ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the perspective of ‘provincial diplomacy’ as a means to analyse the political and commercial relationships between the Mughal Empire and the EIC and VOC. Its focus on interactions at the provincial level of the imperial administration moves against the common tendency to concentrate exclusively on diplomatic proceedings at the central court. The first section examines Ralph Cartwright’s mission (1633) to the nawab’s court in Cuttack (Orissa) to argue that provincial diplomacy was on the whole characterised by mutuality, not cultural misunderstanding. The second section charts the VOC’s entanglement in Mughal imperial politics during the war of succession (1657–1659) to show how successive governors of Bengal gradually incorporated the Company into the Mughal political landscape.
