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Climate change and empire building

What the diaries of an ambassador to India in 1615 tell us about global trade and how concerns about climate have a long history: Rana Mitter meets the authors of two new histories

Haggling with Indian customs officials and presenting a mighty emperor with the distinctly unimpressive gifts of a cheap sword and a broken carriage are two particularly inauspicious moments that feature in the tale told by historian and New Generation Thinker Nandini Das in her new book about the four years Thomas Roe spent as James VI and I's ambassador to the Mughal Empire. Peter Frankopan has previously written about The Silk Roads and the First Crusade. Now he has turned his attention to writing a 5 billion year long history of the natural world, geography and climate change and the influence that these have had on shaping empires and civilisations. Nandini and Peter join Rana Mitter to share insights from their research and to discuss different ways writing history.

Courting India: England, Mughal India and the Origins of Empire by Nandini Das is out on 16th March.
Peter Frankopan's The Earth Transformed: An Untold History is published on 2nd March.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod.

You can hear Nandini Das presenting a Sunday feature about a wager journey made in Tudor England by Shakespeare's clown Will Kemp available on Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Sounds and another feature The Kristapurana follows Thomas Stephens to Goa /programmes/m00016st
Peter Frankopan discussed What Kind of History Should we Write ? with Rana Mitter and Cundill prize winner Maya Jasanoff in a previous Free Thinking episode /programmes/m00016vf

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44 minutes

Last on

Thu 23 Feb 2023 22:00

Broadcast

  • Thu 23 Feb 2023 22:00

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