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9 results

  • 2 - ‘Soe Fayre an Opportunitie’

  • from Part I - Weakness and Adaptation
  • David Veevers, Queen Mary University of London
  • Book:
    The Origins of the British Empire in Asia, 1600–1750
    Published online:
    20 May 2020
    Print publication:
    11 June 2020, pp 57-78

  • Summary

    This chapter rethinks the emergence of Madras, which has traditionally been depicted as an imperial acquisition developed as an English colony, apart from its turbulent Asian surroundings. Instead, as Company servants appropriated authority to themselves in the face of the collapsing corporate framework, they utilised their Asian networks, partnerships and patrons to establish a new settlement from which their interests could be protected and facilitated. Relying on Indian and Indo-Portuguese capital, Indian labour and materials, and in complete defiance of Company leadership, servants politically subordinated themselves to the Vijayanagara empire in exchange for a set of rights and privileges that would create the Company’s first substantial centre of power in Asia. In the face of metropolitan opposition, Company servants deepened their dependence on their Indian partners and masters, opening up new channels of credit, capital and demographic expansion. When the sultanate of Golconda annexed the Vijayanagara empire, Company servants learned to navigate the complex and shifting state formation process in southern India, adapting to their changing environment and ingratiating themselves with a new set of sovereign rulers and governing elites from whom they continued to acquire greater privileges to develop Madras into a transcultural commercial hub.

  • 7 - The supremacy of the English East India Company, 1740–1800

  • Om Prakash, University of Delhi
  • Book:
    European Commercial Enterprise in Pre-Colonial India
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    28 June 1998, pp 268-314

  • Summary

    A major circumstance contributing to the unprecedented growth in the English trade was the wresting of political authority by the Company in Bengal, the most important region of its trade, between 1757 and 1765. Bengal continued to be by far the most important area of operation for both the Dutch and the English East India companies. The English Company no doubt had acquired a special position in the region, but on nowhere near the scale it had been able to do in Bengal. The French presence on the coast had at best a nuisance value. The available data do not permit a precise division of the value of the textiles exported by the Company from Coromandel between the European and the Asian markets. The Dutch connection with Malabar came to an end in the 1790s. From 1792, the factors at Cochin were trying to sell the Company's establishments to the raja of Travancore.

  • 6 - The VOC and the growing competition by the English and the French, 1680–1740

  • Om Prakash, University of Delhi
  • Book:
    European Commercial Enterprise in Pre-Colonial India
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    28 June 1998, pp 211-267

  • Summary

    The last two decades of the seventeenth and the early part of the eighteenth century marked a major qualitative change in the Dutch East India Company's trade between Asia and Europe. Between 1708 and 1715, the average value of the textile exports from Coromandel per annum approximated two million florins. As far as textiles were concerned, Gujarat had its share in the fastgrowing European market for Indian textiles. In a memorandum submitted in 1741, Van Imhoff had argued that the Company's trade in the factories west of Malacca had been compared very unfavourably with that carried on by its competitors such as the English and the French. Traditionally, a considerable amount of trade was carried on between the ports in Bengal, the Coromandel coast, Malabar and the Kanara coast on the one hand, and those in Sri Lanka on the other. In 1670, the VOC monopolized the Sri Lanka trade in all major commodities, the only exception being rice.

  • Bibliographic Essay

  • Om Prakash, University of Delhi
  • Book:
    European Commercial Enterprise in Pre-Colonial India
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    28 June 1998, pp 352-365

  • Summary

    This bibliography presents a list of titles that help the reader to understand the geographical explorations of European commercial enterprise in pre-colonial India. The lists of titles are alphabetical by authors, and each author's titles are listed chronologically. The article presented focuses on topics such as French and the minor companies, Indian merchants in the Indian Ocean trade. The seventeenth century was marked by a fundamental change in the character of the Euro-Asian commercial encounter. Textiles from Coromandel and Gujarat were indispensable for the procurement of pepper and other spices in the Indonesian archipelago, while raw silk from Bengal was the principal item exported to Japan. The second half of the eighteenth century witnessed a fundamental alteration in the nature of the Indo-European encounter. The article also explores the rise of coastal sites in India in a colonial context and emphasizes the structure of textile production and procurement in Bengal.

  • 5 - Euro-Asian and intra-Asian trade: the phase of Dutch domination, 1600–1680

  • Om Prakash, University of Delhi
  • Book:
    European Commercial Enterprise in Pre-Colonial India
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    28 June 1998, pp 175-210

  • Summary

    The position around 1680 which marked the end of the first phase of the European companies' trading activities in Asia, the two giants including the Dutch and the English between themselves accounted for practically the entire Company trade. The Dutch East India Company's trade on the Coromandel coast registered a significant increase over the seventeenth century. Sri Lanka, Malabar and Persia were the other places in Asia to which the Company sent Bengal goods. The exports to Coromandel and Sri Lanka included textiles, raw silk and provisions such as rice, sugar, long pepper, wheat and clarified butter. The most important commodity the English Company procured in India was, of course, textiles for both its intra-Asian as well as its Euro-Asian trade. Besides the Portuguese, the Dutch and the English, the only other European enterprise active in Asia over the first three quarters of the seventeenth century was the Danish East India Company.

  • 4 - The companies in India: the politics and the economics of trade

  • Om Prakash, University of Delhi
  • Book:
    European Commercial Enterprise in Pre-Colonial India
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    28 June 1998, pp 111-174

  • Summary

    In the case of the Dutch East India Company, the phase until about 1680 was basically one where the importance of the Indian trade was derived chiefly from its role in the Company's intra-Asian trade. It is noted that the Dutch East India Company was the first northern European corporate enterprise to establish factories in India. The process was started on the Coromandel coast with the establishment of a factory at Petapuli on the northern segment of the coast in 1606. This chapter considers the absence of coercion in the relationship between the Indian political authorities and the northern European trading companies. This was by and true for all Indian regions other than the Malabar coast until the rise to power of the English East India Company in Bengal. The rise of a number of port cities on both the east and the west coasts of India can be directly attributed to the commercial operations of the European trading companies.

  • 3 - The South

  • from VII - State and the Economy
  • Edited by Tapan Raychaudhuri, Irfan Habib
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of India
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 1982, pp 203-213

  • Summary

    Three centuries separate the high point of Vijayanagara authority and the establishment of undisputed British rule in south India. There were also interior towns which came to thrive as the political centres of 'nāyka kingdoms'. The encouragement of foreign trade by the pre-Talikota Vijayanagara rulers was seen to be vital for the access which such trade gave these rulers to horses, firearms, and foreign soldiers. The rise of new centres of power in the macro-region under nāykas and their subordinates, pālaiyakkaras in Tamil, pālegādus in Telugu, and pālegdras in Kannada, 'poligars' to the British - while weakening the Vijayanagara state, did stimulate economic activity and development. Throughout the turbulent period from 1550 to about 1700, there are repeated references to the plunder of accumulated treasure. The traders and some Brahmans emerged as the most active of the great merchants trading with and under the European companies on the Coromandel Coast in the seventeenth century.

  • 2 - Indian Merchants and the Trade in the Indian Ocean c. 1500–1750

  • from XIII - Foreign Trade
  • Edited by Tapan Raychaudhuri, Irfan Habib
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of India
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 1982, pp 407-433

  • Summary

    At the turn of the fifteenth century, India's mercantile marine, largely in the hands of Gujarati Muslim merchants, appears to have been deployed principally in the middle Indian Ocean, dominating the sea-lanes between Cambay and Malacca. European trade in the Indian Ocean remained part of the traditional structure, which was enriched and strengthened through European skill and enterprise. On the eastern side, Pulicat and Negapatam were the principal ports of southern Coromandel. Of India's exports to the markets of the Indian Ocean three points are worth noting. First, as to India's major export, which was textiles throughout our period, the mass of it was of the coarser kind. Secondly, India exported common foods like rice and pulses, wheat and oil, for which there was considerable demand. Thirdly, the pattern of Indian exports like most other things, appears to have remained stable throughout the period. The vitality of Indian shipping notwithstanding, investment in shipping was not popular among Indian merchants.

  • 1 - European Trade with India

  • from XIII - Foreign Trade
  • Edited by Tapan Raychaudhuri, Irfan Habib
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of India
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 1982, pp 382-407

  • Summary

    In so far as the foreign trade of the Indian sub-continent is concerned, the aspirations and the activities of the Estado da India represented several institutional innovations. As a result of the Portuguese naval watch, at the end of the sixteenth century few Indian ships could venture to east Africa, the Spice Islands, or to China and Japan unless, the shipowners entered into indirect partnerships with Portuguese officials or merchants in Goa. Both the coast of Coromandel and the Gujarat plains in western India produced a wide variety of patterned cotton fabrics which found specialized markets in the islands of south-east Asia. During the eighteenth century, India's foreign trade underwent a considerable expansion as a result of the tripartite participation of the Dutch, English, and the French. It is inconceivable that European trade with India, in general for that matter, could have been sustained on a large scale for any length of time without the discovery of American silver-mines.