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AUDIENCE COMMENTS
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THE MUGHAL EMPIRE
Sean McHugh Mughul Empire & Bolivian silver
I see from the comments of both Melvyn and the contributors below that we all enjoyed that cross world sweeping run from Potosi to Delhi with the spoils of the Spanish Empire finding their way to the descendants of Ghenghiz Khan. Could someone tell me - was it the Indian textile industry that earned this silver ? Was it the Industrial Revolution that brought back that silver to Britain and destroyed the Indian manufacturing base ? Nice program - may I recommend the silk routes land and sea as a possible ?
Susan Holden - Mughal Empire
Like others, I was really struck by the interconnections, ie the Bogota-Spain-India-SE Asia links via silver. Also by the parallel valuation of military expansion and artistic creativity. I found this programme enthralling and am surprised it has caused much less comment than some of the others. Hope it doesn't mean the ideas in it cannot be revisited: the crosscultural aspects of different cultures' views of each other was vey well explored, and is worth coming back to. The other strand that might be developed is the British attitude to a 'foreign' culture, at first embracing it and then trying to overlay it. William Dalrymple's White Mughals discusses this. Worth exploring?
The Mughal Empire
I found the programme on the Mughals really stimulating particularly when it discussed the economic effect of the Bolivian silver trail on the opulence of the Mughal court. Yet another example of how connected so many seemingly unconnected events are..........perhaps there is something chaotic about all this too! I want to reiterate what I sense is coming from a lot of directions not least Melvyn himself (although he is disarmingly reticent about it) we DO need more time. This is one of the very few programmes where serious discussion on a whole range of subjects is possible. Madam Producer............ Time please, a lot more of it but at least 1 hour.
Farhan Chughtai - The Mughal Empire
As someone of Mughal descent, I thoroughly enjoyed the discussion and balanced views presented. It was interesting to get an insight into the empire, its scale and the factors/ideas that shaped it. Also, the comparison, interactions and viewpoints of visting Europeans/Orientalists was well presented.
Stella Morris
(As I write your 'debate has one little e-mail, am worried that just one as a response to a whole programme might dissuade you from similar historical overviews in future! Please no for I adore them as new & broad inroads into a period, and it was enhanced for me by inclusion of how other economies tied in. I wasn't clear if Akbar's intense personal curiosity & openess to others' ways & ideas was inspired in him by the urge of holy books to Muslims to 'seek knowledge wherever it is to be found...' His attitude seems extraordinary as an active conqueror, I'll remember him as a complex man. Guests said that European visitors to court & Mughal hosts looked equally exotic to each other. Susan Stronge went on to say that European influence on art in the empire was many-layered & complex. I know one layer is trade activity, eg East India Company merchants sending out crewel-work (embroidery) hangings to be copied by Indian textile painters. These bore stylised English motifs fashionable in the period (oak-leaves / garden insects / curly bonfire smoke etc) The accident of Indian artisans' understanding (? / ? /?)led them to process these 'obvious' motifs through their imaginations as meaningless exotica, and sent back on the ships even better exotica (trees of brilliant flowers / small fabulous animals / curly foliage) which was dubbed Chinz. Product sourcing/import is my trade, cross-culture accidents never cease & I can see the sour faces of the EIC merchants picking over the bizarre results of simple copying. But very unusually it didn't have to be dumped at a loss on anyone who'd take it but was an accidental sell-out, now indelibly part of the English design culture. The visual misconception for me stands as a parllel to the mental, that out of the worst errors of understanding new blood can flow if positive imagination & enthusiasm are allowed to let rip & infuse a thing with genuine creativity. History is full of the negative response, and a picture of Akbar embracing hybridization & diversity & change with keen personal interest is refreshing & seductive even if it is not the full picture of Mughal rule.
The Mughal Empire
Most interesting, the resonances for today are unspoken, and an account of the Sikh experience of living under the Mughal rule in Delhi would form a programme in itself. Greetings to the gurdwara at Panipat from an Englishman.....
Somnath Mahalanabis: Mughal Empire
I am a regular listener of 'In Our Time'. Today morning when I was listening to the programme I noticed a minor but very unacceptable mistake when Mr Bragg got the geography of Indian sub-continent wrong. I was surprised that none of the eminent academics on the panel made any effort to correct him then and there. Later on when I logged on to this website I was aghust to find the same mistake, so it was not just a slip of tongue on Mr Bragg's part. ''At its height the Mughal Empire stretched from Gujarat in the East to Bengal in the West, and from Lahore in the North to Madras in the South. It covered the whole of present day northern India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, and became famous for the Taj Mahal, the Koh-i-Noor and the Peacock Throne.'' To clarify: Gujrat is the western most state of modern India and Bengal is a state in the eastern part of the country. One expects better than this from BBC and particularly from a programme like 'In Our Time'.
Rosie Taylor - Mughal Empire
I was surprised you didn't (unless I missed it) mention The Miniaturist, the novel about Akbar and his artists by Kunal Basu.
Moguls -- Moogles?
Shades of Bodicea! When and why do Moguls become 'Moogles'... and do we have to change the name of the railway locomotive Mogul class now?
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