Up next in Session 1.2 is @GuidovMe speaking on ‘Diplomatic belonging’ in EM India! #OnBelonging
@GuidovMe GvM uses William Norris’s embassy (1699-1702) as a lens for looking at the performance of English identity in India, arguing that it existed between the diplomatic worlds of England and India. #OnBelonging
Norris represented “New” East India Company est. 1698 to replace "Old" EIC and assert authority over all Englishmen in India. #OnBelonging
Struggled to assert this authority over Old EIC as he sought to differentiate himself as King’s ambassador whilst balancing Crown/Company interests. #OnBelonging
Norris’s diaries reveal that he did so by drawing on a ceremonial language that belonged in part to Mughal culture. #OnBelonging
GvM notes that ‘Compliance with social norms of political interaction in Mughal Indian and insistence on ambassadorial authority in European diplomatic practice continue to mark actions and rhetoric throughout his embassy.’ #OnBelonging
Performance of authority operated within recognisably Mughal register. Participated in a range of customs – giving gifts, offering palm or beetle to guests, pouring rose water in hands, & investing subordinates with honorific robes. #OnBelonging
Diaries reveal that he also partook in ‘discourse of service’ in Mughal register too. #OnBelonging
Places Thomas Roe’s earlier embassy in perspective. Whilst adopting a rigid stance like Roe, who cited European diplomatic conventions, Norris also far more accommodating in adopting social and political ritual. #OnBelonging
While the Norris embassy did not belong to this political world, unlike the English company that was fulled embedded in the Mughal imperial framework, it is still striking how it drew on similar methods/actors. #OnBelonging
GvM concludes by noting that Englishness had shifted over the 17th c in India, with adoption and participation in social and political customs now the norm. #OnBelonging
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