“For Nation, King, and Company”: William Norris, two English East India companies, and a forgotten embassy to Mughal India, 1699–1702

In 1699, English ambassador William Norris was dispatched by King William III and a new East India Company on an embassy to Mughal India. The mission was a spectacular failure and cost a staggering £80,000. Using Norris’s unpublished and handwritten diaries, my research examines the reasons behind the embassy’s downfall. In so doing, it not only sheds light on a largely neglected episode in the history of the English in India, but also builds on recent scholarship that understands the road to the British Empire as haphazard, chaotic, and littered with failures and surprises.