Intersections: Peoples,ports and trade in seventeenth-century Surat and Madras

Historiography

When talking of the European presence in India, in Indian historiography in particular, the tendency has been to view the seventeenth century through the prism of colonial historiography. If not in so many words, the implicit assumption is that the English came, saw and conquered, and thanks to their technological superiority, they had what amounted to a walkover when they took over India. If the focus is on the Portuguese presence rather than the English, then the emphasis is on the changes introduced into the existing Asian system by the Portuguese, with rather less attention paid to the ways in which the new systems were accepted and/or subverted.

Such an approach clearly glosses over historical realities of time and space. The Portuguese definitely introduced ideas that had until then been unknown in Asian waters, including that of sovereignty over the seas; but their attempts were definitely challenged. This is clear from the naval attack launched on Diu in 1534, which, though a failure ultimately, began with the premise that the navies of the Ottomans and the Zamorin of Calicut would join the land-based forces of the Sultan of Gujarat to try to drive out the Portuguese. The English East India Company came to India (and not as a unified company even then) in 1600, and struggled to retain the toeholds that they managed to acquire in different parts of India. As late as the 1670s, the company’s only fortified settlement in India was Fort St. George, Madras. Even there, at the end of the seventeenth century, when the Mughal Empire expanded to include the far south, there was a very real fear that the English would lose that place as well, for the Mughals did not permit any fortified settlements within their empire.

Later historiography has addressed this perspective to a considerable degree, so that, between K. M. Panikkar’s Asia and Western Dominance, ² and Ashin Das Gupta’s Malabar in Asian Trade, ³ there is a clear shift in approach. Where the former argued that Indians disregarded the sea, and so lost the land, the latter focussed on the intricacies of the engagement with sea and land, and the ways in which, in the eighteenth century, one region of India, Malabar and the Travancore state, used European methods against Europeans, and very successfully. The works of M. N. Pearson are particularly important, given that he was among the earliest to analyse the Indian response to the arrival of the Portuguese, in his seminal Merchants and Rulers in Gujarat, as well as in his later books, including The Indian Ocean. ⁴ K. N. Chaudhuri’s The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company is another work that focuses on a single company and its impact, to study in detail the expanding presence of the English in India. ⁵

However, while such approaches are undoubtedly welcome and necessary, they still do not address many of the issues that were peculiar to the seventeenth century. This century saw, among other things, the southward expansion of the Mughal Empire and the collapse of the Vijayanagar Empire, the last of the great empires of the far south. It witnessed the emergence of a number of regional powers in the peninsula that challenged the existing powers, such as the kingdoms of Golconda and Bijapur. And, in economic terms, a range of new players entered Indian markets during the seventeenth century. The social dimensions of these changes within India have yet to be analysed. But the negotiations with the rulers and the new buyers did result in the emergence of multiple points of contact, and different nodes at which one can identify the intersections of different merchants, nobles and governmental systems.

Intersections

The seventeenth century was, for India’s trade, undoubtedly a boom period. Indian textiles, in particular, supplied large new markets in Europe, for between fashion and furnishings, there was an ever increasing demand for the entire range of Indian cotton goods – the piece goods, as they were often called. Centres of textile production in India were many, but Gujarat, Bengal and Coromandel had a special place as suppliers of varieties of cotton cloth. European demand was initiated and fostered by the English and Dutch East India Companies – the former rather more than the latter – but the factors of these companies did not have access to the production centres or to the producers. They therefore had to depend on local intermediaries of different kinds to get the goods necessary for export to their home markets, and so had to deal with brokers and agents. Not only did they need merchants to supply them with their requirements, but they also needed agents at the courts of the various regions in which they were based; and so, there were a variety of people who acted for, with, or often against them in the ports at which they traded.

If, on the one hand, the Europeans had to deal with the merchants, then on the other, they had to deal with the political systems and the bureaucracy, at multiple levels. Seventeenth-century India was dominated by three main political regimes: the Mughals, the largest, across all of north India, and expanding into the peninsula; the Bijapur Sultanate, on the west coast of the Deccan Plateau; and the Golconda Sultanate, on the east coast of the plateau. The beginning of the century had seen the remnants of another old power further to the south, the Vijayanagar Empire, but this had almost entirely vanished by the 1640s, and power here was in the hands of three main Nayaka kingdoms – those of Madurai, Jinji, and Thanjavur (all in present-day Tamil Nadu state). ⁶ Of these, the first remained as an independent kingdom until the eighteenth century; the second became part of the Bijapur Sultanate first and the Maratha kingdom later; and the last became a separate Maratha kingdom. Thus, there were different political entities and their representatives to be dealt with, at different levels – from the courts down to the local functionaries at the various ports or inland towns where the Europeans managed to establish small factories. Moreover, there could be no uniform method or practice, for modes of interaction had to be determined according to the official with whom they were dealing at any given point.

Each of these kingdoms had its own specific and primary ports, through which much of the import and export trade of the kingdom passed. Thus, Surat was the main port of the Mughals. Goa to begin with, and later, after its capture by the Portuguese, Bhatkal and Karwar were the main ports of Bijapur, while Masulipatam was the port of Golconda. The Nayaka kingdoms had a host of small ports that were all equally important, including Nagapattinam (first in Portuguese hands, later in Dutch), Kaveripattinam (an old port, at the mouth of the Kaveri river) under the control of Thanjavur, and Tuticorin (one of the bases of the pearl fisheries) under the control of Madurai. In the second half of the seventeenth century, Porto Novo emerged as an important centre of Asian trade. It was in this region, and on this coast, that the English and the Dutch established their first fortified settlements in the seventeenth century. Significantly, however, these ports already had well-established trajectories of trade and merchant communities, which the Europeans, at least initially, needed to fit into and then (perhaps) modify to suit their own needs.

The nature of the connections that existed across oceans needs to be understood. As mentioned earlier, Indian historiography has tended to emphasise the transforming role of the Europeans in Asian waters. The impact itself continues to be debated, but what is undeniable is that, in the initial stages, the association of the Europeans, especially the English and the Dutch, remained marginal, and restricted to the ports in particular. Later historiography has tended to skim over the problems and the realities of the position that the Europeans initially occupied in India. Far from being, from the beginning, in a position of importance, they were (especially the Dutch and the English) by and large restricted to the peripheries. In the Mughal Empire, in the Golconda Empire, they were kept firmly subordinate to the local administration, and were often at the receiving end of a variety of extortionate measures. It was made very clear that they operated with the permission of the rulers, and this permission could be withdrawn at the whim of the local noble, who had a degree of access to the court which, even if fairly minimal, was more than the Europeans had. Thus, in addition to making arrangements for the supply of the goods required, the English and the Dutch also needed agents to plead their case at court when necessary, and keep them informed of any potential problems in general. With regard to connected oceans, we need to look at the ports, not just as ports of call or as centres for forts or factories, but as points of intersection of the oceans themselves, and of the people who crossed the oceans, or those who stayed at the port itself. The port was also, in addition, the point of intersection of the coast and the hinterland.

The necessity of dealing with the local merchants in order to get supplies was clearly understood from almost the beginning. It was also recognised that the local norms had to be understood and adhered to in the matter of payment, but there was clearly a certain amount of resentment at the difference maintained between the rates paid by the Indian merchants and those demanded from them. In 1625, for example, it was reported that:

following the practice of the ‘Moore marchants’, the house-brokers now take 2 per cent, for brokerage on the calicoes bought in the factory, whereas they formerly took but one, it is ordered that in future they shall take the 2 per cent, but shall pay half of it into the Company’s account, insomuch as one of those taken by the Moore brokers is by them paid into the Custome house, and therefore is in effect but one per cent, but our masters doe there paye that one per cento [sic] to the Customer, which accomplisheth 3½ per cento, whereas the Moores paye but 2 ½ per cento upon their goods and the other one is paid at sale thereof … whereas the pursers in buying provisions have been in the habit of taking one pice in a mahmudi (or more) as ‘disturye’ [dasturi, commission], in future all such discounts are to be credited to the Company. ⁷

What comes across clearly is the different people involved in enabling the purchase of goods – house brokers, customs house officials, and the English factors – and the fact that, at this time, there was no contact whatsoever with the primary producer.

By and large, the English tended to deal with or through a specific merchant at most of the ports on the west coast of India. At Surat, their main contact was with Virji Vora, one of the most important of the Surat merchants. Among the earliest references to this merchant is in the year 1625, when it was decided that in order to get good quality pepper from the Deccan the company would enter into a contract ‘with “Vergee Vora, a prime marchant of this towne”, for 10,000 pounds worth at 16 mahmudis the maund’. But Virji demanded:

16 ¼ mahmudis, and requires as part of the bargain the sale to him of 25 chests of their best coral at a price which would seriously diminish the expected profit. Meanwhile he has engrossed all the pepper brought in by ‘the Decannee marchants’, who are not permitted to sell it to any other. To avoid being forced to give him his terms, it is resolved to send the broker ‘Hirgee’ [Hariji] secretly to the Deccan with bills of credit for 4,000 rupees to see what he can do. ⁸

Here we get the names of two different levels of merchants and brokers. The first, Virji, was obviously in a position to dictate terms to the English. Equally clearly, he had contacts further to the south of Surat and could establish a virtual monopoly of the goods required by the English. The records clearly show that he was also in touch with the Dutch and could apparently play off one company against the other. In contrast, the second broker was one whom the English were apparently trying to use in order to try and bypass Virji’s control. The attempt was unsuccessful. A little later, the factors at Surat reported that ‘the broker sent into the Deccan for pepper has been unable to obtain any’. They were forced to fall back on Virji Vora who had by then ‘slightly modified’ his terms. In addition, as there was a very real fear ‘lest the Dutch (having allready a great estate arryved out of Holland to be this yeare returned) will interpose and secure the pepper, it is decided to close with him’. ⁹

The relationship was, it appears, beneficial to the English company, not just because of the supplies that Virji Vora was able to get for them, but also because he was fairly certain to buy some of the goods that the English brought; something very necessary and apparently very rare, for there was little or no demand for these goods. For instance, there are annual references to his buying the coral that the English brought, ¹⁰ and for Virji, there was the benefit of being able to use the company’s ships to send his goods or his own agents – though there is no mention of whether any freight charges were taken. Given the fact that, otherwise, the records give details about freight charges from every individual, he probably had his goods transported free of cost. In 1642, for example, the instructions given to the commander of one of the company’s ships sailing down the west coast, stipulated that they were to halt at Calicut so that two of Virji Vora’s servants could disembark there. Two more were to be landed at Ponnani on the same stretch of the Malabar coast, before going on to Cochin for the purchase of cinnamon. On the return journey, the ship was again scheduled to call at Ponnani and Calicut to pick up the servants and the pepper that Virji Vora had arranged to supply to the English, and then return to Surat. ¹¹

In later years, the name of Abdul Ghafur begins to feature prominently in the English records. Abdul Ghafur was also a shipowner, whose ships regularly plied the Surat–Red Sea route, and both he and Virji Vora were, at one and the same time, the main suppliers and the main competitors of the English at Surat. The essential point here is the existence of the local and the broader Asian networks, into which the English did not fit, or perhaps, more accurately, from which they were excluded.

Virji Vora and Abdul Ghafur were at one end of the spectrum, as large-scale merchants and shipowners. In addition, we also find references to other, possibly smaller-scale merchants, and to problems arising among them and through them. In 1630, in a letter written by the factors at Surat to the factors at Broach, it is stated that:

Upon the Clamarous Information of Lickmydas Broker of Baroch, touching some pretended abuses of later years in the brokers Secret Cunning way of defrauding the Company in the provision of Broad baftaes Etc. wee have need of you this years wast book, Comprehending the dayly buyings and particular prices of all baftaes soe bought, to Compare with your Broker Tappidasses Books which hee hath also sent for to Justifie himself against the Crimes objected against him. ¹²

Other merchants whose names come up in the records include Kalyanji (most often mentioned in connection with Burhanpur), Tapi Das (important in the trade at Rajapur and at Bharuch), Bhimji Parikh (mentioned particularly in connection with Rajapur, Raibag and Surat), all of whom are referred to as merchants and brokers. The last named seems to have been one of the important merchants of Surat in the 1660s, during the time of the Maratha raids on Surat.

It is at this time that we get some indication of the wealth of the merchants of Surat. The English factors reported that, on 7 February 1664, Shivaji and his troops:

entered ye: towne with fire & sword, … robbd & plundered VirgyVorah, Hodgi Said Beague, those grt and eminent Merchants of ye: greatest part of their riches, with many more though inconsiderable to ym: yet of great estate and fortunes, all lying in Gold and Silver and Jewells, dugg all their houses and when they had possesst themselves of all, fired their houses downe to the ground, all but Hodgi Zaeds [Haji Sayyid?] our Neighbour. ¹³

Another aspect that needs to be highlighted is the port–hinterland–coast connections. Kalyanji was someone who was important in the trade to the interior, to the city of Burhanpur, which lies east from Surat; the other merchants traded with areas to the south of Surat. The market of Raibag, near the port of Rajapur, was regarded as one in which purchases of Malabar pepper could be made; while at the ports of Chaul, Rajapur and Dabhol were to be found merchants from Malabar as well as from across the Arabian Sea. As stated earlier, the ports were thus points of multiple intersections.

If Virji was the main contact on the west coast, on the east coast there were a number of merchants, all of more or less equal stature. In the early decades of the seventeenth century, the Europeans dealt mainly with, and through, the family of one Malaya Chetti. Malaya Chetti was well known on the east coast as a shipowner, prominent in the Bay of Bengal trade as well as being the commander-in-chief of the army of the Vijayanagar Empire. ¹⁴ Malaya was, in addition to being a trader, a tax farmer. In 1633, when the revenue of Pulicat was auctioned, he became the revenue farmer of the revenues of Pulicat on payment of 33,000 pagodas, and also collected the customs on imports and exports for some years. He apparently defrauded the Dutch company and the merchants in his capacity as collector of customs duties – something that became a bone of contention later on, when the Dutch began to deduct 1000 pagodas annually from the rent of Pulicat. He also became the revenue farmer for Devanamapatnam, where too the Dutch had a factory, thus becoming their landlord at both places. In addition, he took the lease of the Danish fort in Tranquebar: Dutch attempts to sub-lease the fort from him were foiled by the Nayaka of Thanjavur.

Unlike in Surat, the tendency on the east coast appears to have been for members of the same family to operate from different ports. Virji Vora had his agents all along the coast, but according to the English records, sent his own ‘servants’ to finalise sales and purchases. Virji is then referred to as ‘the great merchant of Surat’, but it is clear that he dealt with the English on his own terms. He was the supplier of goods, no doubt, but could not be dictated to. On the east coast, however, the term that is most often used is ‘chief merchant’, of the English or the Dutch, or, later, of the French. Nowhere on this coast do we find the use of the term ‘great merchant’ – if at all, there is the occasional reference to the ‘great noble and merchant, Mir Jumla’ – the minister of the Golconda Sultanate. The implication seems to be that, as I have argued elsewhere, ¹⁵ the nature of political fragmentation in the southeast of the country caused a certain scaling down of the operations of the merchants there and led them to establish closer ties with the European companies. On the west coast, the connections were with the Mughal Empire, of course, and with the two large Deccani sultanates. Indian merchants had connections with multiple levels of the administration in these kingdoms, but the Europeans could get access only through the brokers or agents of these merchants. Thus, we get the next level of interaction, with the administration.

The need to establish some contact with the imperial court was recognised very early, and in the first decade of the seventeenth century, first Captain William Hawkins and later, Sir Thomas Roe, were sent to the Mughal Court to negotiate a treaty for trading concessions. Hawkins was a failure, for he seems to have antagonised the court most thoroughly, but Roe was a little more successful. He managed to establish a fairly firm friendship with Asaf Khan, and through him to gain access to the Emperor and the Empress, and get concessions for trade. But what was soon realised was that while he may have got concessions from Jahangir, this did not necessarily translate into practical benefits at ground level in Surat.

Connections were also effected with other levels of the administration. A letter of 1625 addressed to the sole representative of the English at the Imperial Court of the Mughals talked about the parwana issued by a Khwaja Abul Hasan for use at Samana (important for indigo). Attempts were made to supply nobles with certain specifics that they wanted; thus when Asaf Khan asked for ‘English spectacles’, two pairs were sent to him. It had been reported that he had asked for a surgeon; ‘this be the case, the best in the fleet shall be sent up, or one shall be written for expressly from England’. More costly presents could also be given – the same letter talks about the purchase of ‘two thrones, one for the King and the other for the “Begum” [Nur Jahan Begam], which are very heavy but very good’. ¹⁶ Other attempts to win the favour of the nobles included shipping goods for them free of cost. However, whether this was a concession that was granted or demanded is none too clear. The three instances where specific mention is made of shipping goods are to do with Virji Vora, Haji Zahid the Shahbunder of Surat, to whom they owed 6000 pounds, and the Mir Jumla of Golconda to whom they also were heavily indebted.

If in the Mughal Empire, access to the court was through the lower-level administrators and through them to the higher echelons of the nobility, in Golconda and Bijapur access was more direct. Many of the higher nobles were traders in their own right. Thus we have the examples of Mir Kamaluddin, nobleman and trader first in Golconda and later in Bijapur, involved in both the Red Sea and the Bay of Bengal trade, Mir Mohammud Taqi, a merchant of Masulipatnam who was also the chief customs officer and of course Mir Jumla himself. It must be stressed that Mir Jumla, far from being an exception, fit perfectly into the established mode of Persian emigrants into the Deccan who transcended the so-called merchant/politics divide. The first half of the fifteenth century had seen extensive commercial contacts between the western Deccan and the Persian Gulf ports, in which the Kazaruni merchants (belonging to the area near Shiraz) were important. ¹⁷ Later in the same century we have Mahmud Gawan Gilani, Wazir of the Bahmani kingdom, who belonged to a family with widespread mercantile links. ¹⁸

Mir Muhammad Said Ardestani arrived in the Deccan in the retinue of a horse trader, then went on to farm a diamond mine, branched out into trade across the Bay of Bengal, and then, in succession, was the sardaftardar in Hyderabad, havaldar in the Nizamapatnam region, and finally, Mir Jumla of the Golconda Sultanate. ¹⁹ He thus became the second most influential man in the empire, next only to the Sultan himself, but without, in any way, decreasing the scope of his mercantile activities. On the contrary, he also branched out into money lending. He loaned money to the English at Masulipatnam in 1642–1643, and again at Madras in 1646–1647. ²⁰ Repayment of such loans was in accordance with Mir Jumla’s needs, whether political or mercantile, for in one instance, it took the form of a brass gun. ²¹ In 1651, the English at Fort St. George reported that the ‘whole kingdom of Gulcondah is governed by him’. They went on to say that he brought in annual revenues of ‘twentye hundred thousand pagodas’, and that he had:

of his proper owne four thousand horse, three hundred elephants, four or five hundred cammels, and ten thousand oxen, which transporteth his goods up into severall countrys, as Gulcondah, Vizapore and into dyvers parts of the Great Moguls country … Concerning forran navigation, he hath trade to Pegue, Tenasaree, Acheen, Rackan, Persia, Bengalla, Moka, Peruk, Moldeevaes, and Macassar. He hath tenn vessels of his owne, and intends to augment them, makeing much preparation for building of more. ²²

Later in the same year, Mir Jumla also tried to get a monopoly of cloth, as the English reported:

not … a piece [was] to bee sold but by his owne ministers, who are to engross all from the weavers and have order to rate them at 20% profitt to whomsoever will buy, or keepe them in his warehouses … and this course he is resolved to continue, until hee can bring a monopoly upon all imported goods. ²³

Even after he defected to the Mughals, he kept up his trading activities through his agents, who operated in ‘Pallacatt, Metchlepatam, etc. places of Cuttubshawes [Qutb Shah’s] dominion, by vertue of the Moghors power’. ²⁴

At Madras itself, the English depended on a succession of merchants, designated the ‘chief merchants’ of the company. Of these, the most influential was one Kasi Viranna, who was the chief merchant for the company for close to 20 years. It was reported that it was thanks to him that the English had no ‘bad debts’ in the place, and that the goods that they shipped from Madras were of good quality. They informed the Court of Directors in London that Kasi Viranna had 26 merchants under him, and he sent these merchants out to the weaving villages to keep track of the quantity and quality of cloth that he supplied. In addition, he was on good terms with the lower echelons of the Golconda administration, and was therefore useful in any negotiations that needed to be made at this level. On his death, it is perhaps significant that the English decided not to continue to have a single chief merchant, but instead set up a joint stock company of the Indian merchants, who would be contracted with to supply the cloth required.

Conclusion

What have been outlined in this article are some of the ways in which one can think of connections across oceans. If, as has been suggested, the oceans connect people rather than separate them, then the ocean itself becomes the means of establishing connections. These connections can span cultures and regions, and can perhaps be antagonistic; but in the region and the period under review, what one sees are multiple engagements and negotiations, rather than confrontations. Networks of contacts were established, either through diplomacy (Sir Thomas Roe, for example) or through attacking those who were perceived as the enemy or as threats, as happened on the west coast of India when the English declared that they were welcomed because they could take on the Portuguese at sea.

It is through this lens that I have tried to study the two ports in this article. At Surat, the English were the outsiders, who added to the demand for Indian goods, but who were, ultimately, just one more set of merchants. They had possibly less influence than many others, Asians, who had access to, if not the primary producers directly, then to those who did have access, and who did share the same culture(s). For instance, in 1720, when there were rumours that two ships belonging to merchants from Surat had been attacked by English pirates, the news reached the Surat merchants before it reached the English company. The Surat merchants then took steps to make sure that the company was penalised, and that reparation of some kind was made, even though the company insisted that they were not responsible for the damage. The logic here was that they should pay for the damage caused by their compatriots – a case of reprisal – even if they did not directly engage in piracy. ²⁵

At Madras, the English were primarily concerned with trade, of course, but also with retaining control over their fort and city. They guarded their rights, by the threat of force when necessary, as during the tenure of one of the presidents of the Madras Council, Streynsham Master, in 1678. ²⁶ Their concern was actually no different from that of the merchants at Surat – that their authority should not be challenged. The only difference was in with whom authority lay, the Mughals and their representatives, or the English East India Company. In these ‘cross-cultural encounters’, the notions of authority and control were the same, but exercised by different groups, and therefore seen as different.

Negotiations and engagements in these two places were correspondingly different – either from a position of power, or from that of an outsider. In the former, they could dictate, but only within their own town, and even in the second half of the seventeenth century, clinging to their rights as firmly as they could, to make sure that they did not lose their town itself. So, where in Surat they had to apply to the governor for redress, or had to send someone to the imperial court, at Madras, they appointed soldiers and built walls around the fort, creating what has been called a ‘European enclave’. However, from that enclave, they still had to deal with the Indian authorities, and so they had their own vakil, agent, at the Golconda Court. For dealing with the Mughal Court, they had to use, in the earlier decades of the century, Virji Vora’s agent, and later, to send their own employees to the court, but still they had to wait on the convenience of the court.

Peoples and places, ports and courts were the different levels of intersections. Time and space, individuals and society, all came together in the market to try to make a profit. Routes of trade were used by all, despite the early Portuguese claim to control all routes by sea, and to attempt to enforce this claim. Even more important, access to the internal markets was through specific places and people, such as Virji Vora or the Mir Jumla, who used these routes to their own advantage first, and then for the Europeans if it suited them to do so. In the seventeenth century, all the players were on more or less level ground, with perhaps the Europeans at a little more of a disadvantage.

It should be remembered that connections were not restricted to the Indian merchants or nobles. Surat and Madras were ports of call and residential areas for people from all over the trading world of Asia, which by now included Europeans. While there may have been diplomatic problems between the English and the Portuguese or between the English and the Dutch in Europe, local necessities dictated contacts, which were quite cordial. In case of war, of course, the equations changed. So, the Dutch could be contacted for the occasional help against the Portuguese or vice versa. This was evident, for example, in the correspondence that was sent from Europe to India, where Dutch letters could be sent in English ships, or the Dutch could send letters from the English company to Surat via the overland route from Persia, because the letters had come from England to Persia. The oceans were connected by the people who traversed them and not just by the powers that exercised control over them. The networks were of conflict and co-operation in what seems to be fairly equal measure in the seventeenth century. It could perhaps be postulated that this was a century in which all the participants met on fairly equal terms; if anything, the balance was tilted in favour of the Indian and Asian merchants. This was what changed in the later period.