Realising his officials were only rarely successful in forcing armed Company outposts to pay the due taxes and customs duties, he abolished such duties altogether, across his realm, ‘declaring that so long as he failed to levy duties from the rich, he would hold back his hand from doing so in the case of the poor’.92 In this way he deprived the English of their unfair advantage over local traders, even if it meant enormous losses for him personally, and for the solvency of his government.
