British Beginnings in WESTERN INDIA

^co Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2008 with funding from Microsoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/britishbeginningOOrawluoft British Beginnings in WESTERN INDIA w H z o tj- c < D c/) British Beginnings in WESTERN INDIA i579- l6 57 An account of the early days of the British Factory of Surat By H. G. RAWLINSON, M.A. INDIAN EDUCATIONAL SERVICE OXFORD At the CLARENDON PRESS MCMXX OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE CAPE TOWN BOMBAY HUMPHREY MILFORD PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY .ON VILABLE u Kin i <&OQ \ XTX § t\ |X AUTHOR'S NOTE My thanks are due to the Superintendent, Archaeo- logical Survey, Western Circle, and to Mr. G. L. Steele, for the photographs of Surat which illustrate this book. The Committee of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Poona, has permitted me to reproduce some of the matter in Chapter III, originally contributed to the Bhandarkar Com- memoration Volume (1917). The late Dr. Vincent A. Smith not only read through the manuscript of this essay, but was good enough to revise the proofs, and to make many valuable corrections and sugges- tions. It was one of the last tasks of his life, and the author wishes to record his gratitude for the infinite pains which Mr. Smith took to help students of Indian history, and the ungrudging manner in which he devoted his time and energies to the service of others. H. G. Rawlinson. Dharwar, February 1920. CONTENTS PAGE Introduction i Chapter I. The Quest and Invention of the Indies . 8 II. The First Englishmen in India . 21 III. The Foundation of the Company and Haw- kins's Mission to Surat ... 35 IV. The Struggle with the Portuguese by Sea, 1612-35 52 V. The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe, 1615-18 73 VI. The Early Days of the Factory at Surat, 1618-33 89 VII. The Interlopers, 1633-9 .... 100 VIII. The End of the Interlopers and the Dutch War, 1639-54 109 IX. Life in the English Factory in the Seven- teenth Century . .118 Appendix I. The Tombs in the English Cemetery at Surat ...... 135 II. Form of a Bill of Adventure issued by the East India Company .... 138 III. Pay Bills of the Surat Factory . 139 IV. Separate Voyages of the East India Com- pany, 1601-12 ..... 141 V. Thevenot's Account of Surat . 142 (i) The Town of Surat . .142 (ii) The Port of Surat .... 143 (iii) The Governors of Surat . 144 (iv) The Peons ..... 145 (v) The Rapacity of the Customs Officers . 145 (vi) The Tombs of the Factors . 145 ILLUSTRATIONS Surat .... Frontispiece Surat Fort, from Riverside facing page 41 Surat Fort 48 Tapti River, Surat . 52 Tomb of Francis Breton . no Inscription in the Tomb of Francis Breton in The Old English Factory . 120 The Interior of the Old English Factory 129 The English Cemetery, Surat from the South east 134 The English Cemetery, Surat from the East 135 ' INTRODUCTION For the majority of students, the history of British India virtually begins with Clive. Even those who possess a toler- able acquaintance with the last century of the Company's existence, often have a very hazy notion of the early struggles which preceded its triumphant establishment upon the throne of the Great Moghal. Yet this is a story of more than common interest, and the names of Best and Downton, Aldworth and Kerridge, and the other sturdy merchants and seamen, who, almost single-handed, carried on an unequal contest for so long against the attacks and plots of the Portuguese, and what was far more deadly, the onslaughts of disease and famine, deserve fuller recognition than they have hitherto received. The English factory at Surat has been called the corner- stone of the British Empire in India. It was started as an experiment, at a time when every one thought that the real future of British enterprise in the East lay in the spice-trade of the Moluccas. At first the difficulties which stood in the way seemed almost insuperable. The Portuguese were furious at the violation of their alleged exclusive rights, guaranteed by a Papal Bull, to exploit the Orient. They not only opposed the intruders by sea, but placed every obstacle in their way upon land. At the Court at Agra, the astute Jesuits employed all sorts of devices to keep their hated rivals from gaining a footing. As for other difficulties, we have only to remember that the life of a man in Bombay was reckoned at ' two monsoons ', and to note for ourselves the heavy toll which disease took upon such of the factors as enter into the history of the period, in order to realize how severe the struggle must have been. Added to this, we have to bear in mind that the voyage was a long and dangerous one. The annual ' fleet dispatched by the Company arrived at uncertain intervals ; and in the meantime, the factors were cut off from their friends, and isolated in a strange and hostile country without prospect of succour. 2320 b 2 INTRODUCTION It has been said that Robinson Crusoe is a typically English novel. Crusoe is no hero. There is nothing romantic about him. He is just an ordinary British seaman, who, stranded on a distant shore, proceeds to make the best of the situation. In the same way, there is nothing romantic about the sturdy merchants who founded the factory at Surat. They were not consciously empire-builders. They did not come, like the Portuguese, with drum and trumpet to convert the East to the True Faith. They had no Camoens to sing their praises. They were not even supported, like the Dutch, by the State, from which, indeed, they received scant encouragement. They combined, in Puritan fashion, piety and profit ; their objects were the glory of God, and the advancement of the Company's (and, incidentally, their own) interests. But they built better than they knew ; and the footing which they established in Western India led to results far greater than they foresaw. The East India Company was one of the many companies which were the typically English means by which the Empire was built up. As Bacon says, ' trading in Com- panies is most agreeable to the English nature, which wanteth the same general vein of a Republic which runneth in the Dutch and serveth them instead of a Company '. The history of Surat, the original head-quarters of the Company in Western India, is not a long one. The import- ance of the factory, at first the centre from which the whole of the Company's operations in the East were controlled, faded gradually before the rising star of Bombay. Surat had many disadvantages : by sea it was crippled by the lack of a good harbour, and by land it was open to incursions on the part of the Marathas. Hence Surat was destined never to become the capital of Western India. To-day it is a mere shadow of its former greatness : Swally Road is deserted, the ancient factory is a private dwelling-house, and the old walls and the quaint, crumbling tombs of the English and Dutch Presidents are the only monuments of its distinguished past. The first person to make a systematic collection of the records and papers of the early adventurers in the East was Master Richard Hakluyt, who was set by Mr. Secretary INTRODUCTION 3 Walsingham to ' make diligent inquirie of such things as might yield any light unto our westerne discoverie in America '. Hakluyt extended his researches to cover English maritime enterprise in all directions. His monumental work, The PRINCIPAL BRITISH FACTORIES •1 INDIA English Miles Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of l the English Nation (1 598-1600), has been entitled ' the prose epic of the modern English nation '. It does not, however, deal with the history of the East India Company : this was left to Hakluyt's successor, Samuel Purchas, who took over 1 Standard edition by MacLehose, Glasgow, 1903. 4 INTRODUCTION a number of his predecessor's manuscripts, and added material supplied by Sir Thomas Smythe, the Governor of the Com- pany. His first publication was a summary, in the author's own words, entitled Purchas his Pilgrimage, or Relation of the World and the Religions observed in all Ages, of which four editions appeared between 1613 and 1626.1 The last, con- siderably enlarged, formed a kind of appendix to his larger work, Hakluytus Posthumus ; or Purchas his Pilgrimes, con- tabling a History of the World in Sea Voyages and Land Travels by Englishmen and Others?' This volume is a com- pilation consisting of extracts from the journals of the voyagers themselves. Unfortunately, the material was so unwieldy that selection was necessary. Thus in one place the editor notes, ' This journal of Captain Reeling's and that of Captain Hawkins, very voluminous in a hundred sheets of paper, I have been bold so to shorten as to express only the most necessary observations for sea and land affairs '. For this Purchas has been severely but hardly fairly blamed. The standard of historical accuracy was not always what it is now. Much later, 3 we find the editor of Churchill's Voyages (said to be none other than John Locke) wishing that Hakluyt ' had been less voluminous, delivering what was really authentic and useful, and not stuffing his work with ... so many warlike exploits not at all pertinent to his undertaking, and such a multitude of articles, charters, privileges, letters, relations, and other things little to the purpose of travels and discoveries '. Unfortunately we are able to supplement Purchas's extracts only in a few instances by reference to the originals.

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