Cultural historian Dr Lubaaba Al-Azami and historian and author Prof Anna Whitelock discuss how the early seeds of the British Empire were sown by fortune hunters and the first Stuart monarch.

In Travellers in the Golden Realm, Al-Azami describes a period when England was an isolated state. Merchants, pilgrims and outcasts seeking better fortunes ventured to the kingdom of the Mughals. The story features characters such as Father Thomas Stephens, a Catholic fleeing religious persecution, the merchant Ralph Fitch looking for jewels, and John Mildenhall, an adventurer revelling in the politics of the Mughal elite. They found a world ruled by women such as Empress Nur Jahan Begim, Queen Mother Maryam al-Zamani and Princess Jahanara Begim. Al-Azami says the collision of East and West launched a period of globalisation, from the Chinese opium trade to slave trade with the Americas. Al-Azami is a lecturer in Shakespeare and early modern literature at the University of Manchester, a research fellow at the University of Liverpool and founding editor of Medieval and Early Modern Orients.

In The Sun Rising: James I and the Dawn of a Global Britain, Whitelock looks at the arrival of James I and the establishment of a new Stuart dynasty and the first ‘united kingdom’ of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales. She explores how this new Great Britain had to play catch-up with the likes of Spain and Portugal who were already exploiting the New World for profit. James’s global ambitions began to shift the tide as the seeds of a future British Empire were sown. Whitelock is professor of the history of monarchy at City, University of London, and author of Mary Tudor and Elizabeth’s Bedfellows.