Honourable Company: A History of The English East India Company (19 page)

Nothing fuelled English resolve like a magnificent disaster. When word reached Surat that the Portuguese had ‘got into a hole called Bombay’ to refit, Weddell’s Anglo-Dutch fleet stormed down the coast. They were too late; the enemy had fled leaving only the town for the English to avenge themselves on. Thus, in October 1626, the first English to visit Bombay came as raiders. Warehouse, friary, fort and mansions were put to the torch along with two new frigates ‘not yett from the stocks’. A
wild notion that this ‘excellent harbour’ with its ‘pleasant fruitfull soil’ might be worth occupying was scouted but firmly rejected as far too provocative.

Hostilities with the Portuguese rumbled on. The eventual peace which was signed at Goa in 1635 by William Methwold, now President at Surat, should have changed the whole balance of maritime power in the East. That was how the Dutch and the Moghul emperor saw it and they bitterly opposed it. It opened to the English Goa itself, the Portuguese settlements on the Malabar coast, and numerous other ports from Basra in Iraq to Tatta in Sind and Macao off the Chinese mainland. It would also last indefinitely, thus ironically enabling the Portuguese settlements in India to survive even the British Raj. But at the time its possible advantages were not paramount. The main point was that neither the Portuguese nor the English could afford to go on quarrelling. Thanks mainly to the Dutch in the East and the Spanish at home, the Portuguese empire was in an advanced state of decline. (In 1641 Malacca itself would fall to the Dutch.) And as for the English, the London Company was now approaching what may be regarded as the nadir of its eastern commerce.

Overseas the growth of the East India Company during the first two decades of its existence had been decidedly impressive. By 1620 the Presidencies of Bantam and Surat – ‘Presidencies’ because from about that time their Chief Factors were designated ‘Presidents’ – controlled nearly 200 factors scattered over more than a dozen trading centres. In the case of Bantam these stretched from Macassar to Masulipatnam and in the case of Surat from the Malabar Coast to the Red Sea.

But to the stay-at-home Englishman, dodging the sewers of his timbered metropolis and worrying about the next outbreak of plague, these exotic claims meant little. Masulipatnam could have been Mars – and to the lazy-tongued it probably was. For a peck of pepper and a bolt of brocade why, he might have asked, so much fuss? Or to so much fuss, why so little substance?

To remedy such unenlightened comment the loyal Company servant would have recommended a trip down the Thames. As yet the Company boasted no prestigious offices and until 1621 it still operated from the home of Sir Thomas Smythe, its governor. Built by his father, ‘Customer Smythe’ (because he had belonged to a syndicate which farmed the realm’s customs), this establishment was in Philpot Lane off Fenchurch Street. It was evidently of some size for it included a hall large enough for meetings of the General Court and could sleep 120 people. But with a permanent staff of half a dozen, the Company occupied only two or three rooms. For a warehouse it leased a disused section of Cosby House, a much grander edifice in Bishopsgate. In 1617, with subscriptions for the Second Joint Stock pouring in, the optimistic directors rented the whole of Cosby House. Here Sir Morris Abbot presided over the Court
of Committees as they fulminated over the Amboina affair or greeted the news of Methwold’s Anglo-Portuguese truce. But in 1638 the Cosby House lease expired and once again the Company became a live-in tenant, this time in the Lime Street home of its new governor, Sir Christopher Clitherow. Although destined to remain on this site, colonizing abutting buildings and eventually acquiring a frontage on adjacent Leadenhall Street, the Company’s initial occupancy extended only to a few small and badly lit apartments.

But downriver from the City’s cramped thoroughfares, anytime during the winter months, the launch-pad of Eastern enterprise provided a sight to savour. Here, attended by a host of lighters, seven or eight of the tall ships later known as Indiamen might be viewed riding at anchor while final preparations were made for their dispatch. From every masthead and yard-arm there flapped flags and pennants of disproportionate size; all bore the red on white cross of St George. Seamen swarmed through the rigging; crates of livestock cluttered the decks. It was a sight, according to one traveller, rivalled only by that of ‘St Paul’s great church’.

Larger than most merchantmen of their day and as heavily armed as warships, the Indiamen were a source of national pride. Maritime artists generally preferred a low-angle half-profile from astern which would reveal the architectural character of a high blunt poop. Here arabesques in red and gold framed a deep veranda with, stacked above it, a row of leaded Tudor casements and perhaps a bow window. Lace curtains hinted at luxury within, for this was the roundhouse, the most sought-after accommodation on board; the captain’s apartments were on the next timbered storey. But amidships the ‘tea-shoppe’ aspect disappeared. From a row of square ports cannon and culverin of brass gleamed brightly between the scuppers and the waterline.

By 1620 the Company operated thirty to forty ‘tall ships’. Most belonged to the Company and many had been built in its own dockyards at Deptford and Blackwall. The latter, commissioned in 1614, was the first yard to be constructed on the left bank of the Thames and was the genesis of the later East India Dock. To anyone curious about technological advance, it was another of the capital’s sights ‘daily visited and viewed by strangers as well [as] Embassadours’. Here, besides wet and dry docks, there were timber yards, a foundry and cordage works for supplying the ships’ hardware and a bakery and saltings for their provisioning. More than 200 craftsmen were directly employed in the yard.
Added to the ships’ crewing requirements they made the Company one of London’s largest employers.

An industrial as well as a mercantile enterprise, the Company had also become a financial giant. The First Joint Stock (1613-16) raised £418,000 and the Second (1617-22) a colossal £1.6 million. Part of these sums had somehow to be converted into Spanish silver rials, the most acceptable currency in the East. Thus the procurement of rials – like that of ships, ships’ supplies, armaments, provisions, and export cargoes – became a major preoccupation which absorbed the attentions of an important sub-committee drawn from the members of the Court of Committees. It also spawned a network of financiers and overseas agents. In conjunction with the Company’s other financial requirements, particularly borrowing facilities, it is no exaggeration to say that East India business generated the London money market just as it did the London docks.

But expansion so fast and so furious had not gone unnoticed. Abroad it had attracted enemies, notably the Dutch in the East Indies and the Portuguese in the Arabian Sea; at home it stimulated outspoken critics both outside the Company and within it plus, eventually, determined rivals. Extraneous factors – like famine in India and civil war in England – would prove catastrophic. Yet so dramatic had been the rise in the Company’s fixed charges for ships, dockyards, factories, and office staff (whose number had risen to eighteen in the spacious surroundings of Cosby House) that even in ideal trading conditions the pace of expansion must have faltered.

In the event it was dramatically reversed. If histories of the Company in the seventeenth century tend to dwell at length on its first few decades this is simply because so much of its business was concentrated in that period.

Statistics tell one side of the story. Whereas between 1611 and 1620 the Company despatched fifty-five ships to the east, during the 1620s the total fell to forty-six, during the 1630s to thirty-five, and during the 1640s and 1650s to around twenty. On the twelve separate voyages prior to 1613 profits had often been sensational; an average figure of 155 per cent has been suggested. And on the First Joint Stock a respectable 87 per cent was recorded. But on the Second Joint Stock the figure was down to 12 per cent and the period of investment was the longest yet; on an annual basis it appreciated less than 1 per cent. Not surprisingly a Third Joint Stock, launched in 1631, raised only a comparatively modest
£420,000 much of which proved difficult to call in. And four successive stocks between 1636 and 1656 raised just £600,000 in aggregate.

As in 1602-6, the crisis of confidence provoked bitter disagreements between the directors, or Committees, and the shareholders, or General Court. The latter, primarily interested in a quick return on their investment and now including factions representing both court and government, saw their declining dividends as evidence of mismanagement. They vigorously attacked the conduct of the directors and of Sir Morris Abbot in particular, demanding greater access to the Company’s accounts, a secret ballot for the election of directors, and regular quarterly meetings of the General Court. The directors, most of whom were still wealthy city merchants and aldermen, fought back. They conceded the ballot and conciliated their more influential opponents; but Abbot, supported by the King, insisted that the Company’s constitution could only be changed by altering its charter. In 1628 Abbot also managed to push through a resolution that in future only those with holdings worth £2000 or more could stand for election as directors. Far from undermining the directors’ authority, these early quarrels therefore tended to entrench it. Between them just three men (Smythe, Abbot and William Cockayne, governor from 1643 till 1657) monopolized the governorship for forty-seven of the Company’s first fifty-seven years; and it was much the same story with the deputy-governorship. Continuity of management made up for the discontinuity inevitable with a system of short-term stocks. Boardroom dissent was not therefore the cause of the financial crisis, merely a symptom of it.

Until the middle of the century, and in spite of Persian silk and Indian cottons, pepper continued to provide the bulk of the Company’s trade in terms of volume and of value. Both were now hard hit and this undoubtedly did contribute to the crisis. First the 1618-19 hostilities with the Dutch – in which John Jourdain lost his life – saw a decline in shipments which was almost as serious as the loss of shipping from which it resulted. Then, when shipments recovered in the early 1620s with the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of Defence, it was prices that began to decline. By 1627 pepper was down to seventeen pence a pound (from twenty-six pence at the beginning of the First Joint Stock) and was no longer acceptable to shareholders as a dividend. Instead it was sold in bulk, like the Company’s other imports, at one of its periodic sales.

These sales took place in the Exchange. One inch of candle was lit for each lot and bids closed when the flame finally guttered out. Cautious
bidding no less than the spluttering candle seemed to sum up the Company’s plight. For just as returns seemed to be adjusting to the loss of the spice trade and the steady decline in the pepper trade, disaster struck in Gujarat, now regarded as the Company’s one saving grace. It came courtesy of India’s capricious climate in that the monsoon of 1630 failed to materialize. Shah Jehan, who had now succeeded his father on the Moghul throne, chose to see this meteorological hiccup as the inevitable portent of his wife’s death. His subjects, more concerned for their own survival, would happily have foregone the Taj Mahal, which he raised in her memory, for a good downpour. In fact, in Agra it did rain; but in the Deccan, on the Coromandel Coast, and above all in Gujarat, not a drop. The drought ‘burnt up all the vegetables, dried up all the rivers, and rent the ground’. Livestock died, trade ceased, and by October of 1630 the panic of famine gripped the whole province.

At Surat President Rastell sought grain and dates from Persia, rice from as far away as Macassar and the Comoro Islands. Ships arriving at Swalley were told to eke out their biscuit; there was no hope of the usual provisioning. In November one of the factors, Peter Mundy, set off for Agra. Each village presented a sight more harrowing than the last. One place was ‘allmost voyde of inhabitants, the most part fledd, the rest dedd’. At the next, mothers were selling their children. Open graves overflowed with corpses and ‘the hie waies were so full of dead bodyes that we could hardlie pass them without treading on or going over some’.

Noe less lamentable was it to see the poor people scrapeing the dunghills for food, yea in the very excrement of beastes…This was their estate in every streete and corner. And from Suratt to this place our noses were never free of the stinck of corpses, especially about the towns; for they dragg them out by the heels stark naked, of all ages and sexes, till they are out of the gates, and there they are left so that the way is half barred up.

Mundy had set out with a caravan of 150 people. By the time he reached Burhanpur the number had increased to 1700 as more and more fled their homes. Prices for carriage were astronomical but it scarcely mattered; as weavers, dyers and indigo growers joined in the general exodus, there was precious little in the way of produce to carry. ‘It puts us allmost into despaire of a competent lading,’ wrote Rastell in November; ‘and yet,’ he added, ‘these are but the beginnings of greater woe to come.’

He was right. The 1630 monsoon did eventually arrive – but at the same time as that of 1631. Whereas one year’s crop had been lost to drought, the next was lost to flood. And with the floods came typhoid. A Dutch factor arriving back at Swalley in December 1631 could scarcely believe it was the same place. ‘Whereas heretofore there were in that town 260 families, there was not remaining alive above ten or twelve families…and when we came to Surat we hardly could see any living persons where heretofore was thousands.’ He put the death toll in the city alone at 30,000. Flood water still filled the streets ‘so that we could pass from one house to another but by boat’. And the English factory reminded him of a hospital. More than half the factors were already dead, the latest victim being Rastell himself. It would take at least three years, he reckoned, for trade to recover.