This volume explores the changing meanings that maritime India acquired during the early modern period owing to the frequent efforts of the Mughals and the Portuguese from two different fronts to control its vast resourceful enclaves and profit-yielding neighbourhoods.

In December 1572 the Mughal emperor Akbar arrived in the port city of Khambayat. Having been raised in distant Kabul, Akbar, in his thirty years, had never been to the ocean. Presumably anxious with the news about the Mughal military campaign in Gujarat, several Portuguese merchants in Khambayat rushed to Akbar’s presence. This encounter marked the beginning of a long, complex, and unequal relationship between a continental Muslim empire that was expanding into south India, often looking back to Central Asia, and a European Christian maritime empire whose rulers considered themselves ‘kings of the sea’. By the middle of the seventeenth century, these two empires faced each other across thousands of kilometres from Sind to Bijapur, with a supplementary eastern arm in faraway Bengal. Focusing on borderland management, imperial projects, and cross-cultural circulation, this volume delves into the ways in which, between c. 1570 and c. 1640, the Portuguese understood and dealt with their undesirably close neighbours—the Mughals.

Contributed articles.

This is a clear account, written from an Indian point of view, of Portuguese activities in India.

An account of the activities of the Portuguese in India and the Indian Ocean from the 16th century onwards, written squarely from an Indian point of view. The author lays particular stress on social, economic and religious interaction between Portuguese and Indians.

This book charts the convergence of science, culture, and politics across Portugal's empire, showing how a global geographical concept was born. In accessible, narrative prose, this book explores the unexpected forms that science took in the early modern world. It highlights little-known linkages between Asia and the Atlantic world.