Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-p566r Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T12:07:00.831Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

English Private Trade on the West Coast of India, c. 1680–c. 1740

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2014

Abstract

This article explores the private trade networks of English East India Company merchants on the west coast of India during the first half of the eighteenth century. Existing studies of English private trade in the Indian Ocean have almost exclusively focused on India's eastern seaboard, the Coromandel Coast and the Bay of Bengal regions. This article argues that looking at private trade from the perspective of the western Indian Ocean provides a different picture of this important branch of European trade. It uses EIC records and merchants' private papers to argue against recent metropolitan-centred approaches to English private trade, instead emphasising the importance of more localised political and economic contexts, within the Indian Ocean world, for shaping the conduct and success of this commerce.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bibliography of Works Cited

Unpublished Primary Sources

British Library, London [BL]: India Office Records [IOR]: Volumes H/332, E/3/100, E/3/108, E/3/109, E/4/449, E/4/450.Google Scholar
India Office Private Papers: Mss Eur/D5 and IOR Neg 11606-36: “Correspondence and account books of Sir Robert Cowan, free merchant at Bombay 1719, Chief of the Factory at Goa 1720, Chief at Mocha 1724, Governor of Bombay 1729–34.”Google Scholar
Mss Eur E302: “John Spencer Papers: Letter book, dated 1764–66, of John Spencer (c1725–67), East India Company servant, Bombay 1741–86, containing copies of his letters as Governor of Bengal 1764–65 to Laurence Sulivan (1713–86), East India Company Director 1755–86, Chairman 1758–59, 1760–62, 1781–82; MP 1762–74; also personal letter book, dated 1748–64, of Spencer's wife Adriana.”Google Scholar
C 104/248 Waterson v Atkyns: “Papers relating to William Mildmay's mercantile activities in India and the administration of his estate after his death; including correspondence (mainly addressed to William Mildmay on board the Tavistock at Surat Bar), list of goods at Carwar factory delivered by William Mildmay to John Harvey; Bombay warehouse accounts; inventory of the goods of William Mildmay sold at auction; muster rolls of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd companies, Bombay Castle; and bills of lading concerning Madras (in 4 bundles marked A1-30, B1-38, C1-22 and D1-99; B16 missing).”Google Scholar
C 106/141 Gayer v Gayer: “Letter book of William Gayer (nephew of Sir John Gayer). Journal of ships and other papers relating to India trade: India and England.”Google Scholar
C 110/145 Adams v Boone: “Accounts and Correspondence Relating to East India Trade.”Google Scholar
C 103/158 Boone v Nightingale: “Accounts (one in Portuguese), invoices, bonds: India.”Google Scholar
National Archives of Scotland [NAS]:Google Scholar
GD 110/975/1: Letter from Charles Suttie to Sir Henry Dalrymple, dated 8 November 1745.Google Scholar
West Yorkshire Archive Service [WYAS], Bradford: SpSt/3/12: “Letter to Walter Stanhope of Leeds, merchant from William Lowther of Surat, India,” 31 December 1732.Google Scholar

Published Primary Sources

London Evening Post (London, England), April 8th–11th 1738, Issue 1623.Google Scholar
Account of Bombay and Surat in the East Indies,” The London Magazine (London, England), 28 (October 1759), 515–6 and 603–4.Google Scholar
The Gazetteer of Bombay City and Island, Vols. 1 and 2. Bombay, 1909.Google Scholar
Anon., A Description of the port and island of Bombay. And an historical account of the transactions between the English and Portugueze concerning it. London, 1724.Google Scholar
Burnell, J.Bombay in the days of Queen Anne: being an account of the settlement written by John Burnell; with an introduction and notes by Samuel T. Sheppard; to which is added Burnell's narrative of his adventures in Bengal; with an introduction by Sir William Foster; and notes by Sir Evan Cotton and L.M. Anstey. London, 1933.Google Scholar
Edwardes, S.M.The Gazetteer of Bombay City and Island: Vol. 2. Reprint, New Delhi: Cosmo, 2001. Original edition, Bombay, 1909.Google Scholar
Pechel, S.An historical account of the possession and settlement of Bombay, by the English East India Company: and of the rise and progress of the war with the Mahratta nation. London, 1781.Google Scholar
Parsons, A.Travels in Asia and Africa. London, 1808.Google Scholar
Symson, W.A New Voyage to the East-Indies. London, 1732.Google Scholar

Secondary Sources

Aslanian, S. D.From the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean: The Global Trade Networks of Armenian Merchants from New Julfa. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Barendse, R. J.The Arabian Seas, 1640–1700. Leiden: Research School CNWS, 1998.Google Scholar
Barendse, R. J.. “Trade and State in the Arabian Seas: A Survey from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries.” Journal of World History 11:2 (2000): 173225.Google Scholar
Barendse, R. J.. The Arabian Seas, 1700–1763. Leiden: Brill, 2009.Google Scholar
Bulley, A.The Bombay Country Ships: 1790–1833. Richmond: Curzon, 2000.Google Scholar
Chaudhuri, K. N.The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company, 1660–1760. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Curtin, P.Cross-cultural Trade in World History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.Google Scholar
Das Gupta, A.Gujarati Merchants and the Red Sea Trade.” In The Age of Partnership: Europeans in Asia Before Dominion, edited by Kling, B. B. and Pearson, M. N., 123–58. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1979.Google Scholar
Das Gupta, A.Indian Merchants and the Decline of Surat, 1700–1750. Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1979.Google Scholar
Elliott, D. L.Pirates, Polities, and Companies: Global Politics Along the Konkan Littoral, c.1690–1756,” MSc thesis, London School of Economics, 2009.Google Scholar
Erikson, E. and Bearman, P.. “Malfeasance and the Foundations for Global Trade: The Structure of English Trade in the East Indies, 1601–1833.” American Journal of Sociology 112/1 (2006): 195230.Google Scholar
Furber, H.Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient, 1600–1800. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1976.Google Scholar
Furber, H.Bombay Presidency in the Mid-Eighteenth Century. London: Heras Institute of Indian History and Culture, 1965.Google Scholar
Markovits, C.The Global World of Indian Merchants, 1750–1947: Traders of Sind from Bukhara to Panama. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.Google Scholar
Marshall, P. J.East Indian Fortunes: The British in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976.Google Scholar
McGilvary, G. K.Guardian of the East India Company: The Life of Laurence Sulivan. London: Tauris, 2006.Google Scholar
Mentz, S.European Private Trade in the Indian Ocean, 1500–1800.” In The Trading World of the Indian Ocean, 1500–1800, edited by Prakash, O., 485518. Delhi: Pearson, 2012.Google Scholar
Mentz, S.The English Gentleman Merchant at Work; Madras and the City of London, 1660–1740. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Nadri, G.Eighteenth-Century Gujarat: The Dynamics of its Political Economy. Leiden: Brill, 2009.Google Scholar
Nadri, G.The Trading World of Indian Ocean Merchants in Pre-Colonial Gujarat, 1600–1750.” In The Trading World of the Indian Ocean, 1500–1800, edited by Prakash, Om, 255–84. Delhi: Pearson, 2012.Google Scholar
Nightingale, P.Trade and Empire in Western India, 1784–1806. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970.Google Scholar
Prakash, O.European Commercial Enterprise in Pre-Colonial India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Prakash, O.Private Trade in the Western Indian Ocean, 1720–1740.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 50:2–3 (2007): 215234.Google Scholar
Prakash, O.The Trading World of the Indian Ocean: Some Defining Features.” In The Trading World of the Indian Ocean, 1500–1800, edited by Prakash, O., 350. Delhi: Pearson, 2012.Google Scholar
Prange, S. R.Scholars and the Sea: A Historiography of the Indian Ocean.” History Compass 6:5 (2008), 13861393.Google Scholar
Ray, H. P.Crossing the Seas: Connecting Maritime Spaces in Colonial India.” In Cross-Currents and Community Networks: The History of the Indian Ocean World, edited by Ray, H. P. and Alpers, E. A., 5078. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Saxe, E. L.Fortune's Tangled Web: Trading Networks of English Entrepreneurs in Eastern India, 1657–1717. PhD thesis, Yale University, 1979.Google Scholar
Spear, P.The Nabobs: A Study of the Social Life of the English in Eighteenth Century India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998 [1932].Google Scholar
Subramanian, L.Power and the Weave: Weavers, Merchants and Rulers in Eighteenth Century Surat.” In Politics and Trade in the Indian Ocean World: Essays in Honour of Ashin Das Gupta, edited by Mukherjee, R. and Subramanian, L., 5282. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Subramanian, L.. “Seths and Sahibs: Negotiated Relationships between Indigenous Capital and the East India Company.” In Britain's Oceanic Empire: Atlantic and Indian Ocean Worlds, c. 1550–1850, edited by Bowen, H.V., Mancke, Elizabeth and Reid, John G., 311–39. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Thomaz, L. F.Portuguese Control Over the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal: A Comparative Study.” In Commerce and Culture in the Bay of Bengal, 1500–1800, edited by Prakash, O. and Lombard, D., 115162. New Delhi: Manohar, 1999.Google Scholar
Watson, I. B.Foundation for Empire: English Private Trade in India 1659–1760. New Delhi: Vikas, 1980.Google Scholar
White, D. L.Competition and Collaboration: Parsi Merchants and the English East India Company in Eighteenth-Century India. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1995.Google Scholar