Some legends say that Anarkali of Akbar’s court was a lady from Venice, Italy! While this legend may not be true, the fact remains that people from a host of European countries, including Italy, made their way to India in the middle ages. Not all of them were soldiers or influenced the nation’s politics; some were just intrepid travellers while two of them found an Indian court to be the best place to practise their profession — medicine!  

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When one mentions Europeans in medieval and late medieval India, the British, Portuguese and the French first come to mind. Indeed, between them they greatly influenced India’s politics and history. But there were also a few Dutch factories in the country, managed by people from the Netherlands. And not to be left out in the great trading game of the 17th century, Denmark and Norway had also established the Danish East India Company! The ruins of their capital fort, Dansborg, still stand in Tamil Nadu. Completing the Scandinavian presence in India was the short-lived Swedish East India Company. Given how prosperous India was, it is no surprise that everyone wanted a piece of the trade cake.  

The Italians never influenced politics in medieval India, but they did arrive as travellers who stayed for long periods in the country. They left remarkable accounts, such as Nicolas Manucci’s Storia Do Mogor, a book about events during Aurangzeb’s time. There was also a Nicolo Conti, who visited Vijayanagar at its zenith and has left us a memoir which brings the destroyed city to life. And who can forget the celebrated Marco Polo, who visited south India two hundred years prior to Conti? 

Not to be left behind in a growing list of European travellers, a man from Germany, named Johan Albrecht de Mandelso, made his way through Persia to Mughal-ruled India in the 17th century, landing first at the port of Surat in 1638. From there he went on to visit Agra and Delhi and wrote detailed travelogues which were subsequently translated into various European languages. 

The French, as is well known, were quite a presence in south India of the 18th century, and majorly influenced its politics. But further north, a Frenchman named Francois Bernier had become personal physician to Aurangzeb!

Another Frenchman who travelled extensively in Mughal India was a jeweller by profession — Jean Baptise Tavernier. Between them, the two wrote extensively about their stay in India, providing Europe with extensive knowledge of the country.  

With western Europe (sometimes quite literally) on India’s map, could the east be left far behind? So we find the curious case of a Hungarian doctor at Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s court in the early 19th century. He was Janos Honigberg, originally of Kronstadt. A homeopathic doctor by profession, Maharaja Ranjit Singh also gave him charge of some gunpowder stores at Lahore! In fact, his army included officers from England, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and America, which, surprisingly, wasn’t very odd for the times.  

Travellers from Poland also reached India during those times, starting from the days of the European renaissance. Several Polish travellers visited India during the middle ages, including Erazm Kretkowski and Pawel Palczowski.

An interesting thing to note among all these travellers is how knowledge carried by them to Europe quickly disseminated into various European languages. A merchant named Gaspar Da Gama also reached India’s shores in the late 15th century. The name might seem very Portuguese, but he was actually a Polish fellow born in Poznan.  

Close to Poland’s eastern border is Russia, a country from where Afanasy Nikitin travelled to India. Originally of Tver, a principality near Moscow, he visited the Bahamani sultanate for around three years around 1460 AD and like most other European travellers, also penned his experiences in a book named Khozheniye za tri morya (Journey beyond the three seas) — one of the first detailed accounts of life in India written by a European hand.  

While we are on the topic of Russia, mention might be made of Armenia, another former Soviet country, which also found many of its people making their way to India in the middle ages. Akbar settled Armenians in Agra. Armenia and  neighbouring Georgia also had travellers and missionaries travelling to India.   

The first American ship, complete with the old US flag showing thirteen stars in a circle, docked at Pondicherry in 1784! One Captain Bell had commanded the merchant ship, simply named United States. By 1792, there were enough American ships travelling to India to warrant the establishment of an American Consulate at Kolkata!  In fact, one of the last battles linked to the American Revolution was fought off the coast of Cuddalore in 1783, when Hyder Ali allied with the French to face an alliance of the British Empire and Hanover, a German principality!  

The writer is the author of Brahmaputra — Story of Lachit Barphukan and  Sahyadris to Hindukush — Maratha Conquest of Lahore and Attock