The book captures a relatively brief but hugely important period, between 1580s and 1615, in which the Portuguese padroado missionaries (Jesuits) and the servants of the English East India Company encountered each other at the Mughal court, during the late Akbar’s and the early Jahangir’s reign. The two European “missions,” one part of a religious and the other of a mercantile institution, were both rivals and, at times, collaborators facing an increasingly powerful and politically sophisticated Islamicate empire. The author chronicles the triangular political negotiations of the three principal groups of actors through Portuguese, Spanish, Latin, and English sources, mostly Jesuit letters and treatises, and travel accounts, in addition, to some well-known translations from Persian and Dutch.
According to the early Jesuit narratives, the essence of the interaction with the two Mughal emperors followed a scenario of constant court intrigues, diplomatic maneuvers, and often “dissimulated” friendship. Similarly, the emperors played the game of hide-and-seek with the English merchants and the eic representatives depending on the momentary general political chessboard and power relations between the Mughals and their various neighbors, Portuguese included. The relationship between English Protestants and the Jesuits, who were reluctant, but faithful representatives of the Catholic empire, was mostly and predictably fraught with distrust, enmity, and competition. However, on a few occasions, Jesuits did apply, strategically, Christian charity to the people they considered heretics.
While Europeans, or firangis, in the Mughal parlance, speak directly through their letters and accounts, Akbar’s actions are either explained in a hagiographic mode in Akbarnama written by his biographer and ideological consultant Abu’l Fazl or in other Mughal chronicles, some hostile, such as ‘Abd al-Qadir Bada’uni’s Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh, and by Europeans. Both Akbar and Jahangir who wrote, or dictated, their own memoirs, rarely mentioned firangis, except for the Jesuits (112, 129). This is so because the office of the Mughal emperor included managing multiple political alliances and rivalries with continental political units and groups (Safavids, Uzbeks, Deccani sultanates, etc.), who mattered more and were more immediately menacing than the Europeans. It is refreshing to read Melo’s text without excessive and undue emphasis on European agency. Mughal capacity to manipulate the situation at every moment and play English and Jesuits against each other is well staged and substantiated. In fact, each party was trying to double-cross the others, although the major players were the two Mughal emperors.
In the short first chapter, the author introduces the characters and the geographical setting of the events taking place mostly between Lahore and Agra where the Mughal court alternately resided, as well as some elements of previous historiography addressing the major topic of the book: the trilateral encounters. Chapter two focuses on the events leading to the first Jesuit mission (1580–83), showing clearly to what extent both the Portuguese and the Mughals considered the encounter a diplomatic and information-gathering enterprise. Estado da Índia’s interest was to spy on Mughal movements and plans, while Akbar wanted to make sure that the Portuguese did not disturb his political and military expansion on the subcontinent (Gujarat, Bengal, and Deccan). The two powers, one maritime and the other continental were in the process of assessing each other’s political and military weight by negotiating the cartazes or maritime passports that the Portuguese imposed on all ships in the Indian Ocean, and through the Mughal embassies to Goa. It was during the second embassy (1579) that Akbar requested to have “two learned priests” sent to the court. Therefore, the Jesuits played multiple roles from the start as ambassadors, learned men, priests, and spies for the Estado da Índia. Akbar, on the other hand, used Jesuits to learn about Europe and its “curiosities,” and to maintain the channel for negotiations with Goa. By focusing on diplomacy and political events, Melo thankfully avoided inflating his narrative with the Jesuit hagiographical viewpoint. He showed that both sides used manipulation and distrusted each other. In Jesuit words, in chapter three, repeated for both Akbar and Jahangir, the emperors “dissimulated” friendship, but so did the Jesuits who provided strategic information, in letters and in the two important treatises, on the Mughal army and the emperor’s objects in relation to Goa.
In the third chapter, the author gives space to the second Mughal mission, which is usually dismissed as ineffective and short-lived. However, the three Portuguese Jesuits reported lucidly on Akbar’s ideological make-over as a spiritual authority and cosmopolitan and sacred king. They perceived Akbar’s reform as making a “new religion” and exploiting Jesuits and Catholicism for that same purpose. Contrary to certain historians who consider Jesuit missionaries at the Mughal court as dimwits unable to understand the situation, in particular Akbar’s intrigues and Jahangir’s playfulness, it is clear that Jesuits were not “stupid” but played their assigned roles just like all others.
The fourth chapter traces a troubled relationship between John Mildenhall and Jerónimo Xavier, both of whom competed for the attention of the Mughal emperors between 1603 and 1606. The author is interested in particular in “the role of non-state actors” in the processes and practices of diplomatic cross-cultural negotiations. The plot thickened, and the interest of this book, in the fifth and sixth chapters, when the three major actors started to know each other better and devised more aggressive and dissembling strategies. After relatively difficult accession to the throne, Jahangir decided to send various embassies to Goa and to Lisbon, and Madrid that never materialized. His request to be married to a Christian princess remained unheeded. In general, however, Jahangir’s major interest was to keep the Portuguese in check and try to ensure free maritime traffic for the Mughal navy in the Indian Ocean.
The arrival of the first English ship to Surat in 1608, captained by William Hawkins, inaugurated a series of English accounts of the Mughal Empire (by Hawkins, William Finch, Robert Corvete, John Jourdain, Thomas Kerridge, etc.) and the evil-doing Jesuits. The English embassy directly menaced the Jesuit presentation of Christianity as a unified religion of the firangis presided by the pope. Jahangir awarded Hawkins a mansabdar of 3,200 pounds per year, and addressed him as a khan (“English Chan”), just as the Jesuits were considered Christian mullahs. These honorifics were nothing but a well-thought-out scheme to pitch them against each other and to pressure Goan authorities to conform to Mughal interests. It also meant that Hawkins had been incorporated into Jahangir’s service, which turned out to be both a blessing and a curse. His excessive self-fashioning earned him praise as well as a suspicion of his true loyalty and his “credit” at the Mughal court.
The author accurately detects Mughal rituals of incorporation that Jahangir imposed on his firangi subjects, who thus accepted submission to the emperor’s authority and confirmed his cosmopolitan and universal rule. Moreover, Jahangir appears to have been always a step ahead in his long- and short-term calculations concerning the interactions with the Europeans. For example, the baptism of his three nephews immediately disqualified them from the Mughal throne as Hawkins guessed and the Dutch Francisco Pelsaert confirmed later on. Conversion was a Jesuit soft spot, which blinded them to see the political or personal interests of their “converts.” Such was the case of Mughal ambassador, Muqarrab Khan’s secret conversion to Christianity in 1610, which was an event in which Jesuits succumbed to their own wishful thinking.
While the padres basked in their successful bid to prevent English influence at the court, English Chan’s career took a sharp decline after a series of unsuccessful negotiations and sumptuous gifts to the Jahangir’s new wife’s (Nur Jahan) family (172). At the lowest point, he even requested Jesuits to arrange for his safe conduct to Goa. Stripped of his mansabdar rank by Jahangir, Hawkins was also denounced by one of his English agents, John Jourdain, as too Mughalized and “fickle.” By 1611, the English lost their bid to acquire firman for the English East India Company that would have permitted them to trade in the Mughal empire.
What both the English and the Jesuits had in common, however, was the task of providing detailed information about the Mughal empire to the European audience. Xavier’s Tratado and Hawkins’s Discourse are some of the early systematic treatises on the structure and functioning of the empire, both inaugurating an image of the Mughal emperor as a tyrant and despot.
After 1611, the eic changed the tactic. From dissimulation and Mughalization, the English opted for maritime violence and attacks on Mughal ships in order to destroy Luso-Mughal relations. The Portuguese, rather mindlessly and arrogantly, responded with the same strategy. Consequently, the Jesuits who considered that they won the war with the English saw their position at the Mughal court deteriorating. In 1614, Jahangir closed churches in Agra and Lahore, stopped his patronage of the Jesuits, and provoked a total diplomatic breakdown with Goa. Prolonged negotiation for peace revealed Portuguese increasing insignificance. The English and the Dutch profited from the Luso-Mughal conflict and reshuffled the political chessboard on the subcontinent, only to face their own internal problems in dealing with the diplomatic format in the Mughal empire. According to Muhabbat Khan’s Akhbar-i Muhabbat, the firangis were a bunch of unruly troublemakers who disregarded the rules of diplomacy.
João Vicente Melo’s narrative intelligently weaves together various strands of the story told by three competing groups of actors. The rhythm of diplomatic negotiations and behind-the-scene intrigues is fast and vertiginous. The book is a good read and it is only marred by atrocious editing and a rather careless proofreading.
