Nandini Das' book, 'Courting India: England, Mughal India and the Origins of Empire,' clinched the prestigious British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding—a £25,000 award recognizing exceptional non-fiction works that significantly contribute to public comprehension of diverse world cultures and their interconnectedness.
Hailing from Kolkata and serving as a Professor in the English faculty at the University of Oxford, Das received acclaim for her "remarkable debut." Her work offers a fresh and significant perspective on the genesis of empire by delving into the arrival of Sir Thomas Roe, the first English ambassador in India during the early 17th century. The book reshapes the narrative of Britain and India, departing from a Eurocentric approach, and presents a balanced and captivating account of the interaction between two cultures, highlighting their aspirations, misconceptions, and biases.
When Nandini previously spoke to Asian Voice about her book being shortlisted, she described the inspiration behind the book. She said, “ I wanted to understand that encounter, and I wanted to understand not just what Roe saw in India, but how and why he responded in certain ways, and how it shaped both Britain and India in the centuries to come.”
“The history of the British in India is often told in proleptic terms, with an eye to what the British Empire was to become in the future, assuming that how that history turned out was always what was meant to be. When I came across Roe’s journal from his embassy, and the accounts of his embassy by other contemporaries and fellow travellers, I was struck by how counter-intuitive that story was in comparison to our understanding of the British Empire in India. I wanted to find out more,” she added.
Reflecting on the win and the challenges
She spoke to us post her win and described what the award meant for her personally: “I am both delighted and deeply honoured to have received this award, particularly given that Courting India was chosen from a stellar shortlist of books, from each of which I have learned an enormous amount.
“In a world that is currently at a point of crisis on multiple fronts, global cultural understanding seems an increasingly elusive goal. To think that Courting India may have contributed even marginally towards that goal at some level is a wonderful impetus towards my future work.”
About the challenges she faced while writing the book, she said, “Sometimes the challenge that faces historians is the lack of material, but my challenge was just the opposite. I wanted to write an account that attends responsibly and accurately to multiple perspectives, and that meant trying to compare and collate historical documents in multiple languages, European and non-European, as well as paintings and other material evidence.
“Tackling that challenge demanded planning on a scale I had never done before, but it also demanded days, weeks, and months of poring over historical artifacts, only to decide in the end that I could not fit all of them into the narrative.”
Upcoming book to redefine England’s history
Nandini’s next book is a new history of sixteenth and seventeenth-century England, written not from the perspective of kings and queens, but that of people moving in and out of the country. Describing the book, she said, “Some of them were voluntary migrants, others who suffered forced displacement. All of them helped to shape and define not just the history of the nation, but through England, the entangled fortunes of many of the nations and peoples across the globe, with whom England came into contact in this period and subsequently. It'll be out with Bloomsbury in spring 2026.”
The award-winning writer suggests that anyone who wants to understand the role played by the East India Company should read William Dalrymple's “The Anarchy”, which offers a thoroughly approachable, yet rigorous account of the Company’s ruthless ascent and its exploitation of post-Mughal India's turmoil. David Veevers's “The Great Defiance: How the World Took on the British Empire” also offers a new take on global responses to British colonialism in its early period.
