The Ambassador Who Discovered That England Was Still a Petitioner at the Mughal Court
If William Hawkins gives us the story of an English captain trying to enter the Mughal commercial world, Sir Thomas Roe gives us the moment when England arrived with something more deliberate: a formal embassy. Appointed by King James I, Roe reached India in 1615 and remained until 1619, spending nearly four years negotiating with Emperor Jahangir, his nobles, provincial officials and merchants on behalf of the English East India Company. His Journal and Correspondence is one of the most important European records of the Mughal court in the early seventeenth century, not because Roe understood India better than those who lived there, but because he recorded, often with considerable irritation, what happened when an English diplomat tried to obtain commercial privileges from a sovereign whose empire was vastly more powerful than England’s position in India at that time. The later importance of Roe has sometimes encouraged historians to read his embassy backwards, as though he had arrived carrying the first blueprint of the British Empire; the evidence actually shows something much more interesting: he arrived to negotiate, bargain, flatter, protest, wait and repeatedly discover the limits of English power.
Roe landed at Surat on 26 September 1615, (often dated to mid‑September; some sources give 18 September) accompanied by English merchants and an armed guard, and then travelled inland towards the Mughal court. He reached Burhanpur in November and eventually arrived at Ajmer, where Jahangir was holding court. The journey was extremely difficult; Roe himself recorded that illness brought him so close to death that his companions had given him up, and even after reaching the imperial court he remained bedridden for some time. What followed was not simply an embassy in the modern diplomatic sense. Roe had to learn the grammar of a court where status was displayed through ceremony, gifts, access, clothing, language, hierarchy and expenditure, while simultaneously trying to prevent the English from being treated as merely another group of merchants. His journal therefore becomes a fascinating document not only of Mughal India but of the encounter between two very unequal political worlds.
Major Work
The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to the Court of the Great Mogul, 1615–1619
Roe’s journal and correspondence were edited by Sir William Foster and published by the Hakluyt Society in 1899, with a revised edition appearing through Oxford University Press in 1926. The work contains Roe’s journal, letters to English officials and political figures, geographical observations, and correspondence connected with the Mughal court.
For civilizational study, the importance of Roe’s work lies precisely in its mixture of observation and frustration. He was there to negotiate. He was there to secure privileges. He was there to protect English merchants. And therefore, whenever the Mughal system refused to behave according to his expectations, he wrote about it. Sometimes he misunderstood what he saw. Sometimes he was prejudiced. Sometimes he was remarkably perceptive. And sometimes his irritation gives us information that a more polished diplomatic report might have concealed.
1. Roe Arrived as an Ambassador, But Not as the Equal of Jahangir
This distinction should never be lost. Roe represented James I, king of England. Jahangir ruled the Mughal Empire. The two sovereigns exchanged letters and presents, and Roe was formally an ambassador, but the political realities were not symmetrical. England had no territorial power in India. The East India Company possessed only small commercial establishments. The Portuguese had a much stronger established maritime presence. The Mughal Empire controlled enormous territories, cities, armies, revenues and markets. Roe therefore had diplomatic status, but he did not possess corresponding power on the ground. That is why his journal is so revealing. He could demand respect as an ambassador. But he could not command the Mughal state.
2. His First Journey Was Already a Lesson in Geography
Roe travelled from Surat towards the Mughal court through the interior, passing through Burhanpur and the Deccan routes before reaching Ajmer. At Burhanpur, his description is far from flattering:
“A miserable and barren Countrey, the Townes and Villages all built of mudde.”
We should not take this as a description of the entire region. It was Roe’s experience of a particular route at a particular time. And that distinction matters. A traveller’s description of landscape is always partial. But even this negative observation is useful because it shows us how European travellers perceived the enormous ecological variation within the Mughal Empire.
India was not one landscape. The empire crossed: fertile plains, dry regions, river valleys, forests, plateaus, and semi-arid zones. Political boundaries therefore crossed ecological boundaries.
3. The Mughal Court Was Mobile
Roe’s destination was not necessarily a permanent capital in the European sense.
He eventually reached Ajmer, where Jahangir was holding court. This is extremely important. The Mughal emperor travelled. The court travelled. Officials travelled. The army travelled. Merchants followed the court. Supplies followed the court. Artisans followed the court. The political centre could therefore move through the imperial landscape. This is a very different model from the modern nation-state, where the capital is generally fixed.
The Mughal court was partly a mobile political institution.
4. Jahangir’s Court Was a Moving City
Roe’s observations make this even clearer. A Mughal imperial camp was not simply soldiers sleeping in tents.
It contained: nobles, servants, merchants, artisans, animals, administrators, women, officials, and suppliers. The emperor’s movement therefore generated an enormous temporary concentration of economic and political activity. This connects Roe to what we saw in Nuniz’s description of the Vijayanagara military camp.
The early modern court could itself become a mobile urban ecosystem.
5. Roe Was Astonished by the Courtly Scale
The court’s ceremonial complexity repeatedly impressed and frustrated him. He had to negotiate: where he would stand,
how he would approach the emperor, what gifts he would offer, how he would greet Jahangir, who could introduce him, and which nobles possessed influence.
Roe’s journal therefore gives us a very detailed picture of the politics of proximity. Being physically close to the emperor was itself a form of political power. The person who could gain access could influence decisions. The person excluded from the court could possess a perfectly valid petition and still fail. This is not unique to Mughal India, of course. But Roe’s frustration allows us to see it operating in extraordinary detail.
6. Roe Insisted on English Diplomatic Customs
One of the most interesting moments concerns his desire to greet Jahangir according to English custom.
Roe records:
“I had required before my going leave to use the Customes of my Country; which was freely granted.”
This may appear to be a minor ceremonial matter. It was not. The manner in which an ambassador approached a ruler communicated rank and sovereignty. Roe was effectively saying:
I am not merely a merchant. I represent another king.
And Jahangir’s willingness to permit Roe to follow his own diplomatic custom demonstrates something important about the flexibility of the court. The Mughal court could accommodate different diplomatic traditions without necessarily surrendering its own hierarchy.
7. Gifts Were Part of Diplomacy
Roe’s embassy involved a continuous exchange of gifts. European monarchs sent presents to Jahangir. Roe presented them. The Mughal court responded. The emperor’s own gifts could then be passed to English authorities. This was not simply decoration. It was a language of diplomacy.
A gift could signify: friendship, recognition, status, reciprocity, or political expectation. Roe had to learn this system even when he disliked it. And that is an important point. Diplomacy is not simply the exchange of written documents. It is also the exchange of ritual and symbols.
8. Roe’s Great Problem: Trade
At the end of the day, the embassy had a very practical purpose. Trade.
The English East India Company wanted secure access to Mughal markets. They wanted protection for their merchants. They wanted favourable customs arrangements. They wanted freedom from harassment. And above all, they wanted to prevent the Portuguese from excluding them. Roe was therefore constantly negotiating commercial privileges. This is why his journal is so valuable. It allows us to see the early English presence in India before political power had transformed the relationship.
9. Roe Did Not Want the English to Become Mughal Courtiers
This is one of the most interesting tensions in his mission. The Mughal court expected foreigners seeking favour to participate in courtly practices. Roe, however, wanted to preserve the dignity of an English ambassador. He repeatedly complained about the expenses and expectations of Mughal court life.
Writing to the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1616, he observed that an ambassador who wished to maintain his position had to spend heavily, and that:
“to maynteyne one that shall in his equipage and life hould proportion with his qualety in this court will cost much more then the profitt of the trade can spare.”
That sentence tells us a great deal. The English were trying to calculate diplomacy in commercial terms. The Mughal court operated through a much more elaborate culture of rank, expenditure and ceremonial display. Roe was beginning to realise that diplomacy itself had an economic cost.
10. Roe’s Frustration With Mughal Officials
Roe was frequently angry with Mughal officials.
In one letter he complains that:
“their barbarous customes and actions”
did not correspond to what he considered appropriate treatment for an ambassador. Elsewhere he complains about the political influence of Prince Khurram and describes the court as full of factional politics. These passages must be read carefully. Roe was a frustrated diplomat. His language is sometimes deeply prejudiced. But his complaints also reveal something important:
The Mughal court was not politically simple.
There were factions. Princes competed. Nobles possessed their own interests. Officials could obstruct one another. The emperor could favour one person today and another tomorrow. Imperial authority existed within a network of competing political actors.
11. Prince Khurram
Roe’s difficulties with Prince Khurram, the future emperor Shah Jahan, are particularly revealing. He describes the prince as possessing enormous influence and complains about his interference in English affairs.
Roe wrote that:
“His faction is strong, and now more then ever.”
This is valuable because it gives us an outsider’s view of the internal politics of the Mughal succession. Jahangir was emperor. But the political future of the empire was already being contested around his sons and their factions. The Mughal state therefore contained a politics of succession long before succession formally occurred.
12. Roe Was Not Blind to Jahangir’s Character
Despite his frustrations, Roe’s descriptions of Jahangir are not uniformly hostile. In a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, he describes the emperor as:
“gentle, soft, and good of disposition.”
That is interesting because it demonstrates that Roe could distinguish between: the emperor himself and the officials around him. He could complain bitterly about the political environment while still regarding Jahangir personally with respect. This makes the journal more nuanced than a simple catalogue of complaints.
13. The Emperor’s Personality Mattered
Roe’s account repeatedly suggests that Jahangir’s personal decisions could make a substantial difference. The emperor could hear petitions. He could grant privileges. He could overrule officials. He could favour individuals. He could intervene in disputes. This means that the Mughal political system was not purely impersonal administration.
Personal sovereignty mattered.
The emperor’s disposition could affect the practical experience of merchants and ambassadors. This is one reason court culture was so important. To reach the ruler was to reach a centre of decision-making.
14. The English Wanted a Farman
The most important practical objective of Roe’s mission was obtaining a farman, an imperial order protecting English commercial interests.
Eventually, he succeeded in securing imperial privileges for the English factory at Surat and for English trade within Mughal territories, although the precise scope and practical implementation of these privileges remained contested. Modern scholarship therefore rightly describes Roe’s success as important but limited: he established a stronger basis for English trade, but he did not magically remove all commercial difficulties.
This is an important corrective to the mythology surrounding Roe. He did not arrive and receive India. He obtained commercial concessions. That is all. But those concessions mattered enormously in the longer term.
15. The Famous Letter From Jahangir to James I
One of the most interesting documents connected with Roe’s embassy is the correspondence between Jahangir and James I.
In Jahangir’s letter, the emperor promised English merchants freedom to trade in his dominions and instructed his officials to protect them from interference. The letter states that English merchants should be allowed:
“to sell, buy, and to transport into their country at their pleasure.”
The letter also asks James I to send merchants carrying:
“all sorts of rarities and rich goods fit for my palace.”
The commercial relationship is therefore extremely clear.
Jahangir wanted: European goods.
James wanted: access to Indian markets.
The relationship was reciprocal. At this stage, it was not an empire. It was trade diplomacy.
16. Jahangir Did Not Need England for Political Survival
This point deserves emphasis. The Mughal Empire possessed enormous internal resources. Its political economy was not dependent upon English commerce. The English were one group among many foreign merchants.
Jahangir could trade with: Persians, Arabs, Armenians, Portuguese, Central Asians, and numerous Indian merchant communities. The English therefore had to demonstrate their usefulness. This explains why the Mughal court could negotiate from a position of confidence. The English were competing for entry.
17. Roe’s Embassy Was Successful—But Only Relatively
The embassy is often described as a great English diplomatic success. In one sense, it certainly was. Roe secured a firman. English merchants received greater protection. The English factory at Surat gained a stronger legal basis. The Company could operate with greater confidence. But there was another reality. Roe himself understood that the privileges on paper did not always translate into perfect protection on the ground. Local officials could still interfere. Portuguese competition continued. Commercial disputes remained. And English merchants remained dependent upon Mughal political authority. Therefore, Roe’s success should be understood as: Institutional foothold, not political conquest.
18. Roe Understood the Limits of Force
One of Roe’s most important observations concerns the English Company’s temptation to use military force. He repeatedly warned the Company against trying to imitate the Portuguese model. His famous advice was essentially that the English should not attempt to establish territorial power before they possessed the resources to sustain it.
In one of his letters he argued that the English should:
“not seeke to bee masters of the Indies.”
The exact wording and context should be checked against the Foster edition before using it as a standalone quotation, but the underlying position is unmistakable across Roe’s correspondence: the English should concentrate on trade rather than attempt premature territorial conquest.
This is an extraordinary historical irony. Roe was essentially telling his employers: Do not try to conquer India. The later history of British India would develop in a very different direction.
19. The Portuguese Remained the Great Obstacle
Roe’s embassy repeatedly encountered Portuguese opposition. The Portuguese had: forts, ships, established factories, Indian Ocean experience, and alliances.
The English were still newcomers. Roe therefore had to persuade the Mughal court that English merchants were preferable to Portuguese competitors. This was not merely a religious rivalry. It was fundamentally a struggle over: trade routes, ports, customs, shipping, and market access.
20. The Indian Ocean Was Already Global
Roe’s correspondence makes it clear that the Mughal commercial world was connected to: Persia, Arabia, the Red Sea, Central Asia, Europe, and Southeast Asia.
The English were entering an existing global system. They were not creating globalisation in India. They were becoming one participant in a system that had already existed for centuries. This point becomes especially important when we place Roe alongside Pires, Barbosa, Fitch and Hawkins. Across more than a century of European observation, the same pattern appears again and again:
Bharat was already connected.
21. Roe and the Culture of the Mughal Court
Roe’s journal also records clothing, architecture, food, court ceremonies, hunting, gifts, animals, military camps and festivals. But unlike a purely curious traveller, he is constantly evaluating these things.
He asks: What does this cost? What does this signify? Who has access? Who has influence? How does this affect English trade?
That makes him particularly useful for institutional analysis. He was not simply observing culture. He was trying to operate within it.
22. The Court Was a Knowledge System
Roe gradually learned that knowing the Mughal court meant knowing: who the emperor trusted, which prince was powerful, which noble could help him, which official controlled customs, which intermediary could obtain access, which gift would be appropriate, and which ceremonial mistake could damage his standing.
In other words, the court contained its own knowledge architecture.
Political intelligence was essential. The English needed to understand the relationships between individuals. That knowledge became as important as the formal imperial decree.
23. Roe’s Journal Is Also a Study of Cultural Misunderstanding
There are moments when Roe clearly misunderstands Indian practices or judges them through English assumptions. This is not a defect unique to him. It is precisely what makes the source useful. When two civilizational systems encounter each other, each attempts to translate the other into its own categories.
Roe sees: court ceremony. He interprets it through European diplomacy.
The Mughal court sees: a foreign ambassador. It interprets him through its own political grammar. Neither side is entering the encounter without assumptions.
This is an important subject in Civilizational Studies: How do civilizations understand one another when their categories do not perfectly correspond?
24. Roe and the Question of Civilizational Confidence
There is another interesting feature of his experience. The Mughal court did not appear to believe that foreign technology or foreign commerce threatened its civilizational identity.
It could: welcome European goods, employ foreign specialists, receive ambassadors, trade with Europeans, while remaining deeply rooted in its own political and cultural order. This is worth thinking about.
Civilizational openness does not necessarily mean civilizational surrender. A society can absorb external goods and knowledge while retaining its own institutional structure.
25. The English Were Learning, Too
Hawkins had learned that the Mughal emperor mattered.
Roe learned something more sophisticated: the emperor was not enough.
He had to understand: princes, nobles, governors, merchants, Portuguese competitors, customs officials, and court factions.
The English were beginning to learn that entering a civilization required understanding its institutional ecology. This was knowledge that would later become enormously important.
26. Roe’s Experience Reveals a Polycentric Political Order
Although the Mughal emperor was enormously powerful, Roe’s experience shows that power operated through many centres. Surat had its governor. Agra had its officials. Ajmer hosted the imperial court. Princes possessed their own factions. Nobles controlled networks. Merchants possessed economic influence. Portuguese operated through maritime power. English were developing their own commercial networks.
The empire was therefore not a simple pyramid. It was a network of political relationships under imperial sovereignty. That is a much more useful way to study it.
27. The English Factory Was a Small Institution With a Large Future
This is perhaps the most fascinating historical irony. At the time Roe negotiated for the English factory at Surat, it was a modest commercial institution. No British India. No Governor-General. No Indian Civil Service. No territorial empire. No enormous colonial bureaucracy.
Just: merchants, factors, ships, warehouses, and a royal privilege to trade.
Yet institutions can accumulate. A factory produces information. Information produces relationships. Relationships produce influence. Influence produces political leverage. Political leverage can eventually produce territorial power.
History is often built through such seemingly insignificant beginnings.
28. Roe’s Legacy Is Therefore Larger Than His Own Intention
Roe himself did not establish the British Empire. Nor did he necessarily imagine the future in the form that it eventually took. His immediate objective was commercial security. But his embassy helped establish a more stable institutional relationship between the English East India Company and the Mughal state. That relationship created space for English merchants to expand their activities. And over the next century and a half, the balance would change dramatically.
This is why we should resist both extremes: “Roe founded the British Empire.”
Too simplistic.
“Roe was irrelevant because the empire came later.”
Also wrong. He was part of the institutional prehistory of British power in India.
Why Sir Thomas Roe Matters for Civilizational Studies
Roe is important because he captures an extraordinary historical moment: England had ambition, but not yet power. The East India Company had merchants, but not yet territory. The English had ships, but not yet an empire. Jahangir had an empire, and the authority to decide whether these newcomers would be permitted to trade.
Roe’s entire embassy therefore unfolds around a deceptively simple question: On whose terms would the English enter Bharat? For the moment, the answer was clear. They would enter through permission. Through farmans. Through trade. Through factories. Through diplomacy. Through negotiation. Not through conquest. And that makes Roe’s journal especially valuable when read alongside Hawkins.
Hawkins had entered Jahangir’s world almost as a curious foreign captain. Roe arrived with the formal dignity of an ambassador and a clearer institutional purpose. But both discovered the same underlying reality: the Mughal state was powerful enough to make the English negotiate.
The English could ask. The emperor could grant. A governor could delay. A prince could obstruct. A Portuguese captain could interfere. A merchant could complain. A farman could be issued. And the entire process could continue for years. This is not the story of a weak India waiting for the English. It is the story of a powerful early modern empire managing foreign entrants within an already existing commercial and political order.
And perhaps the most revealing line in Roe’s entire experience is not something he says about the wealth of India or the magnificence of Jahangir’s court, but his own admission that maintaining an ambassador at the Mughal court could cost more than English trade could afford. That is the world in which Roe operated. The English wanted India. But India did not yet need the English. And for several generations after Roe, that difference would remain one of the most important facts of the relationship.
