The English Levant Company, In
Their Attempts To Extend Their Trade With The East, Seem First To Have
Reached Hindostan, In 1584, With English Merchandize.
About the same time
the queen granted introductory letters to some adventurers to the king of
Cambaya; these men travelled through Bengal to Pegu and Malacca, but do not
seem to have reached China.
They, however, obtained much useful information
respecting the best mode of conducting the trade to the East.
The first English ship sailed to the East Indies in the year 1591; but the
voyage was rather a warlike than a commercial one, the object being to
attack the Portuguese; and even in this respect it was very unfortunate. A
similar enterprize, undertaken in 1593, seems, by its success, to have
contributed very materially to the commercial intercourse between England
and India; for a fleet of the queen's ships and some merchant ships having
captured a very large East India carrack belonging to the Spaniards or
Portuguese, brought her into Dartmouth: if she excited astonishment at her
size, being of the burthen of 1600 tons, with 700 men, and 36 brass cannon,
she in an equal degree stimulated and enlarged the commercial desires and
hopes of the English by her cargo. This consisted of the richest spices,
calicoes, silks, gold, pearls, drugs, China ware, ebony wood, &c., and was
valued at 150,000_l_.
The increasing commercial spirit of the nation, which led it to look
forward to a regular intercourse with India, was gratified in the first
year of the seventeenth century, when the queen granted the first charter
to an East India Company. She seems to have been directly led to grant this
in consequence of the complaints among her subjects of the scarcity and
high price of pepper; this was occasioned by the monopoly of it being in
the power of the Turkey merchants and the Dutch, and from the circumstance
that by our war with Portugal, we could not procure any from Lisbon. The
immediate and principal object of this Company, therefore, was to obtain
pepper and other spices; accordingly their ships, on their first voyage,
sailed to Bantam, where they took in pepper, to the Banda isles; where they
took in nutmeg and mace, and to Amboyna, where they took in cloves. On this
expedition the English established a factory at Bantam. In 1610, this
Company having obtained a new charter from James I., built the largest
merchant ship that had ever been built in England, of the burthen of 1100
tons, which with three others they sent to India. In 1612 the English
factory of Surat was established with the permission of the Great Mogul;
this was soon regarded as their chief station on the west coast of India.
Their first factory on the coast of Coromandel, which they formed a few
years afterwards, was at Masulipatam: their great object in establishing
this was to obtain more readily the cloths of Coromandel, which they found
to be the most advantageous article to exchange for pepper and other
spices. For at this time their trade with the East seems to have been
almost entirely confined to these latter commodities. In 1613, the first
English ship reached a part of the Japan territories, and a factory was
established, through which trade was carried on with the Japanese, till the
Dutch persuaded the emperor to expel all Europeans but themselves.
The year 1614 forms an important era in the history of our commercial
intercourse with India; for Sir Thomas Roe, whom James sent ambassador to
the Mogul, and who remained several years at his court, obtained from him
important privileges for the East India Company. At this time, the
following European commodities were chiefly in repute in India; knives of
all kinds, toys, especially those of the figures of beasts, rich velvets
and satins, fowling pieces, polished ambers and beads, saddles with rich
furniture, swords with fine hilts inlaid, hats, pictures, Spanish wines,
cloth of gold and silver, French shaggs, fine Norwich stuffs, light armour,
emeralds, and other precious stones set in enamel, fine arras hangings,
large looking glasses, bows and arrows, figures in brass and stone, fine
cabinets, embroidered purses, needlework, French tweezer cases, perfumed
gloves, belts, girdles, bone lace, dogs, plumes of feathers, comb cases
richly set, prints of kings, cases of strong waters, drinking and
perspective glasses, fine basons and ewers, &c. &c. In consequence of the
privileges granted the East India Company by the Mogul, and by the Zamorine
of Calicut, their factories were now numerous, and spread over a large
extent of coast.
If we may trust the controversial pamphlets on the East India Company which
were published in 1615, it appears that up to this year they had employed
only twenty-four ships; four of which had been lost; the largest was 1293
tons, and the smallest 150. Their principal imports were still pepper,
cloves, mace, and nutmegs, of which 615,000 lbs. were consumed in England,
and the value of 218,000_l_. exported: the saving in the home consumption
of these articles was estimated at 70,000_l_. The other imports were
indigo, calicoes, China silks, benzoin, aloes, &c. Porcelain was first
imported this year from Bantam. The exports consisted of bays, kersies, and
broad cloths, dyed and dressed, to the value of 14,000_l_.; lead, iron, and
foreign merchandize, to the value of 10,000_l_.; and coin and bullion, to
the value of 12,000_l_.; the outfit, provisions, &c. of their ships cost
64,000_l_.
The Dutch, who were very jealous of the successful interference of the
English in their eastern trade, attacked them in every part of India; and
though a treaty was concluded between the English and the Dutch East India
Company, yet the treachery and cruelty of the Dutch, especially at Amboyna,
and the civil wars into which England was plunged, so injured the affairs
of the English East India Company, that at the death of Charles I. its
trade was almost annihilated.
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