Changing Cultural Contents: The Incorporation of Mughal Architectural Elements in European Memorials in India in the Seventeenth Century

The conspicuous difference of the architecture of the European grave memorials in the Old English and Old Dutch cemeteries in Surat poses the question of why they differ so enormously in form and style from their counterparts in the graveyards of England and the Netherlands. The assumption of this paper is that the reason for this contrast lies in the temporally specific transfer of cultural contents as a result of the necessary process by which European commercial agents were integrated into the society of the Mughal Empire.