Searching for the Indian in the English East India Company Archives: The Case of Jadow the Broker and Early Seventeenth-Century Anglo-Mughal Trade

Abstract

The East India Company, one of the earliest joint-stock enterprises, helped revolutionize English economic structures. Although recent years have seen a surge of interest in its early history, the native traders and translators who formed the front lines of the East India Company's operations—acquainting the English merchants with mercantile and social systems in Mughal India—often escape scholarly attention. Turning to Company court minutes, the letters of Sir Thomas Roe, and other public as well as private records, this paper explores the circuits of knowledge that were established between the English merchants and their Indian associates. As local informants, they aided in the Western construction of an Indian imaginary that often went beyond older epistemic stereotypes of Asians. Simultaneously, the Company became responsible for the well-being of these Indians. The complex relationships between Indian brokers, translators, and the Company suggest how gossip, trade, and translation became interrelated categories. In particular, this essay follows the East India Company's exchanges with Jadow, one of the very first Indian brokers to work with the Company. These Anglo-Mughal encounters allow us to better understand the circuits of collaboration and conflict that marked the inaugural years of the Company's activities in the Indian subcontinent.