Nandini Das’s debut book, Courting India: England, Mughal India and the Origins of Empire won the 2023 British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding.
New Delhi: Nandini Das, 49, is a British-Indian author, historian, and academic. She is a Professor of Early Modern Literature and Culture at the University of Oxford, and her research focuses on the cultural and intellectual exchanges between India and Europe in the early modern era. Das’s debut book, Courting India: England, Mughal India and the Origins of Empire (Bloomsbury, 2023), won the 2023 British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding. It is a groundbreaking account of the first English diplomatic mission to Mughal India, led by Sir Thomas Roe in the early 17th century.
Das draws on a wide range of sources, including Indian and British eyewitness accounts, to tell the story of this complex and often fraught encounter. She shows how the English and Mughal ambassadors struggled to understand each other’s cultures and political systems, but also how they found ways to cooperate and build relationships.
Courting India has been praised for its originality, its meticulous scholarship, and its engaging writing style. Das’s work is important because it challenges the traditional view of the British Empire as a one-way street, with the British imposing their culture and values on the colonized peoples. She shows that the relationship between Britain and India was much more complex and nuanced, and that there was a great deal of cultural exchange and mutual learning.
Early Life And Education
Nandini Das was born and raised in India. She studied English literature at the University of Delhi, and then went on to earn a PhD in English from the University of Cambridge. After her PhD, Das taught at the University of Warwick before moving to the University of Oxford in 2011.
Research Interests
Das’s research interests focus on the cultural and intellectual exchanges between India and Europe in the early modern era. She is particularly interested in the ways in which the English and Mughal empires interacted with each other, and how these interactions shaped the development of both empires.
Public Engagement
In addition to her academic work, Das is also a passionate advocate for public engagement with history. She has written for a variety of popular publications, including the BBC and The Guardian. She is also a regular speaker at public events, where she talks about her research and her passion for history.
Conclusion
Nandini Das is a scholar-writer who bridges cultures in a unique and important way. Her work helps us to understand the complex and often fraught relationship between Britain and India, and it challenges us to think about the legacy of colonialism in new ways.
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