Book Extract | Travellers in the Golden Realm: How Mughal India Connected England to the World by Lubaba Al-Azami

The men had travelled to Venice, western Europe’s trading capital, a journey many undertook. The promise of lucrative commerce in the region was however shadowed by an ever-present threat that hung over the choppy waters of the Mediterranean. The basin was as much a melting pot of trade and cultural interaction as it was a flashpoint of piracy. Among the offenders were the English them- selves, along with Spanish, Venetian and other mainland European corsairs. The North African side had its own thriving community of privateers, with Algiers and Tunis prominent bases from which they worked. As regencies of the Ottoman Empire, the corsairs of Algiers and Tunis were often working in cahoots with regional Ottoman governors who took a handsome cut from the raids. In this were parallels with western European privateering where monarchs commissioned pirates to attack enemy ships. For many years under Elizabeth I English ships had targeted Iberian vessels. The North African privateers worked the Mediterranean waters but also extended their activities to the Atlantic and as far as the North Sea and Irish coast.

Pattison and Lurting had fallen foul of the North African corsairs but had managed to make an escape both narrow and, by Lurting’s own dramatic and likely embellished retelling, exceptionally daring and merciful. Setting off from Venice, their ship had made it as far as Majorca before being accosted by an Algerian pirate vessel. At the pirate captain’s orders, his men had overrun the English ship and taken Pattison and four other men onto their own vessel, leaving several corsairs to keep an eye on Lurting and the remaining English sailors. Eventually Pattison and his fellow men were returned. Thereafter, Lurting hatched a daring plan overnight which saw the overthrow of the corsairs and the English reclaimation of their ship. The pirates were then returned to shore some fifty miles from Algiers before Lurting and Pattison made a swift escape to England, not a single drop of blood having been shed in the foray.

As they travelled up the Thames and met vessels along the way, they shared their story of capture and flight. These boats then travelled ahead, relaying the tale until it reached the ears of the English king himself. Charles II was then at Greenwich along with his brother James and a retinue of lords. The royals and their courtiers were immensely intrigued and keen to hear the story from the lips of the escaped captives themselves. They made their way to the banks of the river where they awaited Pattison’s ship. Once in view, the vessel was beckoned alongside and the courtiers boarded while the king and duke remained at the ropes to hear the dramatic retell- ing of the captain and his mate. Charles II was especially keen to hear their tale, asking many questions. He rebuked the men for releasing their corsair captives, stating they should have been brought to him. To this Lurting explained, ‘I thought it better for them to be in their own country.’

Buoyed up, Lurting settled back in Liverpool to compile his captivity narrative, The Fighting Sailor Turn’d Peacable Christian, which he published in May 1680. It proved popular and some years later he expanded the account, republishing it in extended form in 1709. North African piracy and captivity had become such a pressing issue in the seventeenth century that captivity narratives gained prominence and popularity, with dozens of accounts published throughout the period. Lurting joined in this growing genre, adding to it his own dose of Christian piety as a narrative of bloodless English resistance and merciful release of corsairs. However, piracy in the Mediterranean was far from a one-sided affair.

Western Europeans, including English, Spanish and Venetian raiders, were no less active, often targeting North African and Ottoman vessels. Since the Middle Ages European corsairs had been targeting North African galleys. With raids often drawn along religious lines, these attacks were framed as Christians targeting Muslims and vice versa, creating diplomatic tensions between European and North African states. The first decade of the seventeenth century saw over five and a half thousand Muslim captives from North Africa in Venice and Malta. Meanwhile, such was the extent of English piracy that in the 1620s alone dozens of North African and Turkish captives languished in English jails, many to then be sold into Spanish slavery or executed. By 1624 the ruler of Algiers felt compelled to reach out to James I to initiate a prisoner exchange, writing:

Your Majesties subjects did take some moores, and Turkes; and now our Captaines did take certaine Englishmen, and sold them; which if your Majestie shalbe pleased to send us the Moores and the Turkes, Wee shall suddainly and out of hand putt the Christians att Liberty.

Things did little to improve through the course of the seventeenth century. During the Restoration the English only furthered their enterprise of targeting North African vessels, capturing ship’s crews and sell- ing them into slavery, and undermining peace treaties in doing so. In 1662 one such treaty was signed with Algeria, yet the ruling Algerian dey soon had to insist that the treaty could not hold unless there was a cessation of English corsairs ‘carrying Turks or Mussulman slaves’.
The Mediterranean was a thriving space for English piracy, and its proximity to England, combined with the mass of merchant vessels that coursed its waters, made it a tempting target for privateers. But England’s pirates were far from tied to a single sea. Just as English traders made their way around the Cape of Good Hope so too did corsairs, keen on profiting from the fabulous riches of Indian Ocean commerce. This began early on, as the aforementioned Roebuck illus- trates. The targeting of indigenous vessels did little to ingratiate the English with regional rulers whose permission was necessary to trade in their lands. Rampant English piracy on Mughal ships in the Indian Ocean would therefore prove among the greatest challenges for East India Company trade.

Khafi Khan had been advised against accepting the invitation from the English. Trust was at an all-time low: the actions of Captain Henry Every had made for an almost intractable conflict as Mughal authorities and citizens alike demanded justice and accountability. Granted, among those who had discouraged him was the Portuguese captain conveying his merchandise. The century-long Portuguese animosity towards the English was well known, and the captain was far from likely to encourage anyone to meet with his adversaries. But Khan was also on a commission to safely transport goods to the tune of 200,000 rupees from Surat to the town of Rahiri, and protecting his cargo from theft was another concern. His route had taken him down the west coast, eventually passing near the English holding at Bombay.

As it turned out, however, Abd al-Razzaq, the Mughal administrator at Rahiri who had commissioned Khan’s cargo, was on friendly terms with an Englishman at Bombay and had written to him requesting he aid the convoy. This had precipitated Khan’s invitation, which the latter had – against the advice of his companions – accepted. As he passed through the settlement he noted the English forces lined up in ranks undergoing review. For a moment he admired the ‘young men with sprouting beards, handsome and well clothed with fine muskets in their hands’.5 But now as he sat opposite his host, initial pleasantries veered to the question of the EIC factors recently imprisoned by the Mughals. Khan felt his bile rise as he snapped at the Englishman:

Although you do not acknowledge that shameful action, worthy of the reprobation of all sensible men, which was perpetrated by your wicked men, this question you have put to me is as if a wise man should ask where the sun is when all the world is filled with its rays!

‘Those who have an ill-feeling against me cast upon me the blame for the fault of others!’ his host rejoined. This was a difficult argument to sustain when numerous offenders of the recent infamy were Englishmen bearing the scars of the Mughal siege of Bombay from just a few years previously. Khan made swift work of pointing this detail out. The English host did have a point, however; Every was no man of the EIC, even though his crimes had plunged the Company into yet another devastating crisis.

Born in Plymouth, the son of a trading captain, Henry Every’s career began as his father’s had, in the Royal Navy. Among other postings, he had served as midshipman aboard the Rupert and as mate aboard the Albemarle. He had soon put his experience to profitable use, participating in privateering expeditions to the West Indies. Privateering being state-sanctioned piracy meant that the slippage to piracy proper was tempting and easy, and Every too soon made the transition. In 1693 he joined an expedition as first mate aboard the Charles, one of four armed merchant vessels hired by the Spanish government to protect Spain’s South American trade against French attacks. However, the expedition was delayed at A Corũna for several months, which, along with Spanish failure to pay the seamen’s wages, led to mutiny. In May 1694, as the captain lay indisposed with fever, Every along with sixty-five fellow sailors took control of the Charles. A boatload of seamen sent from partner vessel the James to save the situation instead joined with Every, swelling the mutineers’ numbers. The men subsequently abandoned the captain and sixteen of his men on shore. Having renamed their captured vessel Fancy and with Every at the helm, they then sped off to the Indian Ocean now dedicated to a life of piracy. Along the way they raided several vessels for good measure.

But their boldest raid was saved for the west coast of India. English piracy in the Indian Ocean had by this time become a long-standing thorn in the EIC’s side. In the first half of the seven- teenth century it was often the act of vessels licensed by the English monarch, particularly Charles I. Both the actions of the Roebuck in 1635 and those of ships dispatched as part of William Courteen’s enterprise in 1638 fell into this category of privateering, much to the grief and harm of the Company in India. However, the latter half of the seventeenth century saw a waning in state sponsorship, giving rise to a new and particularly indiscriminate breed of buccaneers. Often acting autonomously as single ships, they attacked vessels of all nationalities, plundering them while brutalising those on board.

Among the most notorious English pirates, one Captain Roberts destroyed a staggering four hundred merchant ships in the space of three years. In the 1680s and 1690s a series of violent English raids on trading and pilgrim vessels brought substantial anguish to regional traders and the authorities, who duly railed against the EIC. In 1684 six men, four English and two Dutch, captured a Persian vessel bound for India in the Persian Gulf, killing the captain, his family and many passengers. A few years later, in 1688, two ships flying under English colours captured trading ships in the Red Sea worth 600,000 rupees. The predations of English piracy extended as far as south-east Asia where in 1697 a ship belonging to the king of Thailand was looted of coin and cloth, an act described as ‘a great disgrace’ to the English by local authorities.

The region’s wealthier merchants found themselves continually targeted as their fleets put out to sea. Among them Abdul al-Ghafur, the most prosperous and influential merchant of Surat, had the misfortune to suffer repeated attacks. In 1691 pirates sailing under English colours captured a vessel belonging to al-Ghafur, making away with no less than 900,000 rupees. In response, the Mughal authorities dispatched officials to the EIC offices at Surat, banning their trade in India. However, when a captured crew member of the offending vessel was revealed to be Danish rather than English, the Indian authorities lifted the embargo on EIC trade. Nonetheless, within a few years al-Ghafur’s trade had been struck again, this time when Henry Every attacked one of the merchant’s vessels, the Fatih Muhammadi.

Soon English pirates previously operating in the Americas also made their way to the Indian Ocean. A growing climate of animosity in the Americas that saw European colonial governors take to targeting pirates propelled a turn to the waters of Asia. Jean-Baptiste du Casse, governor of the French colony of Saint-Domingue (Haiti) and himself an ex-privateer and trader in enslaved people, established a new policy of hanging pirates rather than harbouring them. From 1693 a reduction in North American specie further pushed the region’s pirates to seek gold from the richly laden vessels of the Indian Ocean instead.

The threat to lives and livelihoods, combined with the allure of merchant vessels in the east bearing treasures of gold, silver, jewels, textiles and spices, made transferring an attractive proposition.

From the popular pirate and slave trader base of Madagascar, the new arrivals joined existing buccaneers in inflicting raids on merchant ships of all stripes and engaging in the regional trade in enslaved people. By 1699 the governor of New York was complaining of how ‘the vast riches of the Red Sea and Madagascar are such a lure for Seamen that there’s almost no withholding them from that vile practice of Turning pyrates’. With a thriving network of onshore informants and regional officials paid to look away, English and European pirates made swift and profitable business. Of the many acts of piracy that plagued the Indian Ocean, however, one achieved the notorious distinction of being among history’s most scandalous raids. And its perpetrator was none other than pirate captain Henry Every.

Lubaba Al-Azami Travellers in the Golden Realm: How Mughal India Connected England to the World John Murray/ Hachette India, 2024. Pb. Pp.304

'A compelling, highly readable account of the earliest phase of English presence in India' NANDINI DAS, author of Courting India

When the first English travellers in India encountered an unimaginable superpower, their meetings would change the world.

Before the East India Company and before the British Empire, England was a pariah state. Seeking better fortunes, 16th and 17th century merchants, pilgrims and outcasts ventured to the kingdom of the mighty Mughals, attempting to sell coarse woollen broadcloth along the silk roads; playing courtiers in the Mughal palaces in pursuit of love; or simply touring the sub-continent in search of an elephant to ride.

Into this golden realm went Father Thomas Stephens, a Catholic fleeing his home; the merchant Ralph Fitch looking for jewels in the markets of Delhi; and John Mildenhall, an adventurer revelling in the highwire politics of the Mughal elite. It was a land ruled from the palatial towers by women - the formidable Empress Nur Jahan Begim, the enterprising Queen Mother Maryam al-Zamani, and the intrepid Princess Jahanara Begim. Their collision of worlds helped connect East and West, launching a tempestuous period of globalisation spanning from the Chinese opium trade to the slave trade in the Americas.

Drawing on rich, original sources, Lubaaba Al-Azami traces the origins of a relationship between two nations - one outsider and one superpower - whose cultures remain inextricably linked to this day.

Dr Lubaaba Al-Azami is a cultural historian and Lecturer in Shakespeare and Early Modern Literature at the University of Manchester. Lubaaba is also Founding Editor of Medieval and Early Modern Orients (MEMOs, memorients.com), a transnational digital platform on premodern encounters between England and the Islamic Worlds.