Honourable Company: A History of The English East India Company (27 page)

Whether or not a treaty was actually signed with the Nawab is uncertain. But evidently trading rights were restored and it was agreed that Charnock might select a site for a factory. With colours flying he led his much reduced band away from Hijili and moved back upriver to a place called Ulubari. It was ideal as an anchorage and perfect for ship repairs, but had little else to recommend it. Three months later he decided against Ulubari and moved north again to his old roost at Sutanati (or Calcutta). More huts were built on that long mud ridge, more forest cleared, and after so many experiments it looked as if the English had at last found somewhere to their liking – neither too remote from the commercial centres of upper Bengal nor too impossible of access for their ocean-going fleets in the Bay.

Poring over rather inadequate maps of the Ganges delta in an effort to follow the peregrinations of their Bengal factors, Sir Josiah Child and his fellow directors in London were taking a somewhat different view of their war. It was at about this time that in Surat John Child was claiming to have secured the capitulation of the Moghul authorities simply by raiding their merchantmen on the Arabian Sea route. Why could not the
Bengal factors make equally short work of the opposition? In letters loaded with sarcasm the hawkish directors lambasted their servants for their ‘sheepishness’ and ‘insensible patience’ in not having sacked Hughli when they had the chance.

We are not without great fear that your own backwardness and hankering after your profitable easy old habitations, as the Israelites did after the onions and garlick of Egypt, may deprive us of the fruit of all our cost…You must seriously consider and lay to heart the Company’s excessive charge for the honour of our King and Country, and make all possible reprisals you can on the enemy for our reimbursement and the maintenance of our forces, the likeliest place for doing of which effectually, we think, is the surprizal of Dacca itself if you can contrive such a design with such secrecy that the Nabob have no foreknowledge of your purpose.

This was written in September 1687. Far from attacking Dhaka – which was about as practicable as attacking Delhi – the much depleted Bengal ‘army’ was just emerging from its long sojourn amongst the swamps of Hijili. Needless to say, when news of this gallant defence reached London, it did nothing to mollify the directors. ‘We are grieved to see how you trifled away time upon frivilous pretences…and engaged our forces in unhealthy places, to the loss of the lives of many of our worthy countrymen, and the irreparable dishonour of our nation, and the ruin of our trade in Bengal.’ Even if a satisfactory treaty
had
resulted, it was no thanks to their witless factors but to ‘God Almighty’s Providence, which hath always graciously superintended the affairs of this Company’. Witness once again, they said, the success of John Child at Surat.

But by the end of 1688 it was beginning to dawn on the directors that John Child’s master stroke might have been one of the Almighty’s less provident interventions. Their Surat factors were back behind bars and Child was making his escape to Bombay, there to embroil the Company in another desperate struggle and a far from flattering surrender. At least in Bengal their factors had now grounded arms and were supposedly busy fort-building. But why, it was demanded, had they not reestablished themselves at Kasimbazar and Hughli and why were they not again pushing their trade for all it was worth?

Great, indeed dazzling, had to be the compensations for serving a Company which so habitually and ungraciously disparaged its
long-suffering, often-dying employees. But the curious thing about this particular correspondence is that blame is never directly laid upon the man ultimately responsible for all the shortcomings of the Bengal establishment, Job Charnock. In a letter roundly condemning the whole Bengal council for preferring peace merely as a cover for their ‘avarice and faint-heartedness’, Charnock emerges unscathed. ‘We see no reason to find fault with Mr Charnock’s conduct of the war.’ Having sung his praises for thirty years it was not in the nature of the Company’s directors to admit that they could have been mistaken. Even when things were clearly going badly for their old servant, instead of abusing him they chose to sympathize. ‘We are well satisfied of our Agent Mr Charnock’s sincerity to our interest, and only wish he were as good a soldier as he is (for aught we see, by long experience of him) a very honest merchant.’

So out of character is this indulgent geniality that one must assume that Charnock’s reputation lay in the safe keeping of some very senior figure. We know that he was still in the habit of corresponding privately with Sir Josiah Child; and given the self-made and scruple-free characters of both men, it would be unsurprising to discover that more than information was being pooled. Throughout the 1680s Child dominated the affairs of the Company and was either Governor or Deputy-Governor for each of the four years 1686-90. But he was bitterly opposed by some of his reform-minded directors who, as will be seen, resented both his influence and his tactics. To this dissent at the helm of the Company may be ascribed its erratic course in upbraiding the Bengal factors in one sentence while marvelling at the devotion of their ‘Colonel’ in the next.

Some such explanation must also account for a quite extraordinary confusion which now arose in the conduct of Bengal affairs. In February 1689 the Court of Directors composed another fulsome address in support of ‘good honest Job’ (who had again fallen out with one of his senior factors) and strongly urged him to press ahead with the fortification of Sutanati (Calcutta) and the reopening of their other establishments on the Hughli. For, they said, ‘we have no manner of doubt of the continuance of our peace in all the Mogull’s dominions’. Yet this very peace the self-same Court of Directors had in fact neatly sabotaged. For, during the previous year, they had sent to Bengal another fleet with orders to revive the war by re-evacuating their entire Bengal establishment and proceeding with that oft-commended ploy of attacking Chittagong. Thus, even as the directors wrote of peace and trade on the banks of the
Hughli, their employees had decamped once again and were now priming their guns 300 miles away on the frontier of Burma.

Some years previously it had been Charnock who in an unguarded moment had come up with the idea of Chittagong. He was under the impression that it commanded the riverine approaches to the Nawab’s capital of Dhaka, that it was poorly defended, and that it was much coveted by the pirates of Burma’s Arakan coast from whom the Moghul had acquired it only twenty years before and who could therefore be counted on to join forces with the Company. All this was, of course, hearsay but it made a big impression in London where Job Charnock’s hints so often became Josiah Child’s obsessions. Child had his reservations, though.

There is a material objection which may be made against the design, viz. that it will be a very difficult thing for Captain Heath [of the
Defence]
and the fleet with him to get up the great Ganges as high as Chittegam.

A glance at the map will show just how difficult; Chittagong is not up the Ganges nor up any of its myriad channels but well to the east on a rather humbler stream tumbling from the Lushai Hills. And although a picturesque and bustling port, it was far too remote to be commercially relevant or strategically valuable to a Bengal trading Company.

Blissfully ignorant of these details, and assuming Charnock to be still eking out a perilous existence up some tidal creek on the Hughli, in January 1688 Child and his fellow directors had despatched the
Defence
with several other vessels to scoop them off to Chittagong – and in January 1689 had apparently forgotten all about it.

But all was not lost. The situation would still have been retrievable had the captain of the
Defence
possessed a modicum of good sense or had Charnock retained the authority to overrule him. Unfortunately the directors had precluded both possibilities. According to the historian Sir Henry Yule (whose prose savours of a long acquaintance with the epistolary style of the Company) ‘they had never made a worse selection than in the case of the hot-headed, wrong-headed, capricious, and futile, feather-brained skipper’ of the
Defence.
This was William Heath and so disappointed were the directors in their Bengal factors that Heath’s word was to be final. Charnock therefore found himself superseded. As in Hedges’s day he resumed the role of disgruntled critic with some relish.

In September 1688 Heath anchored off Balasore and transferred to a
coastal sloop for the journey up the Hughli. Reaching the palm-thatched shacks and godowns of what he was the first to call ‘Calcutta’, he called a meeting, read the Company’s orders and took counsel with Charnock and his companions. They had now been nearly a year upon their ridge and after so many removals and frights they were understandably keen to stay put. Charnock therefore represented his situation as full of promise. They had survived their first monsoon there, trade had been resumed, and even now two of their agents were negotiating at Dhaka and confidently predicting a confirmation of the terms reached at Hijili. ‘But he [Heath] slightingly waved the same, saying it would signify nothing, the affair being solely left to his judgement.’

Moreover Heath had his orders. The directors had been unusually specific, insisting that only if the settlement had already been fortified and the peace already ratified was the Chittagong plan to be abandoned. Surveying his surroundings Heath can hardly be blamed for lacking the imagination to visualize the bluff ramparts of Fort William, the graceful estates of Alipur, and the bustle of Chowringhi where now there was only foetid jungle, forlorn tents, and makeshift cabins. As the flood waters of the monsoon evaporated, the steaming swamps and salt lakes behind the ridge contracted, leaving their marine harvest to fester in the sun; the overpowering smell of rotten fish pervaded all and lent credence to the idea that ‘Calcutta’ was really a corruption of ‘Golgotha’, the place of skulls, and undoubtedly ‘the most unhealthful place on all the river’.

Overruled then, Charnock and his men hastily loaded their stocks, packed their bags, and again sailed off down the Hughli. At Balasore further overtures were received from the Nawab. Shaista Khan had now retired from public life to prepare for a hereafter devoid of quarrelsome Englishmen and his successor seemed genuinely desirous of an accommodation. Indeed he went so far as to propose that if the English were really bent on transferring to Chittagong, he would be greatly obliged if they would transport 3000 of his troops from there to Arakan (on the Burmese coast). In effect he was offering a military alliance against the Arakan pirates, the very people whom Charnock had identified as the Company’s natural allies. Somewhat surprisingly Charnock rather favoured this new alignment and replied accordingly.

No doubt it was this enthusiasm for aiding the Nawab against the Arakan pirates which led to the later idea that he was a staunch friend of the Moghul Empire. The confusion is understandable. Even as the
Defence
rode at anchor at the mouth of the Chittagong river, it was unclear to the townspeople whether the English had come to uphold the Moghul’s authority or to contest it; indeed it was unclear to the English. Charnock had high hopes that, in return for being of service, the new Nawab would duly grant the directors’ cherished wish for a defensible factory at Chittagong. Accordingly he insisted on writing to Dhaka and awaiting an answer. But Heath saw all this simply as a cover under which to explore the town’s defences. He still pinned his hopes on an alliance with the ‘Arakanners’ and had already sent two agents to sound them out.

The only thing on which both men were in agreement was that it would be a big mistake to follow orders and storm the town immediately. Not that it was strongly defended. On the contrary, as far as they could establish, it seemed ill-fortified and eminently take-able. But, rather ingeniously, they represented this as being an excellent reason for leaving well alone.

[For] it is our real opinion that ‘twill be impossible to
maintain
the place…being the town is of little strength and the people very, very numerous on shore.

On the document that contains this suspect reasoning Job Charnock’s always bold signature comes above that of William Heath with the J of the Job slashing like a dagger at the Captain’s copperplate. But Heath was still in command and when the town suddenly began to fill with Moghul troops he hastily recalled his men and weighed anchor. Charnock insisted that the troops were just the ‘harbinger’ or escort of the Nawab’s representative come with a response to his letter and to discuss their joint operations. But Heath was unconvinced. He had waited long enough. Now they would go to Arakan to make common cause with its raja and his pirates.

The date was February 1689. On the west coast of India the Sidi’s sailors were just scrambling ashore to lay siege to Bombay Castle. And in a cold London office some diligent copyist was just transcribing that Company directive approving of the settlement at Calcutta and rejoicing in the continuance of peace with the Moghul.

Forgotten by his employers and cordially detested by his companions, Heath valiantly sailed into Arakan. Impressive epistles were sent to the Burmese raja, then presents. But the raja was unmoved. He could spare no men for Chittagong and he was quite capable of dealing with any
Moghul invasion on his own. For Heath it was the final straw. In the clipped phrasing of an exasperated skipper he recorded his decision to abort the whole expedition.

So when found could not persuade those foolish people from the present ruin and destruction that is just upon them, we watered our ships and refreshed our men…and sailed directly for this place – Fort St George [i.e. Madras].