Early English Trade and Settlement in Asia, 1602–1690

Abstract

THE English colonies of the seventeenth century were founded by a variety of agencies and assumed many forms. There was, however, a basic distinction between the plantation colonies of the North American seaboard and those of the West Indies, on the one hand, whether deriving from proprietary grants to noblemen or from company charters, and on the other hand, the system of forts and factories adopted by the London merchant companies which enjoyed the national monopoly of trade with West Africa and Asia. The scale of settlement was totally different, and so was the economic function. The white population of Barbados, for example, was about 37,000 by 1643, although it fell to 20,000 later in the century as land came to be concentrated in the hands of a planter oligarchy.’ The Royal African Company’s merchants and soldiers in West Africa did not exceed 330 at any time during the century,2 while the East India Company’s establishment in Asia was probably about one thousand men in 1668–90. The difference was not only numerical. The presence of Englishmen in Barbados, Maryland or Virginia was proof per se of local English sovereignty and colonisation. The opening of simple factories or trading posts in Asia did not confer local sovereignty upon the East India Company, nor were the factors who resided there colonists.KeywordsSeventeenth CenturyEnglish CompanyEast India CompanyAsian GovernmentNaval BlockadeThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.