Honourable Company: A History of The English East India Company

by John Keay

  The Anglo-Dutch war of 1652 lent weight to this idea. Although the Company still nursed grievances against the Dutch dating back to the days of Amboina and Pulo Run, the war was essentially Cromwell’s. He employed the Company’s grievances to justify it and he exploited the Company’s willingness to have the Protectorate espouse its cause. But the defence of Eastern trade did not figure in his strategy. He refused a request to send warships to Persian waters and thus abandoned the Company to its fate. With enormous damage to English prestige the Dutch defeated two English fleets off Persia and one off the coast of Sind. It was little consolation to the bealeaguered factors at Surat and Gombroon that in the English Channel Cromwell’s navy had triumphed, or that by the Peace of Westminster compensation was granted to the descendants of Towerson and his fellow Amboina ‘martyrs’. Even the restitution of Pulo Run, an achievement particularly dear to Cromwell’s heart, seemed of little consequence. Far preferable in the Company’s estimation would have been the acquisition of a base like Bombay. They urged the Protector to pursue the matter but without success.

  Throughout ‘these frowning times’ instructions from London as to the actual conduct of trade were often contradictory and unhelpful. Their general drift was to the effect that long-term investments should be avoided, expenses reduced, and that the limited hold space available be filled only with cargoes of high value and certain sale. This was not exactly news. Up-country factories in India were again being closed and at Surat the number of factors had been cut to eight. Left to make their own selection, they and their colleagues at Madras invested heavily in saltpetre, the essential ingredient in gunpowder. In Ireland and the Low Countries as well as in England Cromwell had good reason to be grateful to the Company for its foresight; henceforth saltpetre would remain an important item in the Indian trade. Silk, on the other hand, did not command a ready sale amongst dour republicans. Their ‘rigid and austere manners’, combined with fierce rivalry from the Dutch, saw the gradual decline of English interest in the Persian silk trade; when demand eventually revived it would be met increasingly from the silk farms of Bengal.

  That the Persian trade survived at all was largely thanks to hostilities between the Moghul Empire and the Shah. Their fluctuating campaigns to secure the Afghan city of Kandahar interruped the overland trade and obliged Moghul shipping to avoid Persian ports. The Dutch and the English exploited this situation, becoming deeply involved in the freighting of Persian goods on behalf of Indian merchants. It was the busiest arm of the ‘country trade’ and one greatly facilitated by the customs exemption granted to the English by Shah Abbas. At Mocha and Basra no such privileges pertained, but there too English ships continued their sporadic calls. Again they carried mainly freighted cargoes although a notable exception was a small consignment of ‘coho seedes’ bought at Mocha in 1658 and forwarded to London. The capital’s first coffee house had just opened.

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  Declining fortunes abroad were faithfully reflected in drastic economies at home. In 1635 the Company’s eighteen London employees had to take a cut in salaries; a further cut followed in 1639. In the same year the Company was obliged to suspend its shipbuilding programme and revert to the chartering practices of its earliest voyages. Four years later the Deptford yard was sold and Blackwall used only for refitting purposes. In 1650 even this, the Company’s most valuable and impressive asset, was put up for sale. Since most of its overseas establishments, including the Surat factory, were rented, that left just Fort St George and the still elusive atoll of Pulo Run; otherwise the Company was just people and paper. It continued to trade on both the Fourth Joint Stock and the United Joint Stock but it was unclear exactly which of these was supposed to be the legitimate Company, and by 1655 both had anyway expired.

  Ships still sailed but most were privately financed and even when their subscribers were members of the Company they were no more bound to acknowledge the directors’ authority than were those of other private adventurers. Indeed there was now a strong current of opinion both within the Company and without which favoured this looser arrangement. As Cromwell procrastinated over the future of Eastern trade, it seemed that these ‘free adventurers’ might well have their way. The debate on the subject, which lasted from 1654-1657, was not over a renewal of the Company’s charter but over whether the trade should be conducted on a monopolistic joint stock principle at all. With a host of adventurers already competing for cargoes abroad and sales at home, the chaos that must result from a free-for-all was plain enough. As Mun had foreseen, prices rose, customs receipts fell, and even the adventurers began to have second thoughts. Yet still Cromwell hesitated, referring the matter to his Council of State who in turn referred it to yet more select committees.

  Eventually, on 14 January 1657, the directors took a deep breath and declared for liquidation. Bills were printed and posted at the Exchange; on this day month would be sold by public auction ‘to any natives of this Commonwealth to and for their owne proper use’ the Company’s ‘island [Pulo Run], customs [Gombroon], houses and other rights in the Indies’. An asking price of £14,000 was mentioned – not much to show for nearly sixty years of trade. All that stood between the Company and extinction was an inch of candle. It was, however, generally understood that the object of the exercise was simply to force the Goverment’s hand. And so it did. On 6 February the Council declared in favour of the joint stock principle. The sale was postponed and both the Company and the free adventurers joined forces for a new flotation. In March a draft charter was approved and on 19 October 1657 the new charter passed the Great Seal. A new subscription, known as the New General Stock, was immediately opened and raised £786,000. Evidently both cash and confidence were not lacking if the trade could be properly regulated. Within six months no less than thirteen vessels were on their way to the East well provided with treasure and bursting with the good tidings.

  Although Cromwell was dead within the year, his charter would be quickly replaced with an almost identical grant from Charles II which became the foundation of the Company’s future prosperity. It differed from those of Elizabeth and James I in three important respects. The New General Stock, unlike all previous stocks, was to be permanent; thus ensuring a continuity of capital which had hitherto been lacking. In Sir William Hunter’s words the Company at last ‘cast its medieval skin, shook off the traditions of the regulated system and grew into one united, continuous and permanent joint stock corporation’.

  A stipulation that in future the Governor, Deputy-Governor and directors must all stand down every two years had less dramatic results. Designed to prevent that monopoly of office which had been a feature of the pre-Restoration Company, it failed to anticipate the even greater danger of a monopoly of stock. Amongst the names listed as subscribers to the new stock were those of Thomas Papillon, who would devote most of his career to combating this danger, and of Josiah Child, who would ruthlessly exploit it.

  Finally the new charter included a grant authorizing the Company to fortify and colonize any of its establishments and to transport to them settlers, stores and ammunition. The Protector was again thinking of Pulo Run; doubtless an autopsy would have revealed the name of the island engraved on his stony heart. But the Company’s thoughts were elsewhere. They were thinking of Bombay, still in Portuguese hands, of the Cape, recently occupied by the Dutch, and of St Helena, supposedly the next place on the Dutch agenda. In December 1658, to gratify Cromwell’s concern, John Dutton at the head of a determined band of settlers, prepared to depart for Pulo Run. The London was actually ready to sail when, on the pretext of impending Dutch hostilities, she was redirected to St Helena. Thus in May of the following year Dutton officially took possession ‘with trumpet and drum’ of the Company’s first settlement. Near a clapboard chapel built by the Portuguese and to which passing fleets had habitually nailed the news of their movements, a fort was built, then a town –Jamestown. By a curious train of circumstance Nathaniel Courthope’s epic resistance on the nutmeg is
le of Pulo Run had, forty years on and half a world away, presented the Company with an island of comparable size plus a golden nutmeg in the form of a colonizing concession of quite incomparable portent.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  A Seat of Power and Trade

  BOMBAY AND SURAT

  Of the three great cities which the East India Company would bequeath to its successors in India, Bombay was always the odd one out. Both Madras and Calcutta owed their existence to the predilections of eccentric individuals acting on their own initiative. On a strand of still virgin Coromandel sand Francis Day had traced out the walls of Fort St George (Madras); and, fifty years later, Job Charnock would light upon a wooded embankment, girt by swamps and the Hughli river, as the site for Fort William (Calcutta). But Bombay was different. The trickle of off-shore islands which would become the capital of western India changed hands in London; the acquisition was handled by the Company’s directors themselves; and the man usually described as the founder of Bombay, Gerald Aungier, is revealed as a most upright and unexciting administrator. A swashbuckling pioneer was not needed. Comparatively speaking, the place came as a going concern.

  The Governor’s mansion, a relic of Bombay’s long Portuguese period, already loomed above the coconut palms. ‘A pretty well-seated but ill-fortified house’, thought Dr John Fryer, Surgeon to the Company, who first saw it in 1673; it would require the addition of ‘war-like walls’, ‘bold rampires’, and ‘hardy cannon’ to become a modest fort and eventually ‘Bombay Castle’. Scattered through the palm-roofed hamlets round about, there already lived some 10,000 souls, both Indian and European and including many of part-Portuguese descent. There were Catholic churches and Hindu shrines and attached to the Governor’s house there was ‘a delicate garden, voiced to be the pleasantest in India’.

  But most important of all, when acquired by the Company in 1668, Bombay would already be a Crown colony. The Union Jack fluttered from the Governor’s flagpole and British troops with tall hats and crossed breast-straps paced the parapets. In Bombay the Company would succeed to a bit of Indian soil, albeit small, pestilential and problematic, which was already British. So much so that in the letters patent under which it would be leased to the Company, it was described as pertaining to ‘the Manor of East Greenwich in the County of Kent’; and the rent of £10 per annum was to be paid ‘in gold, on the 30th day of September, yearly, for ever’. Done. One can almost hear the rap of the auctioneer’s gavel. Surplus to Charles II’s requirements, Bombay would be knocked down to the only serious bidder, and the directors of the East India Company would thereby find themselves custodians ‘in free and common soccage’ of all British India. Admittedly it was only some twenty square miles, mostly water; but it made the Company a sovereign power, of sorts, in Asia.

  Charles II, as everyone knew, was heartily glad to be rid of the place. During six years it had brought him only an expense which he could not afford and an obligation which he could not discharge. 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. Like Methwold’s Goa Convention it implied a mutual defence pact against the ever encroaching might of the Dutch V.O.C. but with the onus on the English Crown rather than the Company.

  This had suited the territory-shy Company. In 1660 the directors had greeted the restoration of their old Stuart patrons with genuine enthusiasm, voting £3000 of silver plate to His Majesty and £1000 to his brother, James Duke of York. In 1661 Cromwell’s charter was duly replaced with one in the King’s name and in 1662 a further £10,000 was loaned to the sovereign; the two events were not unconnected. More loans, totalling £150,000, would be voted and more charters, each conferring additional privileges, would be awarded. 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.

  Hence the King’s initial willingness to accept the obligation, attached to Bombay, of supporting the Portuguese in the East and hence the Company’s congratulations. The directors had regretted that they could not see their way to shouldering the burden of actually occupying the place for His Majesty but, when Charles nobly dispatched a squadron complete with garrison, they had agreed to supply all necessary victuals. Commanded by the Earl of Marlborough (no relation to the John Churchill on whom the same title would be conferred thirty years later) and accompanied by a Portuguese Viceroy who was to oversee the transfer of power, the squadron of five ships and 400 troops reached its destination in late 1662. There its problems began.

  Without sanction from Goa the Portuguese Governor refused to hand over his charge, while the Portuguese Viceroy began to query what exactly they were supposed to be handing over anyway. Was it just Bombay island itself as he contended or was it, as the British insisted, the whole minuscule archipelago (since, through infilling and reclamation, become Greater Bombay)? Apparently there had been a map but no one had seen fit to bring it. ‘Whereupon Marlborough [or ‘Marlberry’ as Fryer calls him] examining his commission, was vexed.’ ‘He was pinched and knew not how to ease himself.’ Inevitably his men were suffering from scurvy and could ill withstand further delays cooped up on board. The squadron therefore sailed away to Surat and anchored beside the Company’s moorings in Swalley Hole. Again they were unwelcome. Sir George Oxenden, the new President at Surat, surmised that the city’s Moghul governor would not rest easy at the sight of 400 regular soldiers drilling on his doorstep. He was right. Unless the British troops were immediately re-embarked he could expect, he was told, to see his factory and his investment confiscated.

  Obligingly, Marlborough ‘bid adieu to Swalley’ and sailed south. Decidedly a cargo of soldiery bent on anything but war was uncommonly hard to offload. In despair he finally selected a desert island not far from Goa. ‘Barren, unhealthy and uninhabited’ it might be, but there he landed his men, left them one of his ships, and sailed for home. Anjediva measured ‘a mile long and 300 paces broad’. It had water and soon the 400 Robinson Crusoes had thrown up temporary shelters. Then, for most of a year, they paced the 300 paces, drank the water, and died miserably. Over 200 perished according to Alexander Hamilton, ‘near 300’ according to Fryer, ‘chiefly by their own intemperance’. One must assume that this harsh verdict sprang from some inside knowledge that water was not the only refreshment to which they had access.

  Meanwhile, negotiations with Goa and Lisbon dragged on. In 1664 Sir Abraham Shipman, commander of what remained of the would-be garrison and Governor-designate of Bombay, himself died. 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.

  Mortality was not the only price exacted by Portuguese prevarication. To secure a haven for his men Cooke had been obliged to make heavy concessions in the matter of Bombay’s territorial extent which, when relayed to London, were promptly repudiated by Charles II. ‘The Portugalls have choused [i.e. cheated] us,’ wrote Samuel Pepys in his Diary. Another detachment was soon on its way from England together with a new governor, Sir Gervase Lucas, to supersede Cooke. In fact Lucas went one better and established something of a Bombay tradition by denouncing his predecessor and clapping him in gaol. The charge, originally of extortion and peculation, was upgraded to treason when Cooke made good his escape and began intriguing with the Portuguese for his reinstatement.

  Lucas took a firmer line and no doubt ‘would have made the Portugalls perform their compact’ had he not died within the year. Whereupon he too was succeeded by his secretary, ‘a person of mercuriall brain’ – and no less mercurial origins – called Captain Henry Gary. His name, like his rank, was ope
n to doubt since Hamilton calls him a Greek and Fryer a Venetian. With a house in Goa and plantations in Bombay he flitted between the opposing camps and, according to most accounts, was cordially detested by the Portuguese as ‘an awfull heretick’ and by the British on account of ‘his vainglorious boastings’. He was, we are told, ‘forever seeking to magnifye himself by debasing us (soe much as in him laye)’. Yet evidently he was a most plausible companion and a good businessman. He was also one of Bombay’s true survivors and, however rare this quality, he seems to have expected others to share it. Either that or he was extraordinarily forgetful. For having condemned a miscreant to be hanged on a Tuesday, on the following Friday he recalled the man for further testimony. When ‘the poor dead fellow’ failed to comply, Gary is supposed to have flown into a rage and ordered his arrest for contempt.