India Company's Trade Research Articles

Smuggling Silks into Eighteenth-Century Britain: Geography, Perpetrators, and Consumers

AbstractAs part of protectionist policy in eighteenth-century Britain, imported silks were banned from being sold. Although it is known that bans on imported textiles were widely broken, there have been few systematic studies of the contraband trade in silks. Using customs' records, this article shows how smuggling supplied the demand for imported consumer goods. The illegal trade in silk was diverse, bringing in a variety of products from Asia and Europe. The evidence supports a market segmentation analysis of the different products and their consumers. The trade with Asia supplied “populuxe goods” in the form of handkerchiefs that appealed to a broad, middling customer base. These were brought into the country by the East India Company's trading network. By contrast, continental Europe provided contraband for the high-fashion market. These silks were distributed in more informal and personal ways—travelers and diplomats being the main offenders. The official response to these black markets differed, with silks from Europe posing particular problems for enforcement. Finally, this article provides a reassessment of the transnational influences—specifically the relative importance of Asia and Europe—on production and consumption of consumer goods in Britain.

From merchant to merchant-ruler: A structure–conduct–performance perspective of the East India Company's history, 1600–1765

Many nineteenth-century historians claimed that the English East India Company's trade and commercial activities, right from inception, were never really a financially profitable enterprise. This argument is incorporated within an altered structure–conduct–performance (SCP) paradigm to rearticulate the Company's history between 1600 and 1765. Rather than characterising the Company as simply a chartered monopoly, the article instead argues that the market structure in which it operated was competitive or contestable but, at the same time, wrought with high sunk costs and free-riders. This framework allows us to understand why the Company desperately pursued market conduct strategies to gain monopoly and monopsony power in England and India respectively, which simultaneously contributed to its transformation from merchant to merchant-ruler. In this process the Company redefined not merely industry boundaries but also those between industry and state.

Dryden's Transformation of Bernier's Travels

Dryden's Transformation of Bernier's Travels Peter Craft Although critics such as Achsah Guibbory and Derek Hughes have revealed bits of advice for Charles II embedded within Dryden's plays, there has been little study of collaborative composition between these two men.1 Dryden's Aureng-Zebe (1675), which depicts one of the English king's trading partners, could present such a "collaboration" because the dedication of the play to Mulgrave states that Charles II read it before "the last hand was added to it" and modified "the most considerable event of it" (10). Early drafts of Aureng-Zebe have not survived, so the full extent of Charles II's input is unknown. Most scholars agree with Ros Ballaster's claim that "Dryden plays fast and loose with the historical facts" of its source, François Bernier's Travels in the Mogul Empire (first English edition 1671) (279). The critical consensus is far less overwhelming, as Mita Choudhury points out, when it comes to the question of how scholars should interpret Dryden's distortions (136). I will argue that the play could have functioned as a collaborative public relations' spectacle that presents a sanitized version of Aurangzeb to English theatergoers, and possibly even to the emperor himself, in order to avoid injuring England's lucrative trade with the Mughal Empire. The Missing Link: Fazelkan Unlike the previous historical figures upon which Dryden's characters were based, Aurangzeb was no long-dead leader (ruled 1658-1707). Picking up on the contemporaneity of the play and its subject a century later, Samuel Johnson wrote that if Aurangzeb "had known and disliked his own character, our [England's] trade was not in those times secure from his resentment." While Johnson claims that the possibility of Dryden's play coming to Aurangzeb's attention [End Page 47] was unlikely because "[h]is country is at such a distance," another look at that possibility is merited (qtd. in Bernier x-xi). In the first English edition of Bernier's Travels in the Mogul Empire, the main source for Dryden's Aureng-Zebe, a letter precedes the narrative from "M. de Monceaux the younger" to "Henry Ouldinburgh," the translator, which clearly states that Fazelkan, an important counselor to Aurangzeb himself, procured and read "European Books." The letter reveals that Bernier taught Fazelkan "the principal languages of Europe," and because Bernier spent time at Surat, Agra, Ahmedabad, Moka, Kásimbázár, and Masulipatam, all of which contained East India Company factories at the time, it is probable that English was one of those languages (xxvi-xxvii, xvi-xvii). The English playwright could not have missed Bernier's references to Fazelkan since one of the "Indian lord" or "Omrah" characters in Aureng-Zebe is named "Fazel Chan," and "Chan" was a variant spelling of "Khan," which meant noble (16). There were also Mughal merchants who spoke English, and translators were common at court. As a play written by the Poet Laureate and Historiographer Royal and modified by the English king, Dryden's work may have been considered important enough to influence Aurangzeb's attitude toward England, which was crucial for the East India Company's trade network. East India Company Factories in Mughal Territory Because almost half of the East India Company's factories were in the reigning emperor's jurisdiction in the late seventeenth century, the maintenance of his continued goodwill was essential to England's economic prosperity. In order to show the extent to which the East India Company depended upon Aurangzeb's favor, I have compiled the most comprehensive list to date of the company's factories from 1600 to 1674, both within and outside of Mughal territory. For some of these factories, at least five variant spellings exist since English was not standardized yet and the names came from or passed between Hindi, Persian, Portuguese, Dutch, Italian, and French. A few of these names, such as "Petapoli" (a.k.a. "Nizampatnam"), are not even remotely similar phonetically. I have cross-referenced at least a dozen sources to ensure that none of these factory names refer to the same place. Before the initial performance of Aureng-Zebe in 1675, the East India Company...

K.N.Chaudhuri, The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company, 1660-1760 (Cambridge University Press, 1978)

This scholarly and wide-ranging history of the East India Company's trade covers a scope not frequently found in studies in the area. In contrast to those who focus on the activities of a few Europeans amongst the teeming population of Asia, Dr. Chaudhuri has brought into meaningful relationship relevant movements and events of both continents. Such an approach enables him to illuminate the views and actions of contemporaries. Those of us accustomed to the description of the arbitrary extortions of despotic oriental governments may well take he.ed of the observation that ‘a trading organization that voluntarily offered 10,000 P.Sterling to its sovereign equated a payment of 500 P.Sterling to .an Asian prince with political extortion’ (p. 461).

India's Foreign Trade and the Cessation of the East India Company's Trading Activities, 1828–40

India's Foreign Trade and the Cessation of the East India Company's Trading Activities, 1828–40

India's Foreign Trade and the Cessation of the East India Company's Trading Activities, 1828-40

India's Foreign Trade and the Cessation of the East India Company's Trading Activities, 1828-40

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

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

British Mercantile Cooperation in the India-China Trade from the End of the East India Company's Trading Monopoly

“[Your committee] are not aware that anything material has been omitted that could have conduced to the welfare of the Association, or the trade of India and China generally…They have not failed to maintain their communications with the different Presidencies in India and the Chambers of Commerce at Canton and Singapore.”

The Dutch East India company's trade in Japanese copper, 1645–1736

Towards the end of the 1930's, Japanese copper appeared, like some strange bird in the northern skies, as an object of study in Scandinavian economic history. The occasion was the publication of th...

Reviews

The Chronicles of the Honourable East India Company's Trade with China. Four volumes. By H. B. Morse. Oxford University Press. £3 10s. The India Office. By Sir Malcolm C. C. Seton, K.C.B. Messrs. G. P. Putnam, London. 7s. 6d. The Education of India. By Arthur Mayhew, C.I.E. London: Faber and Gwyer. 1926. 10s. 6d. net. Life in the Indian Civil Service. By Sir Evan Maeonochie, K.C.I.E., C.S.I. London: Chapman and Hall. 1926. 18s. net. Religion and Folklore of Northern India. By William Crooke, C.I.E. Prepared for the Press by R. E. Enthoven, C.I.E. Milford: Oxford University Press, 1926. 21s. The Mosul Question. By V. F. M. Reference Service on International Affairs of the American Library in Paris, Inc. With 2 maps, 1 dollar. April 15, 1926 Grass. By Merian C. Cooper. G. Putnam's Sons, Knickerbocker Press, London and New York. 1925. The American Task in Persia. By Arthur C. Millspaugh, Administrator‐General of the Finances of Persia. 8 × 5½>. 322 pp., illustrated. Messrs. T. Werner Laurie, Ltd. 1926. 15s. Syria. By Leonard Stein. Ernest Benn. 3s. 6d. Israel. By Ludwig Levisohn. Messrs. Benn Ltd. Turkey. ("Modern World” Series.) By Arnold J. Toynbee and Kenneth P. Kirkwood. Ernest Benn, Ltd. 15s. net. The Pilgrimage of 1926. By Colonel E. J. King, C.M.G., F.S.A., Knight of Justice of the Order ; with an Introduction by Major‐General the Earl of Scarbrough, G.B.E., K.C.B., F.S.A., Knight of Justice and Sub‐Prior. London: St. John's Gate. 1926. 1. Some Sayings of the Buddha, according to the Pali Canon. Translated by F. L. Woodward, M. A. (Cantab.). 6×3¾>. Pp.356. Oxford University Press, 1925. Cloth, 5s. 2. The Ethics of Buddhism. By S. Tachibana. Royal 8vo. Pp. 288. Oxford University Press, 1926. Cloth, 15s. Cambridge Ancient History. Vol. IV.: The Persian Empire and the West.

The Provision of Funds for the East India Company's Trade at Canton during the Eighteenth Century

The dominating factor in the China trade for over two centuries was the problem of “laying down the dollar”. The dollar was not the currency of China; but during those two centuries—positively to 1834, and practically to 1857— it was the token by which the pound sterling and the woollen cloths of England were converted into the taels of silver and the silks and teas of China; and on the answer to the question whether the dollar delivered to the Company's treasury at Canton had cost to lay down four shillings, or five, or six, might depend the degree of profit on the round voyage.