CHAPTER FIVE

WESTERN

If I have characterized Kerman as nearly a city-state the same may be said of the small ports in Baluchistan. Th ese were very much “islands on land,” separated by the Dasht-e Lut Desert from the markets in the hinterland, thriving as they were, such as Bandar Herat. Th eir prime means of communication was by coastal navigation and therefore many of the characteristics of the islands also apply to the Baluchi port-towns. Th e inhabitants had to seek their existence by diversifying activities: trading, agriculture and raiding, including maritime plunder—for the Coast was traditionally notorious for piracy. Th ere was thus intensive coastal trade but little grand emporia trade. Rather the ports of Makran and served as centers of redistribution of the products traded in the great ports: Bandar Abbas, , Calikut, and Surat; they conducted by and large foreland trade. Th us, dozens of dhows sailed every year from to Kayakulam, upon which the commerce of the latter place depended, transporting coconuts and copra for local consumption in Sindh and pepper for Bukhara.1 Yet since the Europeans fostered on the emporia rather than on this foreland trade, they knew the barely, if at all. Th e Persian ambassador who was to be ferried by the VOC ship De windhond—we shall return to the dire fate that befell that ship and its crew later—was to be dropped off at the tiny fi shing village of Cochar in Baluchistan. Cochar lay close to a purely imaginary line in the sand, traditionally considered the border between the Safavid and the Mughal Empire. European vessels had been sailing the for two centuries, yet the VOC still pointed out that Cochar “can not be found on any map,” testifying how relatively remote this coast still was.2 As he had encountered but an indiff erent market for his merchandise in Muscat, supercargo Wolfgang Brahé—on temporary employ with the Compagnie—in 1758 sailed on to the “empire of Sindh” on the opposite shore. But on the way there he fi rst dropped anchor at one of those

1 VOC/ 2432, 25 October 1738, fol. 93. 2 Ibid. 2322, 30 December 1733, fol. 14. 316 chapter five obscure townlets of Baluchistan; one, though, that would one day have a grand future. It was called , and Brahé reported: [Karachi] is located on a brackish stream, everywhere broken by small inlets, about three miles inland. It is inhabited by Sindhians and Banias of whom the latter conduct most trade. It exists on the navigation to Muscat, along the Persian shores, to Cambay, as well as to the , Kanara, Coromandel and the Malabar coasts, though this is made dif- fi cult by all the pirates skulking there. But the principal impediment to trade are the many internal troubles and the many roaming robbers in the surrounding countryside, causing constant disorder.3 Early Karachi subsisted and arose as a port for the bombara trade between the Indian ports and the Gulf, possessing virtually no hinter- land and accounting for minute sales for the Compagnie: although of increasing importance in the eighteenth century, the boom in Karachi had to await the opening of a hinterland by railway to the Punjab and its cotton-production in the 1860s.

5.1 Sindh

5.1.1 Sindh Beyond Karachi lay the fertile lands of Sindh; a sloping plain of sand and stone, its lifeblood is the that allows for the cultivation of rice in the south, bhajri in the north. Th e “principality of Sindh,” wrote the Bombay Presidency’s committee of secrecy in 1758, “has been in the utmost confusion” ever since the death of Aurangzeb. Sindh had always been tenaciously linked to the Mughal Empire and the local dynasty of the Kalhoris had seized the paramount power there in the early eighteenth century. In 1740 the region was briefl y subjected to Nadir Shah, upon which the Durani Afghans of Kabul made “it tribu- tary to them.” Aft er the founder of the Kalhori dynasty had died of age, he was succeeded by his son Mahmed Yar Khan “a vile tyrant,” who was deposed by his brother Ghulam Shah, a more capable ruler. Yet he was thrown out in turn by his brother Utrar Khan, taken hostage by the Afghans and who then, supported by them, seized power from Ghulam Shah.4

3 VOC/KZ 9109, “Rapport van de kapiteyn ter zee Brake”, fol. 8. 4 OIOC, P/D/50, BSPP, 8 April 1758, fol. 78.