ed., EFI 1668–1669, p. 181.

83 Foster, ed., EFI 1655–1660, p. 303. The caste label bania refers to members of Indian mercantile professions.

84 Foster, ed., EFI 1665–1667, pp. 273–4.

85 Consultation Fort St George, 27 Feb. 1687: Records of Fort St. George: diary and consultation book of 1687 (Madras, 1916), p. 38Google Scholar.

86 Consultation Fort St George, 5 Dec. 1687: ibid., p. 191.

87 Copy secret resolutions regarding negotiations with the Mughal court, Surat, 3 June 1700, NL-HaNA, VOC 11316.

88 Ibid.

89 Vogel, ed., Journaal, p. 343.

90 Hasan, Farhat, ‘Conflict and cooperation in Anglo–Mughal trade relations during the reign of Aurangzeb’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 34 (1991), pp. 351–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Meersbergen, Guido van, ‘Diplomacy in a provincial setting: the East India Companies in seventeenth-century Bengal and Orissa’, in Clulow, Adam and Mostert, Tristan, eds., The Dutch and English East India Companies: diplomacy, trade and violence in early modern Asia (Amsterdam, 2018), pp. 55–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

91 My use of the notion ‘trans-imperial’ draws on Rothman, E. Nathalie, Brokering empire: trans-imperial subjects between Venice and Istanbul (Ithaca, NY, and London, 2012)Google Scholar.

92 An interesting parallel is found in the context of Spanish expansion in North Africa: Paez, José Miguel Escribano, ‘Negotiating with the “infidel”: imperial expansion and cross-confessional diplomacy in the early modern Maghreb (1492–1516)’, Itinerario, 40 (2016), pp. 189–214CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

93 Foster, ed., EFI 1661–1664, p. 186.

94 Van Meersbergen, ‘Kijken en bekeken worden’, p. 205.

95 Copy secret resolutions, Surat, 3 June 1700, NL-HaNA, VOC 11316.

96 Heeres and Stapel, eds., Corpus diplomaticum, i, pp. 521–8.

97 ‘A Diary of all occurrances of our Expedition to Daman in order to the making a peace between the English Nation and the Mogull’, 29 May – 23 Sept. 1689, BL, Sloane MSS 1910, fos. 47r–57v.

98 Bruton, William, Newes from the East-Indies: or, a voyage to Bengalla, one of the greatest kingdomes under the high and mighty prince pedesha Shasallem, usually called the Great Mogull (London, 1638)Google Scholar; van der Chijs, J. A. et al. , eds., Dagh-register gehouden int Casteel Batavia vant passerende daer ter plaetse als over geheel Nederlandts-India (31 vols., The Hague and Batavia, 1887–1931), 1637, p. 99Google Scholar.

99 Coolhaas et al., eds., Generale missiven, ii, pp. 411–12; Foster, ed., EFI 1651–1654, pp. xxvi–vii.

100 Foster, ed., EFI 1661–1664, pp. 394–5; NL-HaNA, VOC 1288, fos. 74–79; Coolhaas et al., eds., Generale missiven, iii, p. 944.

101 Van der Chijs et al., eds., Dagh-register Batavia 1665, pp. 42–5.

102 Blake, Stephen P., Shahjahanabad: the sovereign city in Mughal India, 1639–1739 (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 96–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

103 Yule, Henry and Barlow, R., eds., The diary of William Hedges, esq. (afterwards Sir William Hedges), during his agency in Bengal; as well as on his voyage out and return overland (1681–1687) (3 vols., London, 1887–9), i, pp. 42–58Google Scholar.

104 Foster, ed., EFI 1661–1664, p. 205.

105 Coolhaas et al., eds., Generale missiven, ii, p. 799; cf. consultation Fort St George, 24 Oct. 1674: Records of Fort St. George: diary and consultation book 1672–1678 (Madras, 1910), p. 33Google Scholar.

106 Travers, ‘A British empire by treaty’.

107 See for a detailed treatment Vink, Markus, Encounters on the opposite coast: the Dutch East India Company and the Nayaka state of Madurai in the seventeenth century (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2016)Google Scholar.

108 Blussé, Leonard, ‘Peeking into the empires: Dutch embassies to the courts of China and Japan’, Itinerario, 37 (2013), pp. 13–29, at p. 18CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Feddersen, Carl Fredrik, Principled pragmatism: VOC interaction with Makassar 1637–1668, and the nature of company diplomacy (Agder, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.