Through a sweeping look at Jesuit activities in Japan, China, Mughul India, and Paraguay, Bailey finds evidence of artistic hybridization as a means of communication and argues in favour of a paradigm of artistic exchange.

In Mughal Occidentalism, Mika Natif elucidates the meaningful and complex ways in which Mughal artists engaged with European art and techniques from the 1580s-1630s. Using visual and textual sources, this book argues that artists repurposed Christian and Renaissance visual idioms to embody themes from classical Persian literature and represent Mughal policy, ideology and dynastic history. A reevaluation of illustrated manuscripts and album paintings incorporating landscape scenery, portraiture, and European objects demonstrates that the appropriation of European elements was highly motivated by Mughal concerns. This book aims to establish a better understanding of cross-cultural exchange from the Mughal perspective by emphasizing the agency of local artists active in the workshops of Emperors Akbar and Jahangir.

In The Mughal Padshah Jorge Flores offers both a lucid English translation and the Portuguese original of a previously unknown account of the Mughal Emperor Jahangir (r. 1605-1627). Probably penned by the Jesuit priest Jerónimo Xavier in 1610-11, the Treatise of the Court and Household of Jahangir Padshah King of the Mughals reads quite differently than the usual missionary report. Surviving in four different versions, this text reveals intriguing insights on Jahangir and his family, the Mughal court and its political rituals, as well as the imperial elite and its military and economic strength. A comprehensive introduction situates the Treatise in the ‘disputed’ landscape of European accounts on Mughal India, as well as illuminates the actual conditions of production and readership of such a text between South Asia and the Iberian Peninsula.

This open access book reconstructs and examines a crucial episode of Anglo-Iberian diplomatic rivalry: the clash between the Portuguese-sponsored Jesuit missionaries and the English East India Company (EIC) at the Mughal court between 1580 and 1615. This 35-year period includes the launch of the first Jesuit mission to Akbar’s court in 1580 and the preparation of the royal embassy led by Sir Thomas Roe to negotiate the concession of trading privileges to the EIC, and encompasses not only the extension of the conflict between the Iberian crowns and England into Asia, but also the consolidation of the Mughal Empire. The book examines the proselytizing and diplomatic activities of the Jesuit missionaries, the evolution of English diplomatic strategies concerning the Mughal Empire, and how the Mughal authorities instigated and exploited Anglo-Iberian rivalry in the pursuit of specific commercial, geopolitical, and ideological agendas.

Between the mid-sixteenth and early nineteenth century, the Mughal Empire was an Indo-Islamic dynasty that ruled as far as Bengal in the east and Kabul in the west, as high as Kashmir in the north and the Kaveri basin in the south. The Mughals constructed a sophisticated, complex system of government that facilitated an era of profound artistic and architectural achievement. They promoted the place of Persian culture in Indian society and set the groundwork for South Asia's future development. In this volume, two leading historians of early modern South Asia present nine major joint essays on the Mughal Empire, framed by an essential introductory reflection. Making creative use of materials written in Persian, Indian vernacular languages, and a variety of European languages, their chapters accomplish the most significant innovations in Mughal historiography in decades, intertwining political, cultural, and commercial themes while exploring diplomacy, state-formation, history-writing, religious debate, and political thought. Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam center on confrontations between different source materials that they then reconcile, enabling readers to participate in both the debate and resolution of competing claims. Their introduction discusses the comparative and historiographical approach of their work and its place within the literature on Mughal rule. Interdisciplinary and cutting-edge, this volume richly expands research on the Mughal state, early modern South Asia, and the comparative history of the Mughal, Ottoman, Safavid, and other early modern empires.

The Jesuits, 1534-1921 tells the history of Jesus society. This is an anecdotal scrapbook of various true and false stories about individual Jesuits, which is more encyclopedic than historical narratives.

A masterful deciphering of an extraordinary art object, illuminating some of the biggest questions of the eighteenth century The Throne of the Great Mogul (1701–8) is a unique work of European decorative art: an intricate miniature of the court of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb depicted during the emperor’s birthday celebrations. It was created by the jeweler Johann Melchior Dinglinger in Dresden and purchased by the Saxon prince Augustus the Strong for an enormous sum. Constructed like a theatrical set made of gold, silver, thousands of gemstones, and amazing enamel work, it consists of 164 pieces that together tell a detailed story. Why did Dinglinger invest so much time and effort in making this piece? Why did Augustus, in the midst of a political and financial crisis, purchase it? And why did the jeweler secrete in it messages wholly unrelated to the prince or to the Great Mogul? In answering these questions, Dror Wahrman, while shifting scales from microhistory to global history, opens a window onto major historical themes of the period: the nature of European absolutism, the princely politics of the Holy Roman Empire, the changing meaning of art in the West, the surprising emergence of a cross-continental lexicon of rulership shared across the Eastern Hemisphere, and the enactment in jewels and gold of quirky contemporary theories about the global history of religion.