ABSTRACT
On 20 March 1652, exactly fifty years after the inception of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), its ambassador Joan Cunaeus visited the Ali Qapu palace of the Safavid Shah Abbas II (r. 1642–1666). The VOC was a true hybrid organization, whose officials could show their multifarious faces as merchant-diplomats and merchant-kings. The chapter explores the legitimating function of ceremonial gift-exchange in mid-seventeenth-century diplomatic relations between the VOC and the Safavid and Mughal empires. It outlines why gift-exchange is an important angle through which to explore the status of VOC and Indo-European relations and then introduces VOC as political and diplomatic actor. The chapter reconstructs the political and representational connotations of the gifts exchanged between Cunaeus, Van Adrichem, and the Safavid and Mughal rulers. An important aspect of political cultures of the Safavid and Mughal empires was their ruler's claim to universal sovereignty. Their monarchs represented themselves as lords of the world, all other rulers ranking below them.
