The he British established their foothold in India after Sir Tomas Roe, the English diplomat, obtained permission to trade for the English East India Company from the Mughal emperor Jehangir (1605–1627). By end of the seventeenth century, the company had expanded its trading operations in the major coastal cities of India. The gradual weakening of the Mughal Empire in the eighteenth century gave the East India Company a further opportunity to expand its power and maintain its own private army.