The Journal of Sir Thomas Roe, Embassador (sic) from His Majesty King James the First of England, To Ichan Guire, the Mighty Emperor of India, Commonly Call‘d the Great Mogvl: Containing an Account of His Voyage to that Country, and His Observations

Sir Thomas Roe, The Journal of Sir Thomas Roe, Embassador (sic) from His Majesty King James the First of England, To Ichan Guire, the Mighty Emperor of India, Commonly Call'd the Great Mogvl: Containing an Account of His Voyage to that Country, and His Observations There. Taken from His Own Original Manuscript , London: Printed for the Hakluyt society, 1899, No. 37, Volume 1

pp. 617-668; rebound marbled boards with leather spine along with gilt text
13.7 x 9 in (35 x 23 cm)

The authoritative eighteenth-century edition of Sir Thomas Roe’s celebrated embassy journal — the foundational English eyewitness narrative of Mughal India — recording Jahangir’s court, its splendour, diplomacy and ceremonial power, here preserved in the influential Churchill printing that shaped British conceptions of the Mughal world for generations

This volume forms the complete printed extract of Sir Thomas Roe’s journal from the 1744 London edition of Awnsham and John Churchill’s monumental A Collection of Voyages and Travels. It retains the original pagination (pp. 617–668), the engraved plates accompanying the text, and the characteristic typographic setting of the Churchill edition. The work preserves the textual and illustrative apparatus through which Roe’s account circulated across eighteenth-century Europe.

Sir Thomas Roe’s journal is the seminal English account of the Mughal Empire at its artistic and political height. Appointed by King James I as ambassador to Emperor Jahangir between 1615 and 1619, Roe recorded with exceptional observational acuity the ceremonial world, diplomatic culture, administrative structures and sumptuous spectacle of the Mughal court. The Churchill edition of 1744, from which this extract is taken, was the most influential of all eighteenth-century printings of the text, ensuring that Roe’s vivid descriptions became embedded in the British intellectual and commercial imagination.

One of the pages preserves one of the most famous passages in early modern writing on India—Roe’s eyewitness description of Jahangir’s courtly display of elephants adorned in extraordinary finery. He writes: “He was so rich in Jewels… I never saw such inestimable Wealth… The time was spent in bringing his greatest Elephants before him… Lord Elephants with Chains, Bells and Furniture of Gold and Silver… eight or ten Elephants waiting on each… clothed in Gold, Silk and Silver… twelve Companies passed by… Plates on his Head and Breast set with Rubies and Emeralds… This was the finest show of Beasts I ever saw.” This scene, endlessly cited in later histories, epitomises the theatrical majesty through which Mughal sovereignty was communicated and staged.

The accompanying biographical section strengthens the historical frame: Roe was born in Essex in 1581, educated at Oxford, knighted in 1604, and served the Crown in several diplomatic missions, including an early assignment to the West Indies in 1610. His embassy to India became the defining achievement of his career. Through sustained negotiation — including encounters with Prince Khurram, the future Shah Jahan — he secured trading privileges that would fundamentally alter the trajectory of English commerce in Asia. Later ambassador to Constantinople and a distinguished collector of manuscripts, Roe bequeathed many of his books to the Bodleian Library, underscoring his stature as both diplomat and scholar.

The book also records a crucial insight linking this lot with Lot 3 (William Baffin): Roe’s meticulous geographic observations informed Baffin’s celebrated “Roe Map”, the cartographic template of the Mughal Empire that shaped European mapping of India for a century. Roe’s own manuscript journal, preserved in London, thus underpinned both textual and cartographic understandings of Mughal India.

Churchill’s 1744 edition, into which Roe’s narrative was incorporated, was the grandest English travel collection of its time. Its engraved plates, typographic clarity and scholarly ambition made Roe’s text accessible to a wide readership, at precisely the moment when British political and commercial influence in India was beginning to accelerate. Through this volume, Jahangir’s audiences, ceremonies, hunts, provincial journeys and courtly negotiations were brought vividly to life for eighteenth-century readers. As a result, Roe’s journal stands not only as a record of cross-cultural diplomatic engagement but also as a foundational text in the British construction of Mughal political identity.

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