Honourable Company: A History of The English East India Company (34 page)

Such hostilities would not have troubled the Company but for the fact that it had factories in Golconda (e.g. Masulipatnam) and that Golconda itself was about to come under Moghul rule. If, as was the Company’s wont, one regarded the Siamese flag as purely one of convenience, then White was just an interloper who, the moment his ships began to molest Golconda vessels, became a pirate. Mergui began to appear as another Madagascar; and since White was English, the Honourable Company was sure to be held responsible for him. Indeed, at Masulipatnam the Company’s trade and factors were already suffering on his account much as those of Surat had on Avery’s account. For the good of the Company’s Siam trade, for the protection of its Coromandel settlements, and as part of the general interdict against interloping, White would have to be stopped.

But although the situation on the east side of the Indian peninsula seemed to be a mirror image of that on the west, there were two additional complications in the unlikely persons of Louis XIV of France and Constant Phaulkon (or Constantine Falcon) once of the Greek island of Cephalonia. France had acquired Pondicherry, its first toehold on the Indian coast, only in 1673.
Le Roi Soleil’s
designs on Siam were unexpected and adventurist. But no less unexpected, no less ambitious,
and no less decisive was the influence wielded by the plausible Phaulkon.

Like many Ionian islanders the young Phaulkon had chosen a life at sea, somehow entering the Company’s service as a cabin boy. Arrived at Bantam he had displayed an aptitude for languages plus an extraordinary resourcefulness which gained the respect of Richard Burnaby, one of the English factors. In 1678 Burnaby had been deputed to Siam in another effort to discipline its wayward factors. Phaulkon went as his interpreter. Under orders from Burnaby and George White he engaged in several trading ventures and then, like Samuel White, was installed in Siamese employ. It was thought that he could there serve English interests and counter Dutch intrigues.

But the plan worked rather too well for its own good. Continuing his meteoric rise through the social firmament the ingenious Greek was soon ‘My Lord Falcon’, confidant of the King, his leading policy-maker and, as head of the treasury, virtually prime minister of Siam. Meanwhile Burnaby had fallen foul of his employers, George White had returned to England, and the Company was as reluctant as ever to increase its Siamese commitments. Phaulkon was out on his own, a pace-maker who had run the field off their feet. He cast about for support and found it in the French.

For King Narai the overriding concern was still to find a European ally and trading parner to counterbalance the commercial strength of the Dutch. Phaulkon, the obvious man to arrange such an alliance, would probably have preferred to see the English step into this role. But in what was apparently a spontaneous conversion Phaulkon had already been received into the Roman Catholic church by a French Jesuit in Ayuthia; and as his personal influence on Siamese affairs grew so did the expectations of both Rome and Versailles. In 1684 Phaulkon sent emissaries to France, the following year Louis XIV reciprocated with a magnificent embassy to Siam, and in 1686 more Siamese envoys were given a grand reception at Versailles.

Meanwhile the English seemed to be bent on cutting their own throats. In 1683 they had been finally ejected from Bantam after a palace revolution engineered by the Dutch. While the first Siamese mission was in France, another Company deputation, this time from Surat, arrived in Siam and demanded that any Englishmen in Siamese employ, like Samuel White, be discharged; it was also intimated that only an undertaking to buy £30,000 worth of English goods every year would guarantee the continuance of the Ayuthia factory. Such demands showed no
appreciation either of Siam’s needs or of the Company’s good fortune in enjoying ‘Lord Falcon’s’ favour. They were rejected outright.

Whereas
Le Roi Soleil
sent accredited ambassadors and distinguished prelates, the English deputed only boorish merchants and quarrelsome seamen. And when at last James II did accord Phaulkon some recognition of his elevated status, it came through the good offices not of the company but of George White, Phaulkon’s erstwhile patron and an arch-interloper. According to one English skipper the Company, in the persons of John Child and Josiah Child, was all for removing Phaulkon and extending its war against the Moghul to include the King of Siam. Phaulkon promptly arrested the skipper in question. But other Company men continued to insist that ‘the right treacherous Greek’ was devoting his undeniable energies to ‘blasting the Hon’ble Company’s business’. Meanwhile in the Bay of Bengal Samuel White, the Greek’s protégé, was blasting Golconda’s shipping.

As usual in a crisis, the Company in London turned to its Stuart patron. James II obligingly issued a proclamation against Englishmen sailing under foreign flags and, acting on this directive, Elihu Yale quickly despatched two ships and forty troopers from Madras. This modest task force under Captain Anthony Weltden was to descend on Mergui and demand the surrender of its English inhabitants, including ‘Siamese’ White, the Harbour Master, and Richard Burnaby, now the town’s Governor. It was also to seize all White’s Siamese shipping by way of reparation for the losses suffered by Golconda and the Company.

Arriving off the Mergui archipelago in June 1687 Weltden in the
Curtana
found the English renegades surprisingly co-operative. White was anyway on the point of leaving for England. He had fallen out with Phaulkon, was suspicious of the Greek’s overtures to France, and had already taken precautions against prosecution by the Company by forging a pass from the Siamese court. Having first inspired his Siamese colleagues to offer a stout resistance, he allowed one of his (and so Siam’s) ships to be taken; then he himself submitted. By July White and Weltden were on excellent terms; as they waited for favourable winds to take them back to Madras they whiled away the hot nights with copious toasts downed to the thunder of gun salutes.

After one such Bacchanalia the sleepless inhabitants of Mergui decided that they had had enough of English treachery. They opened up with the shore batteries, sank one of Weltden’s ships, and then rampaged through the town massacring every foreigner they could find. White
escaped, but Burnaby was amongst the dead. Weltden, felled by a massive blow, survived thanks only to the cushioning effect of his beaver hat. No casualty figure is available but there were probably more than twenty fatalities.

Considerably shaken, White and Weltden with their two remaining ships withdrew into the Mergui archipelago, thence to Burma and to Aceh. Neither was in a hurry to report to Madras. Weltden’s failure would eventually win him severe censure and White could only assume that the massacre would be laid at his door. To escape the Company’s clutches he sailed, with Weltden’s connivance, first to Pondicherry and then straight back to England and the welcoming arms of brother George and the Dowgate Adventurers.

It was thus in complete ignorance of the tragic turn of events at Mergui that in the summer of 1687 Elihu Yale sent another ship, the
Pearl,
to reinforce the Company’s Siam task force. News of Phaulkon’s machinations with the French was now shedding a disconcerting light on Anglo-Siamese relations. Originally the Greek had tempted Versailles with the prospect of King Narai’s speedy conversion to Catholicism. With a Jesuit confessor ensconced in the royal household the Dutch would need no further reminder of French influence. But when the King showed absolutely no inclination to forsake the Buddhism of his forefathers Phaulkon had cast about for an equally acceptable expedient and had come up with an offer of territory. The French might found their own settlement, an equivalent to Bombay with a French garrison and full sovereignty. He first suggested Singhora, near enough to the Menam to discourage the Dutch but not so near that it would antagonize the native Siamese. Then he changed his mind and suggested Mergui. By now, 1687, a French fleet was on its way out with over 300 troops on board plus the wherewithal to take up residence.

From an English point of view there was only one thing worse than Mergui being a lair of interlopers and that was the prospect of its becoming a French naval base. With Mergui on one side and Pondicherry on the other, the French would be well placed to control the Bay of Bengal. It was therefore to forestall the French by seizing Mergui for the Company that Yale sent the
Pearl
to join Weltden. On board were the one-time Agent from Bantam and one of Yale’s senior factors from Madras who were to act as Governor and Port Officer in the new acquisition.

But Weltden had of course slunk away in disgrace; Phaulkon had interpreted his behaviour as hostile and had formally declared war
against the English Company; and in Mergui the Siamese were in full control with a Frenchman already installed in White’s shoes. Unaware of any of these changes the
Pearl
sailed into port. She was promptly surrounded. Her two very senior factors found themselves compelled to surrender to the Frenchman and were then dragged off in chains to Ayuthia. There they were ‘severely confined and used’. The Menam swarmed with French vessels and as well as Mergui, a French garrison had been quartered in the strategic fortress of Bangkok.

It was the end so far as the Company was concerned. Once again its hopes of Siamese trade had brought nothing but heartache. ‘Syam,’ declared the directors in 1691, ‘never did nor will bring the Company two pence advantage, but many thousands of pounds loss.’

In March 1688 the
Pearl’s
factors were released. Eight months later they were followed out of Bangkok and Mergui by the remnants of the French expedition. Its presence had served only to disgrace the mighty Phaulkon and arouse Siamese nationalism. By the end of 1688 Phaulkon had been executed, King Narai was dead, and Siam had put up the shutters to the outside world. Only the Dutch retained their factory and even its importance rapidly declined. For nearly a century and a half the country would continue to nurse the wounds of its first bruising encounter with Europe. This isolationism was no protection against its Burmese neighbour but it did spare the country the traumas of colonialism.

From behind the jaunty walls of Madras’s Fort St George, Elihu Yale greatly regretted the loss of the Siamese trade, so much so that in 1691 he and his Council made an unusually public-spirited offer. They would raise, they said, a subscription towards the cost of sending a small fleet to capture Siamese shipping as compensation for the losses suffered. It seems, however, that the Company never took up this offer. Probably, and rightly, it judged that it was not its own losses but those of Yale and his colleagues that were so bothering Fort St George.

Private trade as conducted by Company men and interlopers had undermined the Siamese venture. But such freelancing, whether in Company ships or native vessels, could serve as a useful form of reconnaissance. Compared to the Company’s ‘out and back’ operations the risks were high and the investments small. But there was always the chance of new markets being opened or of new commodities being discovered which, if profitable, the Company could itself take over. Madras was
particularly well sited for such ventures and, even as Yale and his council rued the loss of Siam, they were already deeply committed to a new and much more exciting field of activity at the mouth of China’s Pearl River.

No English ship had attempted to trade at Canton since Weddell’s disastrous skirmish there on behalf of Courteen’s Association in 1637. It was to be hoped that the Chinese had forgotten that bloody affray and perhaps it was to guard against any repeat performance that Yale sent as chief factor, or supercargo, his ever-dependable brother Thomas. He was less fortunate in his choice of a vessel. It was now 1689, that disastrous year in which Job Charnock and the entire Bengal establishment had been ignominiously withdrawn to Madras. Their ship, the
Defence,
after ‘tripping from port to port [Sutanati, Chittagong, Arakan] without effecting anything’, was now swinging at anchor in Madras roads; and she was still under the erratic command of Captain Heath. Failing any orders for her disposal, it was this ship and her ‘hot-headed, wrong-headed, capricious and futile, feather-brained skipper’ that Yale now directed to establish a factory at Canton.

‘We are of opinion’, wrote Yale to the directors, that it ‘will be very advantageous to Your Honours if it could be well procured, that port [Canton] much exceeding Amoy in all sorts of China commodities and is a greater and better government’. Amoy represented the Company’s one modest and precarious success from twenty years of sporadic attempts to gain a foothold in China. Following the abortive visit of the
Return
and the
Experiment
in 1672-3, the Company’s factors at Bantam had sent further vessels to Taiwan, then as now independent of Peking. For a time its king looked set to make substantial conquests on the mainland, and it was in the wake of these that in 1676 factors first began trading at Amoy on the mainland opposite to Taiwan. Given their ignorance of Chinese commercial practice, the disturbed state of the country and Amoy’s isolation, these factors showed remarkable tenacity and in 1681 were expected to find loadings for no less than four ships.

But in the following year the political map again changed. Amoy and then Taiwan fell to the Manchus, Bantam passed to the Dutch, and responsibility for further English endeavours passed to Madras. Although the Amoy trade resumed, it remained a disappointment. The place was too far from the manufacturing centres to be a great market for Chinese silks and as yet the English market for Chinese tea was insignificant. Additionally the exorbitant demands made by a host of local
officials tried both the purse and the patience of the English. ‘There is no other way to bring them to terms but either to divert trade to Ningpo [in the north] or Canton’, reported a gloomy factor in 1689, ‘or else to forbear some years whereby the want of our ships may reduce them to a juster usage and commerce.’