João Vicente Melo, Jesuit and English Experiences at the Mughal Court, c. 1580–1615

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

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