This event was cancelled due to COVID restrictions.
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The story could be from Disney: in 1653, 14-year-old Venetian Nicolò Manucci, suffering from youthful wanderlust, stows away on a ship. Befriended (and hired) by an English nobleman (Henry Bard, Viscount of Bellomont) en route to Persia to solicit assistance from the Shah for exiled Charles II, he travels through the Ottoman Empire to Esfahan. After a year, once it becomes apparent that no such assistance would be forthcoming, the pair depart for Surat with the intention of continuing on to Delhi, during the last leg of which Lord Bellomont inconveniently expires. Manucci, now 18, but still a teenager, is left alone in the Mughal Empire.
And that’s just the first dozen or so pages of A Venetian at the Mughal Court, a captivating historical biography by Italian scholar Marco Moneta, a life drawn mostly from Manucci’s own Storia do Mogor, his magnum opus composed several decades later.
A Venetian at the Mughal Court is far more than the story of a remarkable character, filled with the sights, sounds and personalities of Mughal India. It also serves as an outline history of a critical half-century of the Empire during which it achieved its largest extent but also when the elements that would lead to its decline started to manifest themselves.
Moneta has written a fine book, and has been very well-served by his translator Elisabetta Gnecchi Ruscone, who has managed not just a fluent translation, but one which maintains the distinct voices of the author and his subject.
Manucci’s story is one that will likely strike a chord with many a lifelong Western expat in Asia.
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This event is also part of “Central West“, an open day for the galleries in the Central Western district.