Honourable Company: A History of The English East India Company (33 page)

With so little fresh water and no sanitation it was potentially as unhealthy as any other Indian – or for that matter, English – town of the period. But thanks to those bracing breezes plus a vigorous administration, the fort area known as ‘White Town’ looked spruce and felt orderly. The pavements were of brick, well swept, and the central roadways more sand than dirt so less dusty. They formed a grid at the centre of which stood Day’s sand-castle fortress, now dwarfed by a stately mansion whose three high-ceilinged storeys reared above the fort’s pepperpot
bastions. This was the residence of the Governor and the hub of the settlement. A large airy hall on the top floor doubled as council chamber and stock exchange. Firearms arranged in scallops and florets, ‘like those in the armoury of the Tower of London’, adorned the walls and from the windows there was a commanding view of the ships in the roadstead. Only one building could claim a greater elevation above the city walls and that was St Mary’s, the first Anglican church east of Suez. Lockyer, who had probably preached there, was undoubtedly proud of it, although somewhat at a loss to describe its architecture.

The church is a large pile of arched building, adorned with curious carved work, a stately altar, organs, a white copper candlestick, very large windows, etc which render it inferior to the churches of London in nothing but bells, there being only one to mind sinners of their devotion.

The neo-classical colonnades and the gracious mansions for which the city would become famous were not yet in evidence. Instead of ‘the garden city’ it was still a tight-packed town of terraced houses with wooden balconies, flat roofs and castellated parapets. Only the already widespread use of
chunam
gave a hint of things to come. This was a shell-based lime which when polished had a finish like marble. Peeking above its rust-red walls, White Town’s
chunam
-ed terraces must have made a brave show in the dancing sunlight. The rows of windows faced the sea. Madras still had its back to the Indian subcontinent and Hamilton was right to the extent that it was less dependent on up-country trade than either Surat or Bengal. Fort St George still looked to the East.

In 1660 this had meant mainly Bantam and Bengal. But Bengal was soon trading and taking orders direct from London while Bantam, so vulnerable to the Dutch in nearby Batavia, had become a place of little consequence and less trade. New markets in the Far East were needed and in 1663 the directors invited Madras to reconsider the benefits of Siamese trade. A ship called the
Hopewell
had chanced to call at Siam and had reported favourably on the prospects. As in the days of Peter Floris, the Dutch were operating most profitably between the Coromandel Coast and the Gulf of Siam; so much so that King Narai, the new Siamese sovereign, was prepared to offer the most generous concessions to any nation which would challenge what amounted to a Dutch monopoly. This report was seconded by the Agent in Bantam. He thought that Cambodia and Bandjarmasin in Borneo were also worth opening and he
added the further incentive of a potential trade with both Japan and China whose ships called regularly at all these places.

As usual London’s enthusiasm for new ventures was tempered by extreme caution. ‘You know that we have resolved to drive a full trade out [to India] and home without dispersing our estate in the settling of new and unnecessary factories’, they reminded Madras. But in the case of Ayuthia in Siam there was no need to settle a new factory. The old one, founded by Antheuniss, was still at their disposal and a skeleton staff from the
Hopewell
had already taken up residence there. It was just a question of not removing them; and in this spirit of leaving sleeping dogs to lie, the Siamese trade was resumed. Launched with so little commitment, it would remain supine and was soon festering with mismanagement.

Madras at the time happened to be in the throes of a minor rebellion which was somewhat similar to that led by Kegwin in Bombay. Sir Edward Winter, the ex-Governor and a staunch Royalist, had detected his successor in some loose talk about the monarchy. He therefore arrested him, threw him into prison, and himself resumed the Governorship. One man was killed in the process and the unfortunate prisoner remained behind bars for the three years which it took the Company to sort out the quarrel. This distraction doubtless absorbed much of Fort St George’s energy. But it would appear that another reason for Winter’s reluctance to forsake Madras was his expectation of a very considerable return from his personal interest in the Siam trade.

Although the Company’s hopes of King Narai’s patronage were invariably disappointed, its employees were evidently doing rather well out of Siamese trade. Soon after Winter’s departure, another unsolicited report on its potential was submitted by one Nicholas Waite, the future scourge of Surat but in the early 1670s also a private speculator in Siam. His glowing, if garbled, address with its offer to subcontract for the entire Siamese trade might well have been the last straw so far as the directors were concerned. But as it happened another Company ship was even then warping up the Menam river past the fort of ‘Bencoke’ (Bangkok); new factors were taking up residence; another wildly optimistic report was about to be written; and serious consideration was being given to opening factories at Patani and elsewhere on the Siamese/Malay peninsula.

The ubiquitous Captain Hamilton maintained that the attraction of Ayuthia, the Siamese capital, had little to do with Siamese trade and a lot
to do with Siamese hospitality. ‘The Europeans who trade to Siam accommodate themselves with temporary wives who’, the Captain reports with, presumably, inside knowledge, ‘generally prove the most obedient, loving and chaste.’ They were also wonderfully understanding and raised no objection over their red-faced husbands ‘continually carousing in drunkenness with wine and women’. Here was indeed what the Captain calls ‘a free country’; and if the Honourable Company’s employees chose to live ‘in much affluence and luxury’ that was their affair. But the new shipload of suitors who sailed up the Menam river in 1675 would have been content just to break bread with a dockside harlot. Of rejection they had had their fill.

Resurrecting the dreams of Jack Saris and the honest Mr Cocks, in 1671 the directors had followed their Siam initiative with a bold new step to make further trial of the Japanese and Chinese markets. As usual the Dutch, whose imports of Oriental silks, porcelain and tea had created an interest in such luxuries in England, furnished the example. They also furnished the opposition. Apart from commercial rivalry, the two countries were about to go to war. As a result, of the several ships directed towards the South China Sea to open a new era of Far East trade, only two, the
Experiment
and the
Return,
plus a small frigate, actually reached the starting line in Bantam.

From there in May 1672 the frigate was dispatched to Tongking, now north Vietnam. A factory was established in the vicinity of Haiphong and, by way of Hanoi, small quantities of Chinese silk were obtained. But it was not trade, not even barter, as understood by European merchants. The King and his officials simply appropriated the Company’s silver plus any goods that took their fancy. They then valued them, often at a derisory figure, and supplied silks to that value. Cash figured only in the form of additional exactions.

Meanwhile the
Experiment
and the
Return
had also sailed north from Bantam. They called first at the island of Formosa (Taiwan) in a vain attempt to exchange some of their English cloth for hides. Leather was known to be one of Japan’s main imports; but even had they secured a cargo, it would probably not have influenced their reception at Nagasaki. The Japanese had recently expelled the Jesuits, ruthlessly annihilating their converts and repudiating their Portuguese patrons. Information, obligingly provided by the Dutch, that the English were in alliance with
Portugal and that Charles II was married to a Portuguese princess, was enough to damn all hope of trade. Loudly did the English factors declare their own detestation of popery; the Japanese merely pointed to the flag of St George flying at every yard-arm. What was that if not the dreaded cross of Christendom?

By now the Anglo-Dutch war had broken out. From Formosa the
Experiment
had been sent back to Bantam although many of her factors had transferred to her sister ship for the voyage to Japan. The
Return,
alone in waters dominated by the Dutch, was beginning to feel highly vulnerable. Her factors therefore applied for a Japanese assurance that no Dutch ships would be allowed to put to sea for at least two weeks after her departure. Their fears were justified. A few days later the factors of the
Experiment
recognized their old ship bearing down on Nagasaki. She had been captured by the Dutch; ‘honest Mr Cocks’ would have understood the Englishmen’s chargrin precisely. ‘God knows what they have done with the ship’s company’, noted the
Return’s
diarist. In fact they were prisoners in Batavia; and with the Dutch reacting to the new English incursion into their eastern markets with an energy worthy of Jan Pieterson Coen, the
Return
herself was now virtually marooned in the South China Sea.

Assuming the enemy fleet was still lurking somewhere to the east of Malacca, both Bantam and India were out of the question. Formosa and Japan had proved disastrous; and Manila and the Philippines were thought unsafe because of the uncertain attitude of the Spanish. ‘It was therefore resolved to make for the port of Macao at which, from the amity between the King [of England] and the Portuguese, it was hoped that at least the ship and the cargo would be safe…’ In this the
Return’s
double complement of factors were not disappointed. But although they eventually off-loaded their Bantam pepper (at an island adjacent to the future Hong Kong), they failed to find a market for their English cloth and were soon deeply distrustful of even their Portuguese allies.

Worse, after more than three years aboard ship, the
Return’s
crew were talking of mutiny ‘if kept out any longer’. More in despair than hope, the factors decided to sail for ‘Bencoke in the river of Syam’. This then was the vessel which warped up the Menam river in January 1675 loaded with disgruntled factors badly in need of the creature comforts they associated with terra firma.

To ensure a quick turn-round while the easterly winds still blew, the factors speedily arranged to load the
Return
with copper and dispatch her
for Surat. Minerals generally sold well in India and there was nothing more galling to the directors in London than news that one of their vessels had missed its sailing. Thus, though the
Experiment
had failed, at least the
Return
would return. But since the
Return
carried no bullion, purchase of the copper meant borrowing heavily from King Narai. It was suggested that disposal of the ship’s English cloth would soon liquidate this liability. But it also provided the new swarm of factors both with a good pretext for staying on in Siam and with the trading capital to make the most of their position. While the Company’s stock was thus being used to finance private ventures its debt would, if anything, grow.

The King raised no objection to this arrangement since it made the Company’s withdrawal from the Siamese market less likely. Neither, for the same reason, did the factors. And perhaps even the Company would have been happy had their trade proved profitable. ‘We hope’, announced the new factors in typically optimistic vein, ‘since we could not carry Syam to Japan, we may have Japan brought to Syam.’ In fact nothing of the sort would happen. The Dutch retained their near monopoly on all trade between Siam and Japan; and through private ventures the factors themselves undercut the Company on the trade between Siam and India.

From both India and Bantam several attempts were made to right the Company’s financial position in Ayuthia and to purge its factory. But for more than a decade the pattern, set by the
Return,
of Englishmen rapidly succumbing to the easy life and rich pickings of ‘a free country’ repeated itself. More carrots were dangled before the directors: the Company might have a monopoly of the copper trade; it might have the government of Patani; or it might build a fort and open a free port at nearby Singhora (which, misleadingly anticipating events, is sometimes written as ‘Singhapora’). But none of these concessions actually materialized, and among those Company men who found a congenial berth up the Menam river loyalty to their Honourable employers counted for little. All traded on their own account, some resigned the service to become interlopers, others entered Siamese employ.

Of those who remained in the Company’s service the American-born Yale brothers proved the shrewdest operators. In the late 1680s Thomas Yale handled their affairs in Siam while Elihu Yale maximized their profits as Governor of Madras. Eventually both attracted the Company’s censure and were dismissed for abusing their positions. Elihu was not, however, disgraced and like Thomas Pitt, a close associate in later years,
he was able to retain his Indian fortune. Part was donated to his old school, then known as His Majesty’s College of Connecticut. In 1718 the grateful trustees renamed it ‘Yale College’ in his honour.

No such mark of posthumous respectability would attach to two other brothers, George and Samuel White, the Company’s and the Yales’ main competitors. George White had entered the Company’s service only to resign it in favour of private trading, first from Siam and later from London. Before leaving the East he installed his brother Samuel in King Narai’s employ. As a naval commander and then as Harbour Master at Mergui on the Indian side of the Siamese/Malay peninsula (and now in Burma) Samuel White built up a commercial empire that was soon contesting the trade of the Bay of Bengal. Using ships built at Mergui and Masulipatnam and sailing under Siamese colours, ‘Siamese’ White short-circuited the Company’s sea-borne trade round the peninsula by consigning goods overland across the Kra Isthmus between Mergui and Ayuthia. This route had been traditionally monopolized by native traders, especially Indians from Golconda (Hyderabad). In 1685 competition between White and the Indians led to a desultory war between Siam and Golconda.