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After the westward voyages come the eastward adventures of
British commerce. There is one striking difference between them— the
Elizabethans went out to trade and settle among savage tribes, the Jacobeans to
procure an entrance to an Empire and a civilization as old and proud as our own.
To undertake such a mission a man must be equipped with remarkable
qualities—the self-reliance to maintain his position for years among haughty
Eastern princes and fiercely jealous European rivals; with manners at once firm
enough and conciliatory enough to treat with men of wholly different race and
mental habits. James the First had not far to look for the right envoy.
Sir Thomas Roe was a City man by birth—a grandson on one side of a Lord Mayor
of London, on the other of Sir John Gresham. As a young man he had been a
servant of Queen Elizabeth; later, he had been sent by Henry, Prince of Wales,
to explore the Amazon. After his third voyage he was commanded by King James to
go on behalf of the East India Company as ambassador to the Court of Jehângir,
the Moghul Emperor of Hindustan, to arrange a commercial treaty and obtain
concessions for “ factories”
for the English merchants. He set sail with four ships in March 1614, and
returned completely successful four years afterwards. “He had obtained the
redress of previous wrongs, and an imperial engagement for future immunities
which laid the foundations of the future greatness of Bombay and indeed of
British India in general” (Lane Poole). He was afterwards successful in
other diplomatic missions and peace conferences in Europe. But of all his
successes the greatest was his Indian mission, where he showed the patience and
self-restraint, under extreme provocation, which alone could have fitly
represented and served his country.
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