Honourable Company: A History of The English East India Company (21 page)

Such home thoughts from abroad were prompted not by homesickness but by the ever suspicious and badgering tone of the Company’s correspondence. For the Company, in the persons of its directors, was not yet an impersonal business entity; in its attitudes even more than in its constitution it harked back to the age of the guilds. In the sub-committee which handled correspondence with overseas factories the emphasis was ever on collegiate discipline, like that of the universities, which presumed a high degree of subordination in its representatives. Hence the respectful modes of address – ‘Your Worships’, ‘the Most Honourable and Worshipful company’, etc. – and hence the presumed right to regulate the personal conduct of its factors. But at such an impossible remove London’s exhortations commonly became paranoid suspicions. It was assumed that every factor once clear of the Thames would, like Hawkins, live as an oriental courtier and set about feathering his ‘neast’.

In the case of Ball this assumption proved well founded. He was eventually recalled in disgrace, arraigned for embezzlement, and fined £2000; all things were not always ‘as a man might wish’. But better men than Ball – ‘the honest Mr Cocks’, for example – would also take umbrage at the relentless barrage of criticism from London. Even in an age of strong language it was no encouragement to be constantly lambasted for incompetence. Goods, it seemed, were always badly packed, of inferior quality, or too expensive; accounts were either faulty or late; living expenses were far too lavish. Rarely indeed was honest endeavour acknowledged or rewarded. And just as an energetic factor was presumed to be expending as much energy on his personal trade as on the Company’s, so a successful commander was presumed to be recompensing himself from whatever booty came his way.

Such was certainly the attitude to Weddell whose services against the Portuguese had won him nothing but complaints about the cost of the operation plus ‘fines, and undeserved public reproaches’. When therefore it fell to the same Weddell to convey to London the good tidings of Methwold’s Goa Convention, his thoughts and those of most of the factors in his fleet turned to revenge. The scheme to apply for a charter to open trade at all the Portugese ports in the East seems to have been hatched during this voyage. In London Courteen immediately lent his support and through Endymion Porter, one of the King’s favourites, secured the necessary charter. £120,000 were quickly raised and in 1636 Weddell put back to sea at the head of an impressive fleet of four vessels.

The directors of the Company protested in the most vigorous
language at this blatant infringement of their own charter; and they would continue to do so for the next twenty years. It was to no avail. For, according to the preamble to Courteen’s charter, the Company had forfeited its exclusive monopoly by having ‘neglected to establish fortified factories or seats of trade to which the King’s servants could resort with safety…[having] consulted their own interests only without any regard to the King’s revenue…and in general [having] broken the conditions on which their charter and exclusive privileges had been granted to them’. It was further argued that the new association need not constitute a rival since it would be trading only at places within the Portuguese sphere of influence – places whose trade the London Company had signally failed to exploit and whose potential in such difficult times it could not be expected to realize. The Company retaliated by ordering its factors to have nothing to do with those of the new association and to report any prejudicial activity immediately. But thereafter, and for the next twenty years, it would have to reckon with rivals who competed for finance and favour at home and for trade and concessions abroad and whose activities were a constant source of embarrassment and conflict.

And all this in spite of the fact that Courteen’s Association scarcely prospered. Weddell’s fleet spent three months at Goa but received no cargo and little encouragement, ‘just delaies, faire wordes, and breach of promisses’ according to Peter Mundy who had also gone over to the competition. They sailed on for Aceh, Malacca, Macao and Canton where Weddell was the first Englishman to have direct dealings with the Chinese – if, that is, an exchange of fire, several skirmishes and a blunt refusal by the Chinese to countenance any future trade may be termed ‘dealings’. After six frustrating months the fleet put back to sea and, disavowing the original plan of sailing home by way of the still elusive north-west passage, headed back to Aceh. A quantity of pepper was obtained and a profitable outcome seemed at last possible. But of the four original ships, two had already departed for London. That left only the
Sun,
which called at Mauritius (where Peter Mundy duly noted the still extant dodo) and was then wrecked on the coast of Madagascar, and the
Dragon,
Weddell’s flagship, which joined the growing list of ships that simply disappeared without trace somewhere in the Indian Ocean. Weddell, ‘the stormy petrel’, had paid the price of what Lancaster had called a ‘devotion to the wind and seas’.

The Association never really recovered from this crushing blow. With its finances in a desperate plight its greatest asset proved to be its
charter, under which a variety of adventurers would continue to make speculative voyages throughout the 1640s and 1650s. An attempt promoted by the Association to form a settlement in Madagascar proved a dismal failure, as did a second attempt along the same lines. The latter was promoted by an association headed by Lord Fairfax but largely consisting of Courteen’s former associates. The same group also planned a settlement on Pulo Run, the half-forgotten legacy of earlier English endeavours in the Banda Islands. Like most English attempts to reach the place it never materialized.

But Courteen’s Association and its successors did leave their mark on two of India’s trading coasts, Malabar and Bengal. Weddell settled factors at three of the Malabar ports who, though soon reduced to pleading for assistance from the Company’s factory at Surat, 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 it was a temporary expedient of inadequate means and unsatisfactory duration designed simply to keep the eastern trade alive in what the directors now tactfully called ‘these frowning times’.

The English Civil War was not physically contested in the Company’s far flung establishments. To the belated news of military manoeuvres by Royalists and Parliamentarians and of theological squabbles between Presbyterians and Independents, distance lent a certain unreality. If the Company’s factors felt any urge to take up arms it was more likely to be against competitors, like the Dutch or Courteen’s men, than against one another. Only one ship was actually lost – seized by mutineers of Royalist sympathies in the Comoro Islands. For the most part anxiety over the constitutional crisis at home centred on its likely effect on the English reputation abroad. Thus the Company’s factors at Isfahan saw ‘this tragicall storie of our King’s beheading’ simply as dangerous propaganda which could be ‘deemed so haynos a matter’ by the Shah that he might see fit to deprive them of that share of the Gombroon customs granted as a
result of the capture of Hormuz. To reassure his Majesty that not all Englishmen were regicides, presents of plate and then a couple of mastiffs were forwarded to the Court. When the Shah let it be known that some rosy-cheeked additions to his harem would be more acceptable, the Isfahan factors lamely responded with a consignment of beaver hats. Their trade was already declining and Dutch ships now outnumbered those of the Company in Persian waters by four to one.

It was this dearth of shipping and of investment capital, the result of the political and commercial instability at home, which really crippled the Company. Hoping to secure a restitution of their monopoly, the directors were willing to treat with whoever held the reins of power. In 1641 they ‘sold’ £60,000 worth of pepper to the king; in effect it was a loan and was never repaid. Similarly, after the conclusion of Cromwell’s Dutch War, £50,000 was advanced to the Protector from the Dutch indemnity (for Amboina and other losses in the archipelago). This too was never repaid. Acceptance of such gifts was seen as constituting an important acknowledgement by the sovereign power of the Company’s role in the country’s financial welfare and therefore as the basis for reinstating its charter. In both instances the Company further regarded the financial risk as acceptable since the debts could theoretically be recouped by withholding future customs duties.

But these were vast sums in the depressed circumstances of the day and, needless to say, Cromwell would no more assume the financial obligations incurred by Charles I than would Charles II those incurred by Cromwell. The Company lost out right along the line. As the size and frequency of its Eastern sailings declined, and as the Dutch stepped up their commercial rivalry in the Arabian Sea, the English factors found themselves left to their own devices. For three or four years at a time Bantam received no shipping at all and no investment capital. Matters were only slightly better at Masulipatnam and Madras where further famines, plus a power struggle between Golconda and its neighbours, precipitated the search for new markets in Bengal and the renewal of trade with Burma.

In order to show a modest profit the Company’s factors turned increasingly to the ‘country trade’. From this period dates the freighting and even building of small local vessels suited to the inter-port trade of the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal. 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 harbour. Diu or Bassein, where most of the Company’s local vessels were built, were suggested; alternatively there was Bombay.

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.

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.