Travels in India by Jean Baptiste Tavernier [2 Volumes]

Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, Travels in India by Jean Baptiste Tavernier: Translated from the original French edition of 1676 with a biographical sketch of the author, notes, appendices by V. Ball, London and New York: MacMillan and Co., 1889

In 2 Volumes
Volume I: pp. i-xci, 1-335
Volume II: pp. i-xv, 1-399
Original publisher’s cloth, gilt-lettered to spines (each)
8.9 x 5.6 in (12.5 x 14.3 cm) (each)

Jean-Baptiste Tavernier’s Travels in India—A Complete Two-Volume English Edition of a Foundational Seventeenth-Century Account

First modern scholarly English edition of Tavernier’s celebrated seventeenth-century travels in Mughal India, edited with extensive apparatus by the Irish geologist and historian Valentine Ball.

Jean-Baptiste Tavernier’s Travels in India stands among the most important European eyewitness accounts of the Indian subcontinent during the height of Mughal power in the seventeenth century. This English-language edition derives from Tavernier’s Les Six Voyages de Jean-Baptiste Tavernier (Paris, 1676–1677). A French gem merchant and seasoned traveler, Tavernier visited India on multiple occasions between the 1630s and 1660s, gaining rare access to imperial courts, trading centres, and commercial networks stretching from Surat and Golconda to Agra and Delhi.

Unlike many contemporary travel writers, Tavernier wrote not as a missionary or diplomat but as a professional observer of commerce. His detailed descriptions of diamond mining, gemstone valuation, textile trade, court ceremony, and mercantile practice form a primary source for historians of early modern global trade and Indo-European exchange. His observations of Mughal rulers, provincial administration, and urban life remain invaluable for reconstructing India’s economic and political landscape before the consolidation of British colonial power.

The present two-volume English edition reflects the enduring scholarly and collector interest in Tavernier’s narrative. Uniformly bound and clearly preserved for institutional use, it represents a serious working copy rather than a purely decorative set. Complete multi-volume English editions of Tavernier remain essential reference works within libraries and private collections focused on early travel literature, Mughal India, and the history of global commerce.

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