The East India Company and the Export of Treasure in the Early Seventeenth Century

Abstract

In the early seventeenth century, the English East India Company was one of the two trading bodies most commonly associated with the export of treasure from England.1 It was an age when any movements of precious metals across the national frontiers aroused acute anxiety in the contemporary minds, imbued as they were with the so-called 'bullionist' ideas, and the East India Company proved to be the obvious target for popular criticism on this score. The historian, however, is indebted to the activities of the Company's specially created 'Committee for Rials', as recorded in its voluminous Court Books, for throwing much valuable and interesting light on this little known subject. The reason why treasure dominated the East India Company's exports is not far to seek: from the very outset of their trade to the Indies the English merchants were unable to sell goods of European production in Asia. Consequently, their imports had to be paid for in cash. These well-known facts, reiterated so many times from the seventeenth century onward, have in many ways discouraged any attempt to look beyond the obvious. That there was a lack of demand for the heavy English woollen cloth and other goods in the Asian markets is universally admitted.2 Yet, several important considerations are raised by a close look at the East India Company's export trade. In the first place, there is the fact that the export of treasure when associated with the external trade of two politically and geographically separated regions is generally the result at its simplest of the disparity in the price of precious metals in these respective areas.3 Leaving the question of consumer taste aside for the moment, I think it is reasonable to ask if we cannot find from this a purely economic explanation for a feature of the East India Company's trade which was to persist for nearly two centuries to come. Again, the first half of the seventeenth century was for England a period of intermittent trade depressions accompanied by an efflux of silver from the country.4 How and from what sources was the Company able to obtain its supplies of silver under such conditions? Of course, some of the contemporaries were convinced that it was the Company which was responsible for causing the silver shortage. But for several reasons, as we shall