Nandini Das’s Courting India: England, Mughal India and the Origins of Empire (Bloomsbury) is ostensibly a study of Sir Thomas Roe’s time as the East India Company’s representative to the Mughal court from 1615 to 1619, but it is so much more than that. While Roe is often considered to be the progenitor of the EIC’s later control of the subcontinent, Das shows that he was often sidelined by established traders and imposing Mughal leaders. Her book makes us rethink the idea that Britain was always dominant in India.