Performing India in Early Modern England 1575-1642: Commerce, Spectacle, and the Formation of the East India Company

Situating itself against the transitional moment of first direct contact of English merchants with the Indian subcontinent, this book examines what it might have meant to perform as Indian in distinct economic and political spaces in early modern England. Turning to the years leading up to and following the establishment of the East India Company, it explores how the arrival of new material imports intersected with questions of racecraft and cultural appropriation on the English stage. It sheds new light on the cultural impact of the East Indies trade by examining late sixteenth and early seventeenth century drama including public theatres, court masques, and civic pageantry. This book views England’s domestic and civic spaces as contact zones, where members of the monarchy or London companies performed as Indians in ritual or political drama. To perform India was to negotiate questions of racecraft, cosmopolitan, and new English gains in global commerce.