Honourable Company: A History of The English East India Company (38 page)

And so, to the historian’s intense annoyance, it continued. Two uneventful weeks later they ‘arrived on the banks of the Ganges before Allahabad’. They crossed in three days; this time there was not even a storm to raise a ripple of interest. May gave way to June, the hottest month in the north Indian calendar. The dust and discomfort can only have been appalling; they merit not a mention. June 18th found the mission at ‘Raj Ghat over against Agra’. All that here separated them from the great white cloud which is the Taj Mahal was the Jumna river, at this time of year a warm and wadable brook. But all that the diary records is that here they ‘proclaimed King George’; news had just reached them from Calcutta of the death of Queen Anne and the accession of the first Hanoverian.

Three nights later the camp was entered by robbers. ‘We had five men wounded and took two of the rogues.’ Another thief was surprised two days later. It was significant that the nearer they approached to the imperial capital the more dangerous was the countryside.

On 6July 1715, a creditable three months since leaving Patna, the mission made its ceremonial entry into Shahjhanabad (now Old Delhi). With flags, elephants and 200 cavalry, an imperial official conducted them straight to the Red Fort where, after a wait, Farrukhsiyar made an appearance and deigned to accept the first instalment of his present. This was by way of an appetizer consisting of 1001 gold coins, a clock set with precious stones, ‘an unicorn’s horn’ (rhinoceros’s?), a gold escritoire, a large lump of ambergris, the inevitable ewer and basin, and a massive globe, more than six feet in diameter, inlaid with gold and silver, and with the place names thoughtfully written in Persian. All went off smoothly and Khan Dauran, the Emperor’s favourite courtier and a man strongly recommended by Khwaja Sarhad, hinted at an early and favourable outcome. Surman quickly passed on the good tidings in a letter to Calcutta. ‘Considering the great pomp and state of the Kings of Hindustan’, he wrote, ‘we was very well received.’

A week later Surman was even more confident that ‘all will end well’. Governor Pitt’s old friend, Ziau-ud-Din, had assured him that they were
correct in concentrating on the favourite, Khan Dauran, rather than on the unpopular Sayyad who was
Wazir.
This was precisely what Khwaja Sarhad, the mission’s mercurial Armenian, had been saying and for once the much maligned Khwaja was in a tolerable humour. Surman and his three English colleagues – a deputy, a secretary and a doctor – were all in some awe of the Armenian, whose multifarious interests and shady associates often threatened to bring the whole affair into disrepute. But unlike the Englishmen, the Khwaja was not an employee of the Honourable Company; he was on a straight commission – 50,000 rupees if the
farman
was granted. This tended to make him excellent company when things were going well but evasive, secretive and altogether exasperating whenever a reverse was in prospect – and, as soon appeared, a reverse was in prospect most of the time.

The first problem was the Emperor’s apparent indifference to the English and their present now that he had both safely installed in his capital. Accordingly, in August His Majesty disappeared on a month-long tour of the neighbouring Punjab, returned only to take to his sick bed, and rose from it only to get married. No sooner was the marriage ceremony over than he took to his bed once again. Needless to say, all public business, including the tedious petition of the English Company, was suspended throughout this period. It was November before Farrukhsiyar felt up to presiding over his interrupted nuptial festivities and at last taking delivery of the mission’s present.

This four-month delay severely tested both Surman’s patience and the Khwaja’s humour. But it did produce an unexpected opening in that William Hamilton, the mission’s doctor, was invited to prescribe for the Emperor. Initially Farrukhsiyar’s complaint, no doubt the result of sexual excess, manifested itself in two large swellings in the groin. Hamilton successfully treated them and thus, in the patient’s words, ‘became privy to my nakedness’. This close relationship was renewed when the imperial tumours reappeared. Again Hamilton’s ministrations proved effective and the Emperor was uncommonly grateful, showering Hamilton with favours and presents, including an elephant and a set of surgical instruments with shafts of solid gold.

There is, however, no evidence that the Emperor felt indebted to the mission as a whole nor that Hamilton was able to put his privileged position to any use in the matter of the
farman.
On the contrary, when along with the present the English at last submitted their detailed petition, it was simply referred to the clerks of the imperial treasury. More bribes
changed hands but the treasury’s comments on each of the nineteen articles merely queried precedents or implied that no
farman
was needed. A second petition designed to simplify the request fared no better. It was clear that Khan Dauran, the Emperor’s favourite, had failed. After nine wasted months and many thousands of wasted rupees, Surman was advised to reapply through the
Wazir.

Ignoring this advice, the mission continued to lobby the favourite. Again
the farman
was refused and amidst bitter recriminations against the Khwaja, Surman threatened to withdraw to Bengal. It was now July 1716, a year since the mission had arrived, seven months since the Emperor had been cured, six since the mission had parted with the present – and if anything
the farman
looked more remote than ever. So much for the oft-repeated story that it was thanks to the surgical skills of William Hamilton that the East India Company stole a march on its European rivals in India.

What did suddenly change the situation was a report from distant Surat to the effect that unless the English mission was satisfied, the Moghul governor there had reason to believe that the Company would withdraw its factories in Gujarat and so, in Surman’s words, ‘that port [Surat] would be ruined’. The threat was genuine enough. The Company’s directors were again questioning the value of their Surat establishment which, unlike Calcutta or Madras, was still unfortified and hence vulnerable to every twitch in the protracted death throes of the Moghul Empire. But Surman had also taken a hand, urging the Bombay government to play up this threat. He appreciated that old reciprocity whereby the Moghul economy was nearly as dependent on the Company’s bullion exports as the Company was on the Moghul’s trade. And he was aware that in the case of Surat, the English presence remained the Moghul’s only guarantee of a safe passage for his shipping in the Arabian Sea.

Thus, even as Surman was writing to Calcutta for permission to break off negotiations, Farrukhsiyar was reading the letter from his Surat governor ‘which not a little startled him’. Suddenly the mission found that doors hitherto locked could be opened at a touch. They were urged to re-present their petition; the earlier objections of the treasury were quashed; the supposedly hostile
Wazir
eagerly processed the petition, ‘our papers no sooner reaching his hands than they received despatch’; and on 20 November orders were issued for the preparation of the
farman.
‘With a little patience and good bribery’, wrote Surman, ‘our
business may be now properly said to have received a good foundation; God grant a happy conclusion to the whole.’ It was, he admitted, all thanks to that alarm over English intentions at Surat and, although both patience and bribery still had a big role to play, the
farman
received the imperial signatures on New Year’s Eve 1716.

Where Captain Hawkins, Sir Thomas Roe, and Sir William Norris had failed, Surman had succeeded. But it was not in his sober nature to exult. A few years previously the Dutch had come away from Delhi with little more than the sort of assurances with which the imperial treasury had tried to fob off the English. More recently the Portuguese had successfully negotiated a substantial concession only to lose it for want of ‘good bribery’ in the final stages of ratification. But now the English had cleared every hurdle and were in possession of a lasting title to the most extensive commercial and territorial privileges ever granted to a foreign power. With a long-drawn sigh of relief Surman wrote of his ‘inexpressible satisfaction’. There were of course further delays: the Khwaja again alienated his companions by trying to elicit some personal advantage; the Emperor desired that Dr Hamilton remain in his service and was little reassured by the latter’s insistence that he must first go to England to replenish his medicines; and many fine points of protocol delayed the final exchange of presents. As a result the mission departed just as the monsoon broke and did not reach Patna till September and Calcutta till December 1717. There Surman finally closed his excruciating diary with a plea that has been little regarded.

There is no other way of coming to a clear knowledge how this grand affair has suceeded than by a serious scrutiny and perusal of this book from the beginning to the end, for which purpose we heartily and humbly commend it to the Honourable President and Council of Bengal; for since we have acted directly under their influence, to them alone must be imputed the glory. Since the trade of Europeans in these parts [began], there have been sundry attempts of this kind, but the grants obtained have been of very little value though at a much superior expense. May those that we have gained be as lasting as they are great is our earnest wish.

The
farman
would indeed be treasured. But not so Surman’s diary. In the early 1750s some pages from the original were ‘picked up in a public necessary house [lavatory] which the writers make use of’ (J. Long).

News of Surman’s success had reached Calcutta in May 1717. The new president, Robert Hedges, (a nephew of Agent William Hedges who had fallen foul of Job Charnock in pre-Calcutta days), promptly declared a public rejoicing. ‘Agreed that next Wednesday we make a public dinner for all the Company’s servants and a loud noise with our cannon and conclude the day with bonfires and other demonstrations of joy.’ But although Surman wished all the credit for Bengal, the original initiative had come from Madras while the conclusive threat had come from Bombay/Surat. All the Presidencies felt equally involved and all received the news with equal satisfaction.

Nowhere were the celebrations more lavish than in Madras where a copy of the imperial
farman
was carried round the city in the Governor’s state palanquin accompanied by the Mayor and Aldermen on horseback. A company of foot soldiers escorted them, and all the English merchants plus ‘all the English music’ followed behind. At each of the city’s gates the document was held aloft and a proclamation read out to the effect that here was the imperial
farman
confirming all the Honourable Company’s former grants and privileges and adding such extensive new privileges ‘with the possession of several lands in many parts of India with such favour as has never before been granted to any European nation’. There followed a grand procession to the ‘Tiping Garden’ and a magnificent dinner with a ‘bonefire’ and ‘feasting of the soldiers with tubs of punch’ – total cost 1022 pagodas. All afternoon a deafening cannonade was in progress as a 151-gun salute from the shore batteries was taken up by the
Marlborough,
the largest ship in port, ‘and when he was done, all the Europe ships in the road one after another, and the country ships upon the Europe ships finishing fired all together as fast as they could, the ships being handsomely dressed out with their colours and streamers’. This performance was repeated during dinner with additional salutes for each loyal toast to the Emperor, the King, the Company, etc.

Such extravagant celebrations were partly designed to impress the Moghul’s provincial Nawabs; habitual oppressors of the Company, they were to note the extraordinary esteem in which the Emperor now held the English and the important new favours he had granted them. But it was not all bravado. At the time the Company’s servants were genuinely excited by the terms of
the farman;
they construed them as giving their Honourable masters a winning advantage over their European rivals and as giving themselves, as private traders, unprecedented opportunities of
exploiting the ‘country trade’. Subsequently the value of the imperial concession, if anything, appreciated. By 1737 ‘our dear
bought farman’
had acquired an almost sacrosant character and in 1756 it was by citing the unfulfilled clauses of the
farman
that Robert Clive justified his march to Plassey. A decade later Clive would up the British stakes in India by obtaining the
diwani,
or governorship, of Bengal; but until that day the 1717
farman
remained ‘the Magna Carta of the Company in India’.

And all this in spite of the fact that within a year of Surman’s return to Bengal Emperor Farrukhsiyar’s brief reign was over. Deposed, imprisoned and blinded by the Sayyad brothers, in 1719 he was finally put out of his misery by strangulation. There followed two years of intrigue and bloodshed remarkable even by the grisly standards of the later Moghul Empire. In an opiate daze one epicene youth was bundled on to the throne only to be replaced within weeks by another consumptive apology-for-an-emperor who in turn coughed his last within a couple of months. Meanwhile anti-Emperors took the field and even the deaths of the string-pulling Sayyad brothers – they were, of course, murdered – failed to restore the imperial dignity. Thereafter all Moghul emperors were but puppets and ciphers. Whereas Aurangzeb and Farrukhsiyar’s other illustrious predecessors had never deigned to grant a general
farman,
his wretched successors would never have dared to. The Company’s timing had been impeccable.

On the other hand the English could forget about the idea of ever appealing to Delhi for the enforcement of their newly won privileges. In 1739 the Persian, Nadir Shah, occupied the capital and decamped with the Peacock Throne; thereafter the marble halls and sandstone galleries of Moghul might were desecrated by every conquering horde that camped by the Jumna river. After Surman, the next British party to enter Delhi’s Red Fort on official business carried guns instead of presents and rather than flatter the incumbent emperor simply kidnapped him. The imperial seal retained its validity as the insignia of sovereignty and legitimacy, but in practice it was more ignored and defied than respected.