The Honourable Company

by John Keay

‘The Coast’ served Bantam and was administered

from Bantam. In the same way the Portuguese had their Coromandel base at San Thome which served Malacca, and the Dutch their Coromandel base at Pulicat which served Jakarta (Batavia).

At none of the Coromandel ports did Europeans glance further inland than they need for their own trade and security. Rather did they face resolutely out to sea, scanning the eastern horizon for a s...

It was the same on th...

Gujarat where at Surat the London East India Company would establish its main factory ...

Hence Surat, whence its ‘founders’ were known to have treated with ‘The Great Mogoll’, was represented as the seed of the Raj.

The effects of such chronological rewinding are still evident in twentieth-century studies. It may, for instance, be unhelpful to bill the first visit by a Company factor to the Moghul court as ‘the opening scene in the history of British India’; or to applaud his successor as ‘the first of the many great Englishmen who have served their country in India’; or to describe the commander of a fleet that called at Surat in 1615 as ‘a most undoubted worker on the foundations of Empire in India’. The imperial perspective wildly distorts the endeavours of the young Company in India just as it marginalizes the activities of the Company elsewhere.

The Company’s factors were therefore to inquire into all aspects of this trade with three objectives in mind. One was the possibility of selling broadcloth for cash; another the possibility of obviating the Company’s existing and much troubled trade with the Spice Islands by buying spices at Aden or Surat; and the third and ideal solution was that of improving their purchasing position at Bantam by obtaining, in return for English exports, the Indian cottons so sought after in the East. This could be done either at source in Gujarat (Surat) or where the Gujaratis finally disposed of their cottons (Aden and Mocha).

Start

On 28 August 1608, the latter became the first commander of an East India Company vessel to set foot on Indian soil.

The Gujaratis had welcomed the English as trading partners and were not without blame in dislocating Arabian trade. They were also fearful of English retribution – and with good reason.

We're these Parsi?

Middleton proceeded on down the west coast of India to Dabhol, the main port of the kingdom of Bijapur and a place of considerably more importance than the nearby Portuguese settlement at Bon Bahia (later Bombay).

1612

In August 1612, having effectively ended all hopes of trade both in the Red Sea and in Gujarat for the foreseeable future, the last English vessels departed.

Although for much of the seventeenth century the Dutch and English were bitter rivals throughout the East, on the long voyage to and from Europe hostilities were usually suspended. At the Cape and at St Helena ships of the London Company amicably exchanged news and provisions with those of the V.O.C. Hadah was postman for both Companies; and occasionally Dutch and English ships actually sailed together. This was not the case with the Portuguese. Anywhere outside European waters Spain/Portugal continued to regard the ships of the Protestant powers as little better than pirates and, peace treaties notwithstanding, they jealously maintained the exclusive character of their eastern bases. In the Arabian Sea further English endeavours at Surat and Swalley between 1612 and 1620 were seen as a direct challenge to Portugal’s maritime supremacy on the very

threshold of its eastern metropolis at Goa. The Portuguese would respond vigorously. But once again a purely Indo-centric reading of these engagements is misleading. At stake was a dominant role not just in India’s external trade but in that of all the trading coasts of the Arabian Sea including the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. Naval battles in the Gulf of Cambay would have counted for little had not the Portuguese also been challenged at Hormuz, Goa, and a host of lesser ports from the coast of Mozambique to that of Malabar. Hostilities would last for twenty years; and they would embrace the whole trading world between Africa and India.

Robert Trully, a cornettist. The latter found high favour with Jehangir. He converted to Islam and eventually blew his cornet in half the courts of India. Not

and to match Portuguese influence there, the directors hit on the idea of appealing to King James to appoint an ambassador to the court of Jehangir. This was a novel departure, especially in the context of oriental diplomacy which scarcely recognized commerce as a legitimate reason for accreditation. It seemed sensible enough, though, to King James, especially when the Company volunteered to meet all the ambassadorial expenses. Accordingly, armed with suitable presents and a long list of demands, in 1615 Sir Thomas Roe sailed for Surat. It was, according to most accounts, ‘the turning point in the history of the British in Western India’ and ‘a landmark in the relations between England and India’.

all or

Without doubt the capture of Hormuz was the most sensational proof yet afforded of the Company’s naval might in Asia.

Thus, in October 1626, the first English to visit Bombay came as raiders.

it is no exaggeration to say that East India business generated the London money market just as it did the London docks.

On the twelve separate voyages prior to 1613 profits had often been sensational; an average figure of 155 per cent has been suggested. And on the First Joint Stock a respectable 87 per cent was recorded. But on the Second Joint Stock the figure was down to 12 per cent and the period of investment was the longest yet; on an annual basis it appreciated less than 1 per cent. Not surprisingly a Third Joint Stock, launched in 1631, raised only a comparatively modest £420,000 much of which proved difficult to call in. And four successive stocks between 1636 and 1656 raised just £600,000 in aggregate.

Until the middle of the century, and in spite of Persian silk and Indian cottons, pepper continued to provide the bulk of the Company’s trade in terms of volume and of value. Both were now hard hit and this undoubtedly

when shipments recovered in the early 1620s with the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of Defence,

For just as returns seemed to be adjusting to the loss of the spice trade and the steady decline in the pepper trade, disaster struck in Gujarat, now regarded as the Company’s one saving grace. It came courtesy of India’s capricious climate in that the monsoon of 1630 failed to materialize.

Quite suddenly the Surat trade, which was about to supersede that of Bantam in value, was at a standstill.

The Surat factory slid into debt and when Methwold returned to India as its President, outlying establishments at Broach, Baroda, Cambay and Ahmadabad were all withdrawn. Such then was the situation in 1633 when peace negotiations were opened with the Portuguese.

the sudden news of Methwold’s treaty with the Portuguese not appeared to throw a whole new light on Eastern trade. Methwold, a cautious man, had spoken of ‘certaine benefitt’. But Charles I was easily persuaded that it was in fact a sensational breakthrough. With no further danger of Portuguese attack and with entry to all of Portugal’s cherished markets, the English had the chance of doubling their trading empire.

inaugurated the export of Malabar pepper to London. Access to this new source of pepper and to the area’s production of cinnamon and cardamom would soon occasion a further downgrading of the Company’s investment at Bantam. Similarly, future trends were anticipated by the establishment of an English factory at Hughli just a few miles from the marshes that would one day become Calcutta. This was settled in 1650 under the auspices of the ‘United Joint Stock’ so called because it was supposed to finance both the original Company and the remnants of the Association. In fact

In order to show a modest profit the Company’s factors turned increasingly to the ‘country trade’.

Thanks to the failure of Courteen’s Malabar factories and of his Madagascan settlements, there was now in the ports of the East a fair number of footloose Englishmen willing to accept employment wherever it offered. The garrison of Fort St George (Madras) was recruited from such people and so were the officers of this new class of shipping.

Circumstance necessitated a spirit of improvization and although the despatch of homeward cargoes was

still the priority, consideration was now given to the preservation of an English presence in the East that could withstand the fluctuations of both European politics and oriental patronage. On ‘the Coast’ the fortified settlement at Madras seemed to be paying off. With the idea of finding a similar base in the west of India to which Englishmen could ‘resort with safety’ the factors at Surat began to float the idea of obtaining from the Portuguese a secure and fortifiable ha...

By the 1661 Treaty of Whitehall Bombay had been gifted to him as part of the dowry of Catherine of Braganza, his Portuguese bride. But a secret clause attached to the Treaty specified that it was to be employed by the British in the defence of Portugal’s other Indian settlements.

King and Company understood one another well and their alliance was cemented by a like-minded approach to foreign affairs, both favouring an alliance with the Catholic powers rather than one with the Dutch.

late 1662.

He was succeeded by his secretary, a one-time grocer named Humphrey Cooke, and it was Cooke who in 1665 eventually negotiated landing rights at Bombay. Out of Marlborough’s force of 400 just 97 emaciated castaways finally sailed north and at last scrambled ashore at Bombay.

In 1668, when Charles II made the place over to the Company’s directors, its loss would not perhaps have greatly troubled them. Their reluctance to ease His Majesty ‘of that great burthen and expense which the keeping of it hath hitherto beene’ was probably genuine. It seemed that Bombay’s negligible trade and limited access to the mainland, plus its unhealthy climate, could never repay the cost of fortifying and garrisoning it against the marauding fleets of the Dutch and of Indian pirates.

But by 1688 it was a very different story. Bombay had become a thriving colony with a population of 60,000. Briefly eclipsing even Madras, it was ‘the seat of power and trade of the English in the East Indies’.

At Bombay, on the other hand, a man could build his own house on British soil and acquire his own few acres of coconut grove. To encourage settlement the Company now permitted its employees to stay on after their term of service and even outsiders, provided their business did not compete with that of the Company, were welcome to take up residence.

The presence of a growing and, all too often, impudent population demanded all manner of judicial, fiscal and administrative institutions. Gerald Aungier, Governor from 1669-77, was not only Bombay’s ‘true founder’ but also the first of the Company’s servants to try his hand at civilian government. During the 1670s he regulated the existing magistrates’ courts and set up a Supreme Court of Judicature. For the first time in India juries were employed and, with the appointment to the bench of Henry Gary, long since superseded as Governor, was introduced the idea of separating judicial and executive authority. Orders from Surat enjoined Gary to uphold the integrity of his office and not bring the court into disrepute by showing partiality or by ‘countenancing common barristers in which sort of vermin they say Bombay is very unhappy’.

It all cost money, of course, and the directors in London were soon groaning at Aungier’s extravagance. ‘Our business is to advantage ourselves by trade’, they reminded him in 1675, ‘and what government we have is but the better to carry on and support that [trade].’ But, as Aungier might have replied, trade at Bombay had first to be created. To attract the weavers, planters, merchants and money-lenders on whom it depended, Bombay had to establish a reputation for security, religious harmony, and impartial justice. And thanks to his reforms it was doing just that. Additionally it offered a new source of income in the form of revenue. Under Portuguese rule Bombay’s residents had remitted a fourth of their crop to the government. Aungier, after meeting with the principal residents, remitted this in favour of a land tax which yielded some £1666 per annum and was based on his famous Convention, ‘a sort of Doomesday Book in which the properties of the island were registered’. It was a significant precedent. For the first time the Company was enjoying the easy pickings of land revenue. Within a decade the Governor of the Company was urging something similar on the Madras authorities. ‘People protected ought in all parts of the universe, in some way or other, to defray the charge of their protection and preservation from wrong or violence.’ If commercial activity in the East depended on the fortifying of land bases, then all who enjoyed their security must pay for it. Trade prece...

the Company was now the largest and wealthiest corporation in the English-speaking world;

Sidi Yakub,

Meanwhile Bombay was left to moulder. Of ‘seven or eight hundred English’ before the war ‘not above 60 were left by the sword and the [subsequent] plague’.

in or about the year 1690 it fell to Job Charnock, an old and respected servant of the East India Company, to found the future city of Calcutta. That much is certain.

The days of Elizabeth and Akbar when European trade to India had been valued principally for its limited stock of novelties, trinkets and sporting dogs had long since passed. In the period 1681-5 the Company would export, mainly to Moghul India, a grand total of 240,000 kg of silver and nearly 7000 kg of gold. With Aurangzeb’s armies permanently locked in combat with either Afghans or Marathas, the demand for coin throughout the empire was unprecedented

and to an important extent it was being met by the European trading companies. Additionally the manufacturing industries of Gujarat, the Tamil country and Bengal had come to depend on Europe’s insatiable demand for cottons and silks.