SAINTPLUME

Sir Thomas Roe in Mughal India

By M.A. — Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

In the delicate pages of his diary, the English envoy left not treaties, but sighs: of jasmine nights and a court where every word was a blade.

When Sir Thomas Roe arrived at the glittering court of Emperor Jahangir in 1615, it was with silk, wine, and careful words. Appointed as ambassador by King James I, Roe's mission was to negotiate trade privileges for the English East India Company in a land already watched over by Portuguese, Dutch, and Persian eyes.

Yet it is not the treaties Roe forged that linger. It is his diary.

Across four years in India, Roe recorded not only formal audiences but the tremble of a peacock's feathers at dawn, the scent of narcissus in the imperial gardens, and the fierce rivalries that bloomed in every marble chamber. He wrote of Jahangir's opium-soaked evenings, of courtiers whose smiles were daggers, and of how a single misplaced word could end a man.

On February 6, 1617, Roe confided:
"The King commandeth without reason, his justice is bloody, and his word a law. I have seen men struck down before him without cause, and their bodies cast away without notice."

The ambassador’s frustrations and fascination bled onto the page. The privileges he sought were delayed, tangled in the Mughal court’s intricate etiquette. Roe’s position was precarious, his English manners alien to the subcontinent’s rhythms. He wrote often of being ignored for weeks, of bribes demanded in riddles, and of his longing for familiar stars.

His final audience was bittersweet. The envoy knew his mission’s limits. As Roe departed in 1619, his diary whispered of a court where alliances were gardens that withered overnight. The grants he secured paled beside the richness of his observations: a document where history lives not in decrees, but in the softness of rosewater at dusk.

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