Merchants and Ports in the Indian Ocean World: Across Sea and Land 1032248270, 9781032248271

Citation preview

MERCHANTS AND PORTS IN THE INDIAN OCEAN WORLD

The Indian Ocean world has a rich history of socio-economic and cultural exchanges across time and space. This book and its companion Connecting the Indian Ocean World explore these connections around the wider Indian Ocean world. The book looks at the extensive range of maritime networks that criss-crossed premodern Asia and the Indian ocean region connecting ports, peoples and cultures. It explores the connected histories of these regions and the movement of merchants, commodities and money which created the multicultural and cosmopolitan port cities like Surat and Nagasaki. With contributions from Indian and Japanese scholars, the volume analyses travellers’ accounts and trade routes between Japan and India, offering insights into how maritime movement shaped culture, politics and the social life of people in the most populated and productive regions of the world in the early modern period. Rich in archival material, this book will be of interest to scholars and researchers of Indian Ocean history, maritime history, economic and commercial history, Asian and South Asian history and social anthropology. Radhika Seshan  is former Head and retired Professor in the Department of History, Savitribai Phule Pune University, India and is now Visiting Faculty at the Symbiosis School for Liberal Arts, Pune, India. Her work has been primarily in the areas of economic history, particularly maritime and urban history of early modern India. Author of three books, she has edited or co-edited many others, and her most recent publication is Wage Earners in India 1500–1900: Regional Approaches in an International Context, co-edited with Jan Lucassen (2022). Ryuto Shimada is Associate Professor in the Department of Asian History, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, The University of Tokyo, Japan. The author of The Intra-Asian Trade in Japanese Copper by the Dutch East India Company During the Eighteenth Century (2006), he has published extensively in Japanese and English on aspects of the networks of the Indian Ocean world in the early modern age.

MERCHANTS AND PORTS IN THE INDIAN OCEAN WORLD Across Sea and Land

Edited by Radhika Seshan and Ryuto Shimada

Designed cover image: Getty Images First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 selection and editorial matter, Radhika Seshan and Ryuto Shimada; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Radhika Seshan and Ryuto Shimada to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-032-24827-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-50045-4 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-39666-6 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003396666 Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC

To our families and our colleagues

CONTENTS

List of Maps ix List of Figures x List of Tables xi Acknowledgementsxii List of Contributors xiii Introduction Radhika Seshan and Ryuto Shimada PART 1

India and Japan

1

9

1 Trade and Culture in the Seventeenth Century: the Japanese Traveller Tenjiku Tokubei’s Idea of India Ruby Maloni

11

2 Textiles in the Pre-Modern Economies of India and Japan: a Comparative Study Ishrat Alam

23

3 Gold Trade Between Japan and India by the Dutch East India Company Ryuto Shimada

44

viii Contents

4 Surat and Nagasaki: a comparison of two international port cities in the seventeenth century Hiromu Nagashima PART 2

56

Merchants and Trading Networks

75

5 Roads and Security Between Agra and Surat During the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries Shinsaku Kato

77

6 Merchants of the Coromandel Coast in the Seventeenth Century: From Masulipatnam to Fort St. David Radhika Seshan

97

7 Trade of Adil Shahi Sultanate of Bijapur: Textiles, Spices and Horses (1489–1686) Kiran Sampatrao Jadhav

109

Index130

MAPS

5.1 5.2 7.1 7.2 7.3

Caravanserais on the Routes Between Agra and Surat, c. 1600–1720 Details of the Route Trade Centres Adil Shahi in About 1656 Adil Shahi in About 1680

86 87 111 126 127

FIGURES

3.1 Japanese silver exports by the VOC, 1622–1667 47 3.2 Exports of Japanese gold Koban by the VOC, 1659–1753 50 3.3 Shares of Japan’s exports of silver, copper and others by the VOC, 1669–169750

TABLES

2.1 Export and Import Between India and Japan, 1641–1669 33 3.1 Exports of Precious Metals From the Netherlands by the VOC, 1602–179549 3.2 Annual Averages of Precious Metal Imports Into Japan, 1763–1839 52 5.1 List of the Places With Caravanserais Between Agra and Surat via Burhanpur84 5.2 List of the Places With Caravanserais Between Agra and Surat via Ahmadabad and Ajmer 88 7.1 Weight Standards of Adil Shahi Coins 118 7.2 Revenue Collection From the Karnatak 121 7.3 Information of Salary, Number of Horses and Foot of the Nobles 124 7.4 Revenue Collection From the Ports During the Reign of Muhammad Adil Shah 125

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This volume is the outcome of two seminars organised under the auspices of the ICSSR-JSPS ‘Joint Seminar Grant’, which was approved by the two organisations in September 2016. The first seminar was held at the University of Tokyo in March 2017, and the ICSSR permitted us to roll over the funds remaining from the first seminar to host a follow-up seminar in Pune in January 2018. Our sincere thanks to our colleagues and to the staff both at the University of Tokyo and at Savitribai Phule Pune University (formerly the University of Pune) for their help in all aspects of hosting the seminars. Dr Mizushima in Tokyo and Dr D.S. Gaikwad are particularly to be thanked, as despite their busy schedules as heads of their departments, they made time to welcome all the participants and to be as much a part of the discussions as their schedules permitted. Our students in both countries helped us in many ways, from asking questions that helped us to sharpen our arguments to doing all the running around that is necessarily as part of the organisation of any seminar! Antara Ray of Routledge has been our go-to person throughout the process of putting together this work and suggesting that it be split up into two volumes (both of which share a common subtitle). Subsequently, Shloka Chauhan and Angeline Joy have been of great help to us in a great many ways. Finally, our thanks to all those who participated and who have patiently borne with us and the delays imposed, first by our own schedules and then by the pandemic-enforced problems. Radhika Seshan and Ryuto Shimada

CONTRIBUTORS

Ishrat Alam is a former Chairman and Coordinator, Centre of Advanced Study,

Department of History, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh. He was Member Secretary (COE) of the Indian Council of Historical Research between 2008 and 2013. He is known for researches on history of technology and trade in medieval times. He has jointly edited two books: The Varied Faces of History: Essays in Honour of Anirudh Ray (with Syed Ejaz Husain, Primus, 2011), and Blending Nation and Region, Essays in Honour of Late Professor Amalendu Guha (with Sajal Nag, Primus, 2018). His forthcoming work on Textiles, Technology and Trade in Medieval India will be brought out by Oxford University Press. Kiran Sampatrao Jadhav is currently working as Professor and Head, Department of History in Agasti Arts, Commerce and Dadasaheb Rupwate Science College Akole, District Ahmednagar, Maharashtra State in the Republic of India. The recipient of the Itihaskar Vasudev Sitaram Bendre Suvarnpadak, (Gold Medal) for his PhD., he has completed a number of projects, and is currently working on revising his thesis for publication. He has a number of papers in national journals to his credit. Shinsaku Kato is a Research Associate at Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. He is the author of the articles, ‘The Dutch East India Company in the Port City of Surat on the West Coast of India in the Eighteenth Century’ (Acta Asiatica: Bulletin of the Institute of Eastern Culture, 2022, 122,), ‘The Dutch East India Company and Its Privilege in Mughal Gujarat’ (Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, 2019, 79). His current research topics are legal encounters between the East India Companies and people in the Mughal empire, and maritime security for the navigation from Mughal India.

xiv Contributors

Ruby Maloni is a former Head and retired Professor of the Department of History,

University of Mumbai. She has published extensively on Modern India and Medieval India. Her specialization is the Indian Ocean and maritime trade, with special emphasis on the history of Gujarat. She has published several articles and books, including ‘European Merchant Capital and the Indian Economy’, and ‘Surat, Port of the Mughal Empire’, and most recently, The Route to European Hegemony – India’s Intra-Asian Trade in the Early Modern Period (Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries), published by Manohar Publications, 2021. Hiromu Nagashima is a Professor Emeritus of University of Nagasaki (at Sasebo). He was qualified M.A. (History) both at Aligarh Muslim University and Kyoto University and studied for prescribed three years at the PhD course of Kyoto University. He taught for 31 years since 1981 at the University of Nagasaki. His main spheres of study are medieval Indian history and trade and cultural relations between Japan and Asian countries such as India and Thailand. Some of his papers are: Bania Merchants under the Mughal Empire: A case study of those of Surat city [ Japanese]; Merchants and Rulers in Gujarat during the 17th Century; The Shahbandar at Surat in the Mughal Empire; The Factories and Facilities of the East India Companies in Surat: Locations, Building Characteristics and Ownership; Reading a Map of Surat Drawn around 1730 [Japanese]; Persian Muslim Merchants in Thailand and Their Activities in the 17th century: Especially on their visits to Japan and Early Modern Nagasaki as an International Port Town: as compared with Surat in the Mughal Empire [ Japanese].

INTRODUCTION Radhika Seshan and Ryuto Shimada

This volume is the product of two seminars organised in Tokyo, Japan, and in Pune, India, in 2017 and 2018. We wish to place on record our sincere thanks to the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) and the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) for providing the generous funding that made it possible for us to host these seminars. One manifestation of the ongoing collaboration between Japanese and Indian scholars, the academic association has a long history, with scholars like Hiroshi Fukazawa, Noboru Karashima, Tsukasa Mizushima and Shigeru Akita in Japan and A.R. Kulkarni, Dwijendra Tripathi and many more in India. Going forward from that collaboration, this work brings together scholars who have continued to work on economic history but with greater emphasis on the Asian connections and the Indian Ocean world. In the introduction of a seminal work on India’s history, K.M. Panikkar’s Asia and Western Dominance: A Survey of the Vasco da Gama Epoch of Asian History,1 it was stated that this ‘epoch’ showed a ‘singular unity in its fundamental aspects’, which, he said, were the dominance of a maritime power over the land masses of Asia; the imposition of a commercial economy over communities whose economic life in the past had been based not on international trade, but mainly on agricultural production and internal trade; and thirdly the domination of the peoples of Europe, who held mastery of the seas, over the affairs of Asia.2 What he did not bring in was the longevity and the range of the networks of merchants and trade that had united the Asian trading world for many centuries. This was, to some extent, brought in by scholars like Ashin Das Gupta,3 Tapan Raychaudhuri4 and M.N. Pearson5 and many more. While the first two examined Dutch sources in particular, Pearson focused on the Portuguese writings. Their DOI: 10.4324/9781003396666-1

2  Radhika Seshan and Ryuto Shimada

work underlined the significance of European sources for the study of the premodern Indian Ocean world but did move away from the Eurocentrism that had been part of many earlier writings, both overtly and covertly. In subsequent decades, a great deal of research has been undertaken on various aspects of the Indian Ocean world and the connections around this world. It may be useful to conceive of the Asian trading world as consisting of three broad, overlapping circles. Moving from west to east, the first segment then comprises the east coast of Africa, the Red Sea and Persian Gulf regions and across the Arabian Sea to the west coast of India. The second stretches from the west coast of India, across the land mass of the country to the east coast of India and beyond, across the Bay of Bengal to Southeast Asia. The third consists of the area from the east coast of India, across the Bay of Bengal, Southeast Asia and the Indonesian Archipelago to the China Seas. In this, the farthest extent could be Australia. It has been said by Ashin Das Gupta that the inclusion of the entire interior economy of India, with its emphasis on land and land revenue, does not really help in the understanding of maritime history.6 Pearson, on the other hand, asked how far inland one had to travel to get away from a ‘whiff’ of the sea! The two represent two different ways of looking at the multiple connections that led from sea to land and vice versa. It is of course clichéd to say that hinterland linkages, or, as K.R. Hall has argued, upstream and downstream linkages, were crucial to the maritime economy of the Indian Ocean world. The routes that criss-crossed the continent were used by soldiers, merchants, pilgrims and adventurers of many hues. Networks were established by all of these people, but we would like to emphasise two aspects – the merchants who were key in the many exchange networks and the ports through which these exchanges were routed. A key idea in this work is the notion of connected histories. How are connections established? One material dimension is of course the movement of goods and the existence (or creation) of markets for these goods. The Indian Ocean world has often been said to have been connected by horses, cotton cloth and spices – but linking all these was bullion. Money, it is said, is the lubricant for the ‘wheels of commerce’, and a great deal of money moved in this world. Numerous studies have pointed to the strong money market that existed in India, not just under the Mughals, but both earlier and in the kingdoms and empires of the Indian peninsula that were contemporary to the Mughals until the seventeenth century. Coins and bullion flooded into the country, with the Europeans, when they came, adding to the types of coins in circulation and to the bullion that was brought to India. However, it is necessary to point to the social, political and economic ramifications of this influx as well. An important socio-economic aspect was the development of the system of money-changing, where coins and bullion brought into India were exchanged or minted into the coins current in the kingdom or empire. This was done primarily through the medium of the sarrafs – the money-changers. Records of the time, both in Persian and in European languages, give us a great deal of information on the institution of sarrafi, as well as on individual sarrafs. It should be remembered that the institution itself reflected the power of the state, for the

Introduction  3

sarrafs were people authorised by the state structure. The form of this authorisation is not clear, but there was a strong link between state power and the system of sarrafi, manifested sometimes in specific connections between a noble and a sarraf (as seen in the case of Mir Jumla in Masulipatnam). Methods for the transfer of money through the ubiquitous hundis – the bills of exchange – were in place throughout India, with networks reaching into Persia and Arabia as well. This clearly indicates the existence of both knowledge and trust. When money needed to be transferred, hundis were used. Bills of exchange were used to transfer money from anywhere, and to anywhere, across Asia or within India. For example we have the rates of commission on bills purchased at Aden and payable at Surat or purchased at Surat and redeemable at Burhanpur. Rates fluctuated according to who was purchasing it, to whom it was made out and the time it would take to reach the destination. English records and Persian sources are very clear that at the time of political unrest in Yemen, rates of exchange shot up dramatically in Surat. The Asian trading world, encompassing some of the most populated and most productive regions of the world, has a long and fascinating history. The nature of the commercial interactions led to a multiplicity of cross-cultural exchanges, which had a symbiotic relationship. All the Asian ports developed a multicultural and cosmopolitan character. Earlier writings on the period covered by this volume, including such works as K.N. Chaudhuri’s The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company (1978),7 K. Glamann’s Dutch-Asiatic Trade, 1620–1740 (1981)8 and S. Arasaratnam’s Merchants, Companies and Commerce on the Coromandel Coast 1650–1740 (1986),9 have brought to the forefront numerous aspects of the economic history of the period as well as the nature of the links across the seas. Located within the context of European trade, they had a lot of information about the negotiations and contestations that took place in these ports. Thus, we get any amount of information on the customs duties, on the problems faced by the Europeans in their dealings with the local officials and similar details. Ports then became the only points of contact, not just for the Europeans but for the internal kingdoms as well. The customs duties, an important source of revenue for these political powers, were collected at the ports, which were the points through which goods moved from the hinterlands to the wider world of trade and vice versa. Such studies tended to further validate the study of ports, particularly as ‘port cities’.10 What were the commodities that were of prime importance in the trade of the Indian Ocean world, and how did the many political regimes defend, expand or constrict the world of the Asian merchants? The importance of spices, Indian cloth and Arabian horses has long been underlined, but it is also necessary to examine the trade in other products, perhaps more mundane, in that they were lower priced but necessary nonetheless. Networks of people and trades spanned both the maritime and the land-based worlds, through commodities such as horses, cotton cloth, spices and silk, in addition to the more ordinary ones such as rice, timber or earthenware jars. All this depended on the production of the hinterland and the intricate network of internal marts and trade routes. The nature of the connections between the

4  Radhika Seshan and Ryuto Shimada

coasts and the hinterlands, and the organisation of the trade to and from the ports of the hinterland, is an additional area of research. Equally significant is the issue of currency and the trends of bullion flows. India had long been known as a willing recipient of bullion; and gold, silver and copper came to India in large quantities to be minted into local currency. Much of this came from Japan. The arrival of the Europeans in Asian waters definitely affected the patterns of the Indian Ocean trade. In the course of the period under review, a distinction needs to be made between the official trade of the various European companies and the private trade of the Europeans and company officials in their individual capacities. The private trade, in particular, involved considerable collaboration with local merchant groups. This led to the emergence of networks, which were a continuation of, and a change from, the earlier networks that had existed, even if they drew upon many of the same ties. The book is divided into two parts, with the first focusing on India–Japan connections and the second on merchants and trading networks. Part 1 is composed of four chapters. In Chapter  1 Ruby Maloni sheds light on a Japanese traveller in the seventeenth century to examine his and Japanese national idea of India. Tenjiku Tokubei (1612–1692) was an adventurer and writer of seventeenth-century Japan. He wrote about his travels to Southeast Asia and also to South Asia. He was born in 1612, at Sendō-machi, Takasago-chō, in today’s Hyogo Prefecture, where his father was a salt wholesaler. After a peripatetic and adventurous time spent in his youth, he returned to his home town to live a long and spiritual life. At the age of 15 he had been hired by a trading company in Kyoto, and he soon became involved in commercial activities aboard Japanese Red Seal ships or Shuinsen. Tokubei visited China and stayed for some time at Ayutthaya. He sailed on board a ship belonging to the Dutch adventurer Jan Joosten van Lodensteijn and is said to have visited India in 1630 and traded there. It was only after Tokubei’s return to Japan in 1633, that the policy of seclusion or Sakoku was introduced and kaikin or maritime prohibition was implemented. After several decades, he became a monk with the priestly name of Soshin and proceeded to record his account, dictating the narrative at the venerable age of 89. The ‘Tenjiku Tokai Monogatari’ or ‘Relations of Sea Travels to India’ (天竺渡海物語), describing his adventures in foreign lands, held the popular imagination of the Japanese people well into the late Edo and Meiji period. Partly fiction, this narrative text forms a fascinating case study for regional commercial contacts and cross-cultural connections, particularly between Japan and India. Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 discuss the economic links of India and Japan. Ishrat Alam in Chapter 2 investigates the Indian textiles trade with Japan to attempt a comparative survey of the two economies, India and Japan. Adam Smith’s insightful observations about the nearly simultaneous twin discoveries – the discovery of America and that of a passage to the East Indies united, “in some measure, the most distant parts of the world, by enabling them to relieve one another’s wants, to increase one another’s enjoyment, and to encourage one another’s industry” – implied great consequences. After these two discoveries the world was never the

Introduction  5

same. In the light of this all-encompassing approach, it will be difficult to confine the conceivable impacts for any one or two of the continents. In this broad framework, Ishrat Alam tries to approach our theme and to confine himself to understanding the kind of trade relationship India and Japan entertained in the seventeenth century and the role of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in it. Some fundamental studies done earlier have helped us further in appreciating the theme. Textiles served as the most important industry in the agrarian society. Textiles heralded reciprocal economic, political, social and cultural background, in which the Indo-Japanese relations emerged in the seventeenth century. In Chapter  3, Ryuto Shimada focuses on the Japanese gold trade with India by the VOC during the seventeenth century. When the VOC began the Japanese trade in the early seventeenth century, it exported Japanese silver on a large scale. The VOC shipped Japanese silver to India. In exchange for silver, the Dutch company obtained Indian cotton textiles for the market in Southeast Asia, where the VOC procured spices for Europe. Through this triangular trade in Asia, the VOC gained large profits so as to save the exports of silver from the Netherlands. However, the Japanese shogunate authorities prohibited the VOC from exporting silver in 1668. This is because Japan was facing a decline in silver production at that time. Due to the change of the Japanese policy for foreign trade, the VOC began to export gold from Japan. Japanese gold was sent to India and it was sold as a means of payment to procure cotton textiles in the markets around the Coromandel Coast in particular. The Japanese gold trade was put to an end in the late seventeenth century. In 1695, the Japanese shogunate authorities began the debasement of gold currency. In 1698, the VOC in Japan was told by the Japanese authorities that the VOC had to purchase debased gold Koban coins at the same price as before. The Japanese gold trade became unprofitable for the VOC, while Japanese copper became more important for the VOC as merchandise for the Indian market. Chapter 4 is a fascinating attempt by Hiromu Nagashima to compare two port cities, Surat and Nagasaki, in the seventeenth century. Surat was the most prosperous international port city in the Mughal empire in South Asia, while Nagasaki was the most important international port city under the seclusion policy of Tokugawa Japan (1639–1853) in East Asia. Nagashima takes up the period from the beginning of the seventeenth century to the beginning of the eighteenth century, that is the most prosperous period of the Mughal empire and the former half of the national seclusion period in Japan. First, the chapter briefly examines the quantitative aspects of the two port cities, such as area, population and volume of trade. Second, the chapter compares the magistrate (bugyō) of Nagasaki and the governor (mutasaddi) of Surat, both were officers despatched from the respective central government. Next, he compares the local officials, such as deputy (daikan), ward elders (machidoshiyori), ward headmen (machi otona) and interpreters, in case of Nagasaki, and deputy (na‘ib), police and head of town or city (kotwal), ward headmen (mir-i muhalla), spokesman for the

6  Radhika Seshan and Ryuto Shimada

foreign merchants (shahbandar) and interpreters in case of Surat. Third, the chapter compares the system of control of foreigners and foreign trade, so as to demonstrate that control of trade by the Mughal central government over Surat at that time was not as strong and systematic as that by the Japanese central government over Nagasaki. Finally, Nagashima infers some reasons behind this difference in the policy towards foreigners and foreign trade between the central governments of Mughal India and Tokugawa Japan. Part 2 has three chapters that investigate merchants and trading networks. In Chapter 5, Shinsaku Kato examines the land trading routes and security between Agra and Surat during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The construction of caravanserai seems to have been concentrated on the surrounding of the centre of the empire. There were many caravanserais between Agra and Sironj in particular, which is not surprising, given the importance of Sironj in the indigo trade, which was a monopoly of the Mughals. On the other hand, few caravanserais did exist on the route between Burhanpur and Surat or between Agra and Surat through Ajmer and Ahmadabad. The only exception was the highway from Agra to Ajmer, where caravanserais were constructed every ten kos in the late sixteenth century. By the 1630s, those caravanserais were no longer maintained, and travellers were forced to camp in the field on their way. In this situation, some other methods enabled travellers to conduct their safe journey. Organising a large scale of caravan was one of these manners to secure their safety when they moved from one place to another. Furthermore, a caravan always hired guards to accompany it. Meanwhile, political entities also paid attention to assuring security of the highways. They were conscious of their responsibilities to keep their countries quiet. They offered convoys to caravans and had their servants patrol the areas under their jurisdiction. One such local official was faujdar, and he took care of the roads under his territory and arrested bandits when he found them. Thus, in spite of the fact that the highways were always in danger, these practices helped realise efficient transportation between Agra and Surat. In Chapter 6, Radhika Seshan presents a case study of merchants on the Coromandel Coast in the seventeenth century. The English arrived on the Coromandel Coast in 1611, at Masulipatnam. This remained their main settlement on the coast for the next two decades, even though smaller settlements were established at various points along the coast – Petapoli (Peddapalli) or Nizamapatnam (subordinate to Masulipatnam, and to the south of that place), Kunimedu, Nagore, Devanamapatnam (in the south Coromandel), Armagon (near Pulicat) and finally, Fort St. George in 1639–1640 and Fort St. David in the 1690s. With the establishment of the fort at Chennapatnam/Chennai/Madraspatnam/Madras, that became the headquarters for the ‘Coast and Bay’ and for the ‘West Coast’ – Sumatra, Priaman etc. Other than Fort St. George and Fort St. David, all other settlements went through phases of being dissolved and re-established. As the centre, all goods were sent out from the various factories but had to be put in at Fort St. George before being shipped off to England. By the same logic, obviously, all despatches from England were sent to Fort St. George first and then sent on from there.

Introduction  7

While Fort St. George was the centre, each of the individual factories had of course to act independently, in terms of procurement of goods through contracts with the merchants and arrangements for washing the textiles that reached there, examining the finished goods (‘sorting’) and so on. The starting point was the merchants. Who were the merchants? What was the hinterland that these merchants accessed? What was the nature of the organisation of the coastal trade, and who were the participants in this trade? How did the Europeans insert themselves into this trade, and what was the role of private trade (especially Portuguese and English) in this trade? Finally, in the course of the seventeenth century, in the process of establishing competing and overlapping structures of trade, how did the English navigate with or through merchants? These are some of the questions that are addressed in the chapter. Chapter 7 by Kiran Sampatrao Jadhav investigates the trade of Adil Shahi Sultanate of Bijapur in the Indian Ocean. The Adil Shahi Sultanate of Bijapur (1489– 1686) had a long coastline, hence, it was exposed to the Indian Ocean through its ports on the west coast and Coromandel Coast, passing through Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal, respectively. Until the early decades of the second half of the seventeenth century, Adil Shahi Sultanate had control over the ports of both the coasts. The sultanate was at the height of its prosperity. This chapter therefore attempts to look into its external trade and traces how the sultanate was connected through external trade to other ports of the Indian Ocean. Also, it examines the bilateral trade between the ports of both the coasts of the sultanate and the ports of various regions where the goods were marketed. In this bilateral trade, textiles and spices were exported to these ports by merchants of the west coast and Coromandel, and in return, the merchants imported a variety of products of these regions, which included horses, raw silk, metals, pearls and so on. It questions how the silk weaving industry of Chaul and Dabhol was supplied with its raw material from China. This chapter also focuses on the involvement of various merchants in the trade. Travellers and ambassadors, including Varthema, Abbé Carré and Asad Beg, mention the presence of Moorish [Muslim], Hindu as well as foreign merchants including ‘Armenians or Persians’. A key concern of this work has been the exploration of the many dimensions of what, at first sight, appears to be only economic exchanges. Merchants from different parts of the Asian and the European worlds, state systems, currency networks, and, of course, goods of all kinds circulated through the Indian Ocean world. Facilitated by the long-established knowledge of routes and ports, these made the Indian Ocean world (then and now) one of the busiest in the world.

Notes 1 K.M. Panikkar, Asia and Western Dominance: A Survey of the Vasco da Gama Epoch of Asian History, 1498–1945, London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1953. 2 Ibid., Introduction, p. 12.

8  Radhika Seshan and Ryuto Shimada

3 Ashin Das Gupta, The World of the Indian Merchant 1500–1800: Collected Essays of Ashin Das Gupta, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000. 4 Tapan Raychaudhuri, Jan Company in Coromandel, S’-Gravenhagea: Brill, 1962. 5 M.N. Pearson, Merchants and Rulers in Gujarat, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976. 6 Ashin Das Gupta, ‘Indian Merchants and the Western Indian Ocean’, Modern Asian Studies, 19(3) (1985): 481–499. 7 K.N. Chaudhuri, The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978. 8 K. Glamann, Dutch-Asiatic Trade, 1620–1740, S’-Gravenhage: Springer, 1981. 9 S. Arasaratnam, Merchants, Companies and Commerce on the Coromandel Coast, 1650–1740, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1986. 10 This can be seen in works like Indu Banga (ed.), Ports and Their Hinterlands in India, 1700–1950, New Delhi: Manohar Publications, 1992.

PART 1

India and Japan

1 TRADE AND CULTURE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY The Japanese Traveller Tenjiku Tokubei’s Idea of India Ruby Maloni

Tenjiku Tokubei (1612–1692) was an itinerant adventurer and writer of seventeenth-century Japan, who wrote about his travels to Southeast Asia and South Asia. He was born in 1612, at Sendōmachi, Takasago-chō, in today’s Hyōgo Prefecture, where his father was a salt wholesaler. After a peripatetic and adventurous time spent in his youth, he returned to his home town to live a long and spiritual life. At the age of 15 he was hired by a trading company in Kyōto and soon became involved in commercial activities aboard Japanese Red Seal ships or Shuinsen.1 Tokubei visited China and stayed for some time at Ayutthaya. He sailed on board a ship belonging to the Dutch adventurer Jan Joosten van Lodensteijn and is said to have visited India in 1630 and traded there.2 It was only after Tokubei’s return to Japan, in 1633, that the policy of seclusion or Sakoku was introduced and kaikin or maritime prohibition was implemented3 (Toby, 1977: 323–363). After several decades, he became a monk with the priestly name of Sōshin and proceeded to record his account, dictating the narrative himself at the venerable age of 89. The ‘Tenjiku Tokai Monogatari’ or ‘Relations of Sea Travels to India’ (天竺渡海物語), describing his adventures in foreign lands, held the popular imagination of the Japanese people well into the late Edo and Meiji period. Partly fiction, this narrative text forms a fascinating case study for regional commercial contacts and cross-cultural connections, particularly between Japan and India. The ‘Tenjiku Tokai Monogatari’ may be seen in the context of maritime trade and intercultural exchanges, emanating and extending from the ‘Age of Sail’. The author was one of those intrepid itinerants who ventured outside a personal space in the quest of profitable trade, also to sample new cultures, and returned to tell the tale. The early seventeenth century was a dynamic age when traders and seekers of fortune of various nationalities dared to sail across the oceans. This trend was also true of Japan, where voyages abroad were rampant, interestingly just as the government was into the process of retreat from the rest of the world. DOI: 10.4324/9781003396666-3

12  Ruby Maloni

The battle of Sekigahara took place in 1600 by which Tokugawa Ieyasu established a decisive hegemony over Japan and began the process of solidifying the regime, which he and his 13 successors as shōgun would perpetuate over two and half centuries. By 1635, the Tokugawa shogunate officially prohibited their citizens from overseas travel, ending the period of Red Sea trade. Before this, Japan was at the peak of the most expansive and outgoing period of its pre-modern history, being actively engaged in open oceanic trade. Since Japan was excluded from direct access to the markets of China by the Ming government’s anti-maritime orientation and Chinese law, Japanese merchants and seafarers had responded in the late sixteenth century by venturing further outward to trade, advancing into Southeast Asia in search of Chinese goods. On the other hand, Japan had been reached by the farthest extension of the European ‘Age of Discovery’, first by Portuguese traders, followed inexorably by Jesuit missionaries, who came east from Africa and India. They were later joined by Spanish traders and missionaries coming west from Mexico and then north from the Philippines. The Dutch commercial power arrived in the seventeenth century, a time when Iberian Catholics and the Japanese were in the midst of vigorous economic, cultural and religious competition. As a result of a half century of Jesuit proselytisation, the Iberians of the Counter Reformation were deeply entrenched, playing a critical role in Japan’s external trade to support their position and with several hundred thousand converts to Catholicism. The Portuguese had established themselves at Macao since the 1550s, thereby grasping a share of China’s foreign trade. Wako pirates from Japan operated on the China coast, and Japanese freebooters ranged freely across the China coast and into the Indies in search of trade or plunder. The volatile atmosphere of the sixteenth century also included the 1592 attempt to subjugate Korea by Hideyoshi, the Taikō.4 The economic dynamics of the time created connections between a collection of diverse societies. During the early modern age of commerce, the cultural exchanges were transcending borders. Several Southeast Asian ports, including Spanish Manila, Vietnamese Hoi An, Siamese Ayutthaya and Malay Pattani, welcomed the Japanese merchant ships, and many Japanese settled in these ports, forming small Japanese enclaves. It is possible that Tenjiku Tokubei collected some portions of his widely ranging narrative from his visits to these places. His ‘story’ is useful for understanding a region of shifting frontiers rather than fixed nation states. It is not very clear whether Tenjiku actually sailed to India, to the source of the Ganges and the ‘country of Magadha’, as he writes. But he did return to Japan after amassing riches, both in the material sense and in the sense of rich tales to tell. His nom de plume ‘Tenjiku’ was the East Asian term for India – ‘the heavenly abode’.5 Monogatari (物語), as a literary form in traditional Japanese literature, is an extended prose narrative tale comparable to an epic. Along with Setsuwa (説話), it belongs to a Japanese literary genre. It consists of myths, legends, folk tales and anecdotes based predominantly on oral tradition and generally relates a fictional or fictionalised story, even when retelling a historical event. As with most such works, ‘Tenjiku Tokai Monogatari’ suffers from

Trade and Culture in the Seventeenth Century  13

a lack of credibility since the empirical evidence, if at all, is sketchy. Despite historical anachronisms, inaccuracies, generalisations, stereotypes and ethnocentric views, it acts as a telescope to bring into focus the contemporary concept of the world and the interface between two different cultural characteristics of the East. The ‘Tenjiku Tokai Monogatari’ may be considered to be both a work of history and a piece of imagination and fantasy. It is in major parts a work of fiction and a record of data based on hearsay. Tenjiku Tokubei in many instances wrote about specific people whom he had perhaps not personally encountered but had heard of and wondered about. His simple objective was to record his travel experiences in writing and make it known to other people. He was a storyteller and not a historian. With the passage of time, his work evolved into a combination of myth and propaganda. Fact, fantasy and symbolism merged together to project the value systems of different periods of history in Japan. Tenjiku Tokubei’s chronicle was part of a genre reflecting a historical process extending over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Long-distance oceanic voyages became a level playing field for seafarers, men of commerce and chroniclers. The opening up of maritime travels, mainly for trade, led to encounters with the ‘Other’ which offered a multitude of possibilities for imaginative historical fiction. Opportunities were available for romancers to embroider, offering much latitude for fertile imaginations (Smith, 1980). In this period of Japan’s history, the possibility of world travel was becoming real by the presence of first Iberian and later other Europeans in various ports throughout the Japanese isles (Boxer, 1951). The time frame was also one of cross-cultural connections. A case in point is the fascinating career in Japan of William Adams (1564–1620). He was an English navigator who was the first from his nation to reach Japan. Known as Miura Anjin, he was the first ‘Western Samurai’ and key advisor to Shōgun Tokugawa Ieyasu.6 His letters provided information about Japan, which continued to hold the attention of the West for a long period. Numerous novels based on his interesting life were printed, beginning from the nineteenth century. The culmination of this popular fictional writing was James Clavell’s novel Shōgun, published in 1975. In 1990, it was produced as a Broadway musical in the United States and reached an even wider audience. Japan fascinated the Western mind and continues to do so. Conversely, India also was a land which fascinated not only the West but also Japan. Tokubei’s narrative offers some significant and unique issues, particularly of a cultural encounter, of one Oriental culture with another. It is interesting to observe how India was understood and how it appeared in the Japanese imagination. The trend of the times, both in the West and in the East, was to fantasise about an exotic and far distant land. It must be remembered that Tokubei was also a skilled fabulist like the Jesuit chronicler Luis Frois, who felt in 1585 that ‘the zone of myths is not the place for facts but for beliefs’ (Smith, 1980). Since travelling implied a form of escape, his chronicles obtained popularity. Myths have often used travels as a metaphor for reaching knowledge. A travelogue therefore becomes human history itself (Mariani, 2006).

14  Ruby Maloni

The dominant image of India, as it emerges from Tokubei’s narrative, is of a mysterious and magical land, reading about which became a form of recreation and a type of both sophisticated and popular entertainment, mainly for domestic consumption in Japan. While Tokubei’s work becomes modern mythology, at the same time it also holds up a mirror for Japanese preoccupation with India at that time and later. Oceanic travel had created channels for observers from different cultural backgrounds to have extended encounters with India. The prolific output of European travellers, the majority of whom came to India in search of commercial profit, was in the process of creating an exotic image of India. Tokugawa Ieyasu’s policy of isolation from external influences, continuing for the next two centuries, would only add to the concept of India as a mythical and mystical land, as pictured by the Japanese. Buddhist cosmology was also intrinsic in the formation of Tokubei’s narrative and its focus on India. Tokubei’s account of his maritime travel was quite different from other travelogues of this period. Stored in Tokubei’s memory, the narrative was recollected and refined many years after he returned from his peregrination. In the interim, an entire genre of texts known as Hyōryūki or castaway narratives had been created and were to be widely disseminated (Wood, 2009).7 The broad textual category of early modern Hyōryūki included the stories of many Japanese sailors who became distressed at sea and their encounter with foreigners. Thousands of such accounts followed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.8 But Tokubei’s narrative stood apart from the Edo period castaway accounts of the foreign, since it strongly permeated the realm of popular culture and was reiterated, in different permutations, in many artistic formats. The narrative is remarkable for the specific popular forms of theatrical performance that the retellings took. While castaway narratives were underground texts that were otherwise strictly controlled, factors such as the appearance of numerous printed accounts as well as public theatrical performances of Tokubei’s story are rather unique (Kornicki, 2001: 240–241). By the late eighteenth century, a specific vocabulary as well as a certain ethnographic curiosity and imagination emerged from Hyōryūki. Unlike Edo period castaway accounts that came later, which focus on descriptions of empire and colonial relations, Tokubei’s narrative lacks this vocabulary (Wood, 2009: 244–268). Tenjiku Tokubei’s travelogue became so popular that he was sometimes referred to as the Marco Polo of Japan. It attained wide circulation, with several literal and dramatic renditions. Some original facets of Tokubei’s story still lingered in popular drama, graphic art and literature. Highly fictionalised accounts of the work proliferated in different cultural spaces, finding their way into late Edo period theatre and popular fiction. Attaining an image of mythical proportions, Tokubei became a popular character of Kabuki and Jōruri puppet dramas, where he was given the role of a magician. The play ‘Tenjiku Tokubei ikoku banashi’ or ‘Tenjiku Tokubei’s Tales of Foreign Countries’ was a highly fictionalised account. First staged at Edo in 1804, it was so well received that it ran to full houses for two months. The author of the play, Tsuruya Nanboku, and the lead actor, Onoe Matsunosuke, attained a

Trade and Culture in the Seventeenth Century  15

high degree of fame. Nanboku’s 1804 performance was the culmination of numerous textual reconfigurations of ‘Tenjiku Tokai Monogatari’ taking place across genres over a century. The script of the play traces the return of a Japanese castaway from the land of Tenjiku, who discovers his real father to be the Korean refugee priest Sōkan, who was plotting the shogun’s assassination. In the play, the character of Tenjiko Tokubei uses the secrets of magical toads to resolve the conflict by destroying Sōkan’s mansions and soldiers. Nanboku added this element, since the Gama or large Japanese toad added to the special theatrical effects. The sorcery of controlling these magic toads was associated in the play with both Christianity and Ainu beliefs. Christianisation of the Ainu in the Chishima Islands had become one of the most significant concerns for the Bakufu or shogunate. Christianity, officially prohibited in the 1600s, became associated with miraculous powers. Apart from the giant fire-breathing toads, spectacular displays and special effects contrived on stage included the collapse of a building on stage and throwing performers off the stage into tubs of water that would drench the audience. For the first time in Kabuki history, costume changes were done under water with speed. The attraction of the play was based on its emphasis on the bizarre, reflecting the decadence of the Bunka-Bunsei era (1804–1830).9 The script of the play was also crafted for the contemporary audience. Popular sentiment among Japanese audiences in the later Edo period tended to reflect sympathies for Korea, which was earlier invaded by Japan.10 The Tenjiku Tokubei legend, in many of its rewritings and dramatic versions, included popular representations of Koreans, as manifested in early modern Japanese texts of the ‘Other’. Tokubei’s narrative, as it continued to be scripted for stage performances, proved to be popular for a long period of time. The theatrical techniques may have been novel in their appeal, but the story of Tokubei was not new to the audiences. The popularity of the Tenjiku Tokubei legend, which gained momentum in the early nineteenth century, was reinforced through woodblock prints, some with three panels, based on specific theatre performances. Many of them are extant today (Brandon and Leiter eds., 2002: 35–36). The catalogue ‘Kokusho Sōmokuroku’11 confirms that numerous handwritten accounts concerning Tenjiku Tokubei’s work were written over the course of the Edo period, including ‘Tenjiku Tokubei ki’ in 1743, ‘Tenjiku Tokubei ōrai banashi’ in 1784 and ‘Tenjiku Tokubei oboegaki’ in 1832 (see Appendix 1A). Although the enduring story of Tenjiku Tokubei underwent a dramatic reinvention, the basic narrative remained that of a historically verifiable Hyōryuki, based on the adventures of a sailor, Tokubei, whose ship became distressed in 1627. The earliest accounts describe his wanderings throughout the land of Tenjiku, or India, providing the reader with descriptions of the peoples, customs, wildlife and products of different parts of the region. The general introduction, even in different Kabuki theatrical representations, was, ‘Tokubei sailed away on unknown seas to India and returned with wealth greater than that of a daimyō, many strange tales to relate’ (Kincaid, 1925: 187).

16  Ruby Maloni

Tenjiku Tokubei depicted himself as a merchant captain departing from Nagasaki. His places of visit were first Takusanku or Takasago, probably Taiwan, then Macau and Nanking. He appeared to have also visited Kōshi or Hanoi, as well as Cambodia. The narrative then states that he set sail to the country of ‘Makata’ or Magadha, where a vermilion seal was gifted to the king. Tokubei’s sojourn in India appears to have been of a period of one year. Three Buddhist temples were described, with many Buddha statues, particularly a tall golden Buddha statue gilded in gold leaf.12 The author referred to the mountain Ryōjusen, with Vulture Peak, displaying Buddha’s footprints and wash basin, where ‘Shakamuni’ (Sakyamuni) expounded several Sutras. Various statues of Buddha sitting in meditation were seen by him. Different construction designs of dwellings were noted, for instance bamboo of a thinner type than that found in Japan was used for flooring in houses of small dimension. Houses were usually constructed of two stories. Due to the prevalent high temperatures, a raised floor was built and the people lived on the second floor, with a place opened up underneath. Tiles and also reeds were generally used for roofs. Tenjiku Tokubei found that reed mats were used on the floor since they were cool, similar to Chinese mats, and traditional Japanese floor covering or Tatami. Travelling south to ‘Santome’ (San Thomé on the Coromandel Coast of India), the author suffered from the scorching heat, apprehending that if one were to fall from a cart, there was a certainty of being burnt and mummified. From the third or fourth month until the sixth or seventh month of the year, it became slightly cooler, but the climate was exceptionally warmer than the heat of Japan. Depending on the weather, a person could shower two or three times in a day, Tokubei took care to note. The narrative also focuses on the indigenous people of India, describing them as taller than the Japanese. The men shaved below the ears, with their heads done up in the Keshi Bōzu style of Nanking.13 Women and children used sandalwood oil on their body and hair, the latter styled with a parting in the middle. While describing male attire, he compared it to the Japanese fashion, where ‘the front comes down and is bound to make an underbelt in the back like Jittoku clothing’.14 The women wore courtly dress that was draped across the shoulder. Men of both high and low status wore ‘crowns’, which probably signified turbans. The higher ranking men wore their crowns with silver tassels and the lower ranks wore crowns with brass tassels. All those who took holy orders were supposed to avoid walking along any street where women were passing through. To use such a road, the men were to first wait for the women to pass and then coming out into the road, recite the word ‘Chaka’ ten times before proceeding further. ‘Chaka’ was the word for Shakamuni or Sakyamuni. The laity, when seeing a Japanese, placed their hands together and offered a prayer, saying ‘Chaka’. More than anything, this was a sign of respect. The ‘Nayakakuhon’ (probably referring to the Nayakas) was in charge of a province. The author recorded in brief his interaction with warriors and great landed barons. While the text of Tokubei’s work is rife with ambiguities, it provides considerable information on commercial aspects, with emphasis on the commodity composition of trade. At the mouth of the river Ganges, the author witnessed many

Trade and Culture in the Seventeenth Century  17

markets engaged in active trade, particularly in textiles and leather goods. When the author visited the Kyara mountains in the central region of the Indian subcontinent, he found large quantities of sandalwood and cinnamon bark. The brisk trade in coconuts captured the author’s attention. In ‘Makata’, Tenjiku Tokubei found a large palm or ‘Yashi’, describing it as a coconut, like a large Japanese pear. The inside of this fruit contained water with medicinal properties. It could ‘counteract several poisons’ and would be convenient for the Japanese to prepare medicines. A half portion of the ‘Yashi’ was used to measure rice, a quantity that was sold for a silver coin. The practice was to sell rice in quantities of 60 cups. The white silver used for the minting process was ashblown, and in comparison Japanese silver was only 75% in value. He described the specific smelting process of silver coinage. The coins were deeply embossed so that weighing was not necessary. The author noted the circulation of coins similar to the Zeni coins of Japan.15 Detailed notes were kept by the author on the agricultural practice of multiple rice harvests in a year. Referring to rice cultivation, he commented that it was harvested thrice annually in the third, sixth, and tenth months, with the first and last harvests not being taxed. Taxes were paid with the best rice from the middle harvest of the sixth month. The first planting was in spring during the first month; afterwards, the second planting emerged on its own from the tufts of cut stalks of the first planting. The straw of the rice was not collected, while the ears of the plant were cut off and stored as such, this being done with the first and the second harvest. Straw bags were made by folding over rattan and sewing it. The harvested rice was stored in untreated casks. One bag had the capacity of four or five Masu.16 Tenjiku Tokubei, while observing the cultivation of soy beans and lentils, found the cultivation of wheat, millet or similar grains to be absent. Melon and eggplant were grown in plenty, tasting similar to those in Japan. The melons were exceptionally delicious, but there were no white melons. The eggplant, growing all through the year, were found to be growing on trees by the author. He saw the cultivators ascending those trees with ladders to harvest them. Tenjiku Tokubei’s account includes references to several varieties of indigenous fauna, including birds like peacocks, kites and crows. He was intrigued to observe that ‘the king of this country’ kept elephants in a special stable made for them. The elephants were led around by prodding them with pitchforks. During battles, large elephants were lined up in serial formation. Since there were no cows, peasants kept water buffaloes in the same manner that cows were kept in Japan, and used them to pull carts. Horses were slightly smaller than the horses in Japan. The ubiquitous monkey in India went quite unnoticed by Tokubei, who wrote about the absence of monkeys in India. Jackals, similar to Japanese mountain dogs, captured the attention of Tokubei, who said that Jakau dogs were hunted with guns and their bodies were placed in vessels and buried. Afterwards, they were dug up and sold. Because of such ‘a disgusting practice’, Tokubei found the people of Tenjiku to be ‘hateful’. Also, he noticed an animal called a Hyo (leopard) that resembled a Jakau dog. Being of no value, they were abandoned. He discerned various types of fish

18  Ruby Maloni

such as carp and bass in the Ryūsa river, and also Gangetic crocodiles, described as ‘very long serpents whose faces were as large as Japanese cow faces with the exception of horns’. During sunny afternoons, they climbed up on the sand bars in the Ryūsa river and took naps while snoring loudly. While in this state, they would be captured alive, held down with long sticks, bound up and hung from a stout stick. It is evident that the author’s tendency was to confuse distances, directions and place names. The geographical idea that emerges in the descriptions displays the inaccuracy that existed before the knowledge of maritime travel replaced it. The information comes across as penned by the hands of a person with inadequate knowledge of both Southeast Asia and South Asia. The narrative strategy may have been to indicate first-hand experience to reaffirm a Buddhist cosmology within which India was central. Later accounts such as ‘Tenjiku Tokubei ikoku banashi’ focus on extrapolating the details of Tokubei’s return to Japan. Also, with the passage of time, the older Buddhist-centric geography of the five Tenjiku countries was rendered obsolete.17 As earlier versions of Tokubei’s account were grounded in a Buddhist-oriented geography and topography, the category of the ‘West’ was quite peripheral. While there are a few references to European countries, mostly related to the commercial outposts of the Dutch and the English at Batavia and other Southeast Asian ports, they are not considered a threat in any sense. The text makes wide geographical leaps while making a catalogue of foreign countries, some of them unfounded on personal experience, referring to Jagatara (Jakarta), Tsuritogisu (Portugal), Granda (Holland) and Igirisu (England) (Wood, 2009). The geographical dissonance is evident in the designation of the space ‘Tenjiku’. Even in contemporary times, it has been a common practice to equate this term with India. Tenjiku Tokubei’s travels, in fact, take place throughout a space coinciding with today’s Southeast Asian countries of Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam. While focusing on mendicant priests from Tenjiku arriving in Japan (Tenjikujin hijiri), the historian Tanaka Takeo has demonstrated that by the fourteenth century the land of Tenjiku was in fact taken to be a much more loosely determined space that included Java, parts of China and other areas outside the traditionally understood borders of India (Takeo, 1975). Tenjiku may be seen in terms of its central position in a Buddhist cosmology represented by a particular type of map known as Go Tenjiku zu. Tenjiku was frequently divided into five (and sometimes 16) smaller countries and was said to comprise the larger part of the continent of Jambudvipa or ‘The Whole World’ (Nansen bushū). The birthplace of the Buddha and centre of this world view was commonly marked by a vortex in the north-central mountains of this landmass and a central lake from which four major rivers flow. In this world view, spatially conceptualised, the Japanese archipelago remains on the upper right-hand corner, on the very edges of the world. This parallel or alternative geography maintained a certain authority over the course of the early Edo period. It is interesting to see the notions of the world that were projected in Japan, based on earlier visions of a Tenjiku-centric geography. The question arises whether there was a single dominant world view or a certain geographic imaginary during the seventeenth century. Many Tenjiku maps were produced during this period, as

Trade and Culture in the Seventeenth Century  19

part of Buddhist mythological cartography, whose exact dates are unclear (Muroga and Unno, 1962: 49–69). These maps were associated with different spatial discourses. As chance would have it, the extreme peripheral space of these otherwise yet-to-be congruous hemispheres overlapped with the site of India/Tenjiku and served as the origin of the unfamiliar. With the West facing the East and the East facing the West, the ‘Other’ was determined to be India/Tenjiku but not for long. Europe was waiting to be ‘discovered’ and understood by Japan (Wood, 2009). It has been argued that Japanese representations of these early non-Western ‘Others’ most frequently placed them in an idealised foreign landscape. Ronald Toby’s work on the ‘Indianness’ of Iberians in some Japanese perceptions of the sixteenth century is interesting in this regard (Toby, 1994: 323–351). It is moreover useful to observe the usage of language in Tenjiku Tokubei’s narrative, where the verb Toten (to cross to Tenjiku) appears numerous times. Already archaic in its usage in the context of post Shuinsen international relations, it was originally used to describe the travels of Chinese priests to the holy land of Buddhism, centred in Magadha. By the beginning of the seventeenth century, it was more often used to describe international trade between Japan and various ports in Southeast Asia. Tenjiku Tokubei repeatedly states that the story is set ‘in the past’, or ‘in those days’, when commodity export from Japan included umbrellas and fans made of strong Japanese paper, lacquerware, guns, bronze, tools, swords and long knives, which were ‘now strictly forbidden’, and goods from Tenjiku included thread, fabric, medicines, fragrant woods and perhaps also shark. In the original narrative, the smuggling of the ‘scales of the rain dragon’ from Tenjiku into Japan is mentioned. This was a period when smuggling of Buddhist relics and artefacts into Japan was becoming common. The geography of Tokubei’s account is populated with Buddhas, dragons and even mythical phoenixes, as it borrows from the Setsuwa literary genre.18 The chronicler focuses on visits to holy sites, origins of relics kept by temples in Japan and provides anecdotes of a mysterious world. It is probable he identifies a stupa in Cambodia with Ryōjusen or ‘Vulture Peak’. Preponderance of Buddhist-related stories may be based on the fact that ‘Tenjiku Tokubei Monogatari’ was written after Tokubei has become the priest Sōshin, affiliated to a Buddhist temple in Takasago, Harima. A set of Sutras written on leaves of a tree from Tenjiku is said to have found their way to Harima. The author’s endeavour may have been also to ratify the cultural authority of this temple (Takeo, 1975). He took care to write about the leaves of the ‘Tarayau’ or ‘Tara’ tree growing around the mountain of Ryōjusen, whose leaves were inscribed with the teachings of the Buddha by his disciples and were considered to be of rare value. Although later transformations that appeared on stage and in popular literature took wide-ranging liberties with the actual narrative, some facts remained the same. In the ‘Tenjiku Monogatari’ of 1707, the author Tokubei is clearly associated with a temple in Takasago, Harima. In Nanboku’s play of 1804, Tokubei’s character on stage is introduced as ‘the Captain Tokubei .  .  . from Takasago in northern Japan. Five years ago he was blown off course and landed in India’ (Wood, 2009). Nanboku may have embraced an increasingly obsolete Tenjiku-centric tale

20  Ruby Maloni

as source material to critique Bakufu relations with Korea. The narrative provided dramatic possibilities in rewriting historical foreign relations. Also, with an increasing Western presence in Asia, new literary and fictional possibilities for the Tokubei story become apparent. Some of Tokubei’s costumes were designed on that of Ainu and Dutch sailors. Newer knowledge of the world led to new permutations. The later playwright’s invention of fire-breathing magic toads was in a way an extension of the earlier stories of dragons. Details of the original castaway narrative were freely manipulated in creative ways. Namboku was not the only late Edo writer to rewrite early Edo castaway narratives in a new format. The subject of the narrative was sufficiently exotic for entertainment purposes, but on the other hand, it was historically and geographically far enough removed from contemporary realities to avoid the censorship of the authorities. The milieu through which the story was told kept changing, as also the veracity of the original text. Although problematic in its respective reiterations, the narrative continued to hold the attention of its audience for a considerable period of time. A story retold in various formats, the ‘Tenjiku Tokai Monogatari’ can be looked at in various ways – as a form of historiography, a depiction of the geographic imaginary of the early Edo period and a site of commercial and cultural engagement with India. The early modern period in Japan, that is the Edo or Tokugawa period (1603–1868), has most often been represented as a culture in isolation due to ostensibly draconian Bakufu regime policies that prohibited foreign travel (Sakokuron or the ‘Closed-Country’ theory). While there was limited contact with the Dutch, Chinese, Korean and Ryukyuans,19 the more than 260 years of the Edo period has been largely interpreted as a time during which an indigenous Japanese culture developed and flourished without the influence of extensive foreign contact. It is therefore interesting to see the images and ideas of new geographical regions, as culturally conceptualised and contrived over time. Legends, such as that created by Tenjiku Tokubei, engaged the shifting geographic imaginations of their readership and audience in important ways, especially the ever-shifting sense of the world beyond the seas (Shirane, 2008). Later, the Pacific would occupy this space that was earlier held by the concept of India. In the seventeenth century, a particular vision of India emerged from the recesses of the collective imagination of the Japanese, in the context of Buddhism. Among the various forms of discourse involving the translation and re-imagination of connections, the ‘Tenjiku Tokai Monogatari’ is useful in understanding the historical evolution of the ‘Idea of India’ in Japan, based on commercial adventures and contacts. Notes 1 Between 1600 and 1635, more than 350 ships went overseas from Japan, with Shuin or vermilion seals, a permit system issued by the early Tokugawa shogunate. 2 Originally from Delft, Lodensteijn was one of the first Dutchmen in Japan. He made a fortune in trading between Japan and Southeast Asia, chartering more than ten Red Seal ships under license from Tokugawa Ieyasu. He was reported by Dutch traders in Ayutthaya to be aboard junks carrying rich cargoes in early 1613. After the establishment of

Trade and Culture in the Seventeenth Century  21

the Dutch factory at Hirado, he became a middleman between Dutch merchants and the shogunate. Later, he tried to return to the Netherlands, but after reaching Batavia, he was denied permission by the VOC authorities to proceed further. He drowned in the South China Sea in the mid-seventeenth century, when his ship sank as he was returning to Japan. 3 Sakoku or ‘closed country’ policy was the interdiction of foreign travel and the return of the Japanese from foreign countries. 4 Imperial Regent of Japan, during the Sengoku period; in office from 1585 to 1591. 5 Tenjiku (天竺), meaning ‘heaven’, is the obsolete Japanese word for ancient India, being the Japanese pronunciation of the archaic Chinese name for India, ‘Tianzhu’. 6 William Adams’s shipmate was Lodensteijn, who also became a confidant of the shōgun and was given a house in Edo. 7 Early modern castaway narratives of Japan as a literary genre have been discussed by Michael S. Wood in Literary Subjects Adrift: A Cultural History of Early Modern Japanese Castaway Narratives, 1780–1880, PhD dissertation, University of Oregon Graduate School, 2009. This chapter acknowledges reliance on the aforementioned and also for the translation of Tenjiko Tokubei’s narrative, based on the work of Ishii Kendo. 8 This complex subject has been discussed in the works of Yoshioka Nagayoshi, Haruna Akira, Arano Yasunori and Ishii Kendo. The latter’s first work on castaways appeared in 1892. Studies on early modern Japanese castaways in English from the post-war era include Nishinomiya Kazuo’s A View of the Outside World During Tokugawa Japan: Reports of Travel by Castaways – 1636 to 1856, Unpublished Dissertation, Department of Geography, University of Washington, 1972, and Katharine Plummer’s The Shogun’s Reluctant Ambassadors: Japanese Sea Drifters in the North Pacific, Tokyo, 1991. These studies emphasise a direct connection between Edo period castaways and Bakufu Sakoku policies. (The Tokugawa shogunate is also known as the Tokugawa Bakufu or the Edo Bakufu.) 9 Also known as the Ōgosho period, with an urban cultural scene dominated by a flamboyant merchant class. 10 For Japan–Korea relations, see the work of Ikeuchi Satoshi, among others. 11 First published by Iwanami Shoten, Tokyo, in 1963; its expanded edition was released in 1989. 12 According to scholars, this may have been actually a reference to Angkor Vat in Cambodia. 13 The style of a shaven head. 14 Garments that are seamless. 15 Coins of bronze or copper with a perforation in the middle. 16 Masu was originally a square wooden box used to measure rice in Japan. 17 Tianzhu, or the historic Chinese name for India, was also referred to as Wutianzhu (五天竺, literally ‘Five Indias’), because there were five geographical regions in India known to the Chinese: Central, Eastern, Western, Northern, and Southern India. This concept was prevalent in Japan too. 18 A genre based on oral tradition, consisting of myths, legends and folk tales. 19 Indigenous people of the Ryūkyū Islands between the islands of Kyūshū and Taiwan.

Bibliography Boxer, C.R. (1951). The Christian Century in Japan, 1549–1650, Berkeley: University of California Press. Brandon, James and Leiter, Samuel (eds.) (2002). Kabuki Plays on Stage: Darkness and Desire, 1804–1864, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Kincaid, Zoe (1925). Kabuki: The Popular Stage of Japan, London: Macmillan. Kornicki, Peter (2001). The Book in Japan: A Cultural History From the Beginnings to the Nineteenth Century, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.

22  Ruby Maloni

Mariani, Maria Antonietta (2006). ‘Utopia and Shifting Space’, paper presented at Genoa, Columbus and the Mediterranean, 9th Annual International Congress of the Mediterranean Studies Association, Genoa. Muroga, Nobuo and Unno, Kazutaka (1962). ‘The Buddhist World Map in Japan and Its Contact With European Maps’, in Imago Mundi, vol. 16. UK: Taylor & Francis Ltd. Nishinomiya, Kazuo (1972). ‘A View of the Outside World During Tokugawa Japan: Reports of Travel by Castaways - 1636 to 1856’, Unpublished Dissertation, Department of Geography, University of Washington. Plummer, Katharine (1991). The Shogun’s Reluctant Ambassadors: Japanese Sea Drifters in the North Pacific, Tokyo. Portland, OR: Oregon Historical Society Press. Shirane, Haruo and Araki, James T. (tr.) (eds.). (2008). Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600–1900, Columbia: Columbia University Press. Smith, Henry (ed.). (1980). Learning From Shogun: Japanese History and Western Fantasy, Santa Barbara: University of California. Tanaka, Takeo (1975). Chusei taigai kankeishi no kenkyū (Studies on the History of Medieval Foreign Relations), Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai. Toby, Ronald P. (1994). Implicit Understandings: Observing, Reporting, and Reflecting on the Encounters Between Europeans and Other Peoples in the Early Modern Era, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Toby, Ronald P. (1997). ‘The Early Tokugawa Bakufu and Seventeenth Century Japanese Relations With East Asia’, Ph.D. Thesis, Columbia University. Toby, Ronald P., Hayami, Akira and Saito, Osamu (2004). Emergence of Economic Society in Japan, 1600–1870, Eugene, OR: Oxford University Press. Wood, Michael S. (2009). ‘Literary Subjects Adrift: A Cultural History of Early Modern Japanese Castaway Narratives, 1780–1880’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Oregon Graduate School.

Further Reading Appendix 1A

Select List of Texts (Based on Wood, 2009) 1707 Tokubei Tenjiku monogatari, hyōryūki with characteristics of setsuwa written by the Priest Sōshin. 1743 Tenjiku Tokubei ki, hyōryūuki manuscript at Kyoto University. 1757 Tenjiku Tokubei kikigaki ōrai, Kabuki play (Ōmatsu Kyokusuke za). 1757 Tenjiku tokai monogatari, popular handwritten hyōryūki of which several copies still exist. 1763 Tenjiku Tokubei sato no sugatami, Jōruri play written by Chikamatsu Heiji and Takemoto Saburobei (Takemoto za). 1784 Tenjiku Tokubei ōrai banashi, printed text written by Rakuda Sanjin. 1804 Tenjiku Tokubei monogatari kusazōshi, written by Santō Kyōden and illustrated by Utagawa Toyokuni. 1804 Tenjiku Tokubei ikoku banashi, Kabuki play written by Tsuruya Nanboku. 1832 Tenjiku Tokubei oboegaki, hyōryūki manuscript. 1847 Onoe Kikugorō ichidaiki, Kabuki play (lchimura-za).

2 TEXTILES IN THE PRE-MODERN ECONOMIES OF INDIA AND JAPAN A Comparative Study Ishrat Alam

Introduction

Adam Smith’s insightful observations about the nearly simultaneous twin discoveries of America and that of a passage to the East Indies united, ‘in some measure, the most distant parts of the world, by enabling them to relieve one another’s wants, to increase one another’s enjoyment, and to encourage one another’s industry’, implied great consequences (Campbell and Skinner, 1976–11: 626). After these two discoveries the world was never the same. In the light of this all-encompassing approach, it will be difficult to confine the conceivable impacts for any one or two of the continents. In this broad framework we will try to approach our theme and confine ourselves to understand the kind of trade relationship India and Japan entertained in the seventeenth century and the role of the Dutch East India Company (hereafter VOC) in it. Some fundamental studies done earlier have helped us further in appreciating the theme (Boxer, 1966; Chaudhuri, 1978, 1985; Prakash, 1985, 2004; Boyajian, 1993; Souza, 1986, 2004; Riello and Roy, 2009; Riello and Partharsarthi, 2012). Textiles served as the most important industry in the agrarian society. This chapter explores the link between India and Japan through textiles, which heralded reciprocal economic, political, social and cultural aspects in which the Indo-Japanese relations emerged in the seventeenth century. The Portuguese were the first among the Europeans to reach Japan, as early as 1542–1543, but it was only after 1550s that they were permitted to settle at Macao, and this opened their trade relations with Japan (Prakash, 2004: 124–125). The Japanese authorities had introduced an arrangement named pancado, according to which the Portuguese were expected to sell their principal import, Chinese raw silk, at a price to be determined arbitrarily by a guild monopsony comprising a group of merchants from the five imperial cities of Edo (Tokyo), Osaka, Kyoto, Sakai, Nagasaki. The system was first introduced in 1604. The Japanese took DOI: 10.4324/9781003396666-4

24  Ishrat Alam

advantage of their difficulties in disposing of the large quantity of the Chinese raw silk, which they had brought to Japan in 1602 and 1603 (Ibid.). Under this arrangement, the Dutch accepted the Japanese proposal to purchase whatever quantity the Portuguese offered them for sale on the mutually acceptable ‘fair price’. In practice, it was extremely discriminatory (Stapel, 1931: 422.442,828).1 The Portuguese had argued against the pancado system. In 1655, such a situation arose which necessitated rethinking the system. The pancado price was fixed at a higher level against an average annual import of 100,000 pounds. The Chinese merchants had imported 164,500 pounds of Chinese raw silk. The guild was unable to purchase this large quantity and sought the opinion of the central government to get itself relieved of the obligation. The shogun dispensed with the pancado system itself. The Japanese authorities were suspicious of the Portuguese Jesuit groups. They were apprehensive of a possible alliance between the Portuguese Jesuits and the Japanese Christian daimyo. A ban was imposed on Christianity in 1587. The relations continued to deteriorate to such an extent that, in 1610, the Japanese attacked the Portuguese carrack, the Madre de Deus. And eventually, the Japanese authorities evicted all Jesuits from the country in 1614 (Prakash, 2004: 126). Meanwhile, the Dutch and English East India Companies were encouraged by the prospects of trade. They opened their factories at Hirado in 1609 and 1613, respectively. The English Company owing to shortage of resources decided to withdraw their factory in 1623.2 The English had sent an empty ship, the Bull, to Japan to vacate their people and place. They had also sent the advices of the king and the governor of Firado to let them know that they were leaving the place.3 However, the Dutch stabilised this relationship and succeeded in retaining their foothold. Moreover, an attack by the Spaniards from Manila in the Gulf of Siam further worsened the situation and drew an embargo on Portuguese trade at Nagasaki in 1628. Interestingly, a clash occurred between the Japanese crew of a ship despatched to Taiwan by an influential Nagasaki merchant and VOC factories and Taiwan. As a consequence, curiously, the Portuguese were permitted to trade, and the Dutch were to wait till 1633.4 The Japanese government was suspicious of even contacts with the Roman Catholic Christianity in Indo China and Southeast Asia through the medium of the Japanese merchants visiting those places on the Red Seal ships. Not only that, from 1635, overseas navigation by ordinary Japanese was strictly regulated, and contracts with foreigners were permitted only through the ‘four mouths’ or Gateways of Nagasaki (with the Chinese and Dutch), Tsushima (with Kingdom of Korea), Satsuma (with the Kingdom of Ryuku) and Matsume (with the Ainus in Ezo-chi). Only Nagasaki was under the control of the shogun.5 The VOC officials were to operate under these circumstances. The excessive security concerns were thus obstacles to normal life. But foreign trade also induced cultivation of cotton in Kyushu and Honshu islands of the Japanese archipelago by the end of the sixteenth century (Fujita, 2009: 182).6 Cotton began to replace ramie and hemp as the clothing of the common people (Prakash, 1985: 119). In the sixteenth century, Japan was along with Spanish America, one of the two major suppliers of silver. Mass production of silver in Japan seems to have

Textiles in the Pre-Modern Economies of India and Japan  25

started in the 1520s, but much of the metal flowed to China – the world’s largest absorber of silver, in lieu of its silk. As a result, the country got its close country edict, the Sakoku, in June 1636, which nearly sealed the country from the rest of the world (Fujita, 2009: 126). The VOC had established its first factory at Hirado in 1609.7 However, our earliest account of Japan was conveyed by Pieter Pietersz Heyn, who was in Japan in 1612 and did not desire any junior merchant to be posted there. He observed that instead of reporting trivial things (bagatellen) he expected to send diamonds, indigo, silk and other expensive commodities to Japan. Since some war was going on, he thought it prudent to know some passage and move to some safe and secure place.8 Jacques Specx informs that he stayed at Hirado (Japan) from 1609 to 1613. He was extremely loved by the people there and was well versed in the Japanese language and was getting 126 guilders as salary per month. Not only Specx, along with him Hendrick Brower Sr. was also there.9 It was reported (24 February 1623) that about 24.5 ton in Japanese silver and gold was sent from Batavia to Holland.10 The supply of rice from Mataram was quite good. About 150–200 loads of rice from Mataram was required for Batavia. Commander Cornelis Reyersz. had also ordered that as much rice from Japan should be sent, as it was required to maintain the garrison and the ships on the coast of China. It was estimated that 150 loads were required.11 In 1624, seven small ships (navette), richly laden, had come to Nagasaki from Macao, and one frigate richer than others had left for Manila. Still, a Japanese junk carrying goods of the Portuguese stationed at Macao, one from Cochin China, one from Tonkin, three small ones from Taiwan, two from Cambodia and one from Siam, and besides them 40 more Chinese junks from the north coast of China had reached Batavia. And each had brought 10, 20 or 30 picols of silk, partly sugar and coarse porcelain. They were instructed to bring more silk piece goods at a comparatively low cost.12 The governor general and his council at Batavia demanded 49 ships of varying sizes and capacities to run maritime trade in the Indian Ocean. Out of 49, 17 ships were to be employed in pursuit of Japanese trade which means 34.69% of the total demand.13 They were mainly to carry silver from Japan to other Dutch factories to conduct trade. In 1626, Japanese merchants tried to conduct trade in Taiwan with three junks and 180,000 tael capital, and it seemed that they wanted to enter into a trade with VOC officers. But they actually wanted to send the capital for procuring silk from China for Japan. But it could not succeed.14 Apart from China and India, Persia was another source of supply of silk. But it was found that Persian silk was not profitable in Japan because it considered Japanese standards of manufacturing Persian silk coarse (Groff) and hard and so not suitable.15 However, it was proposed that 2–3 ships with f.600,000–800,000 worth of gold should be sent to Batavia for conducting Japanese trade. On 1 December 1632, it was hoped that if business in Japan continued on moderate lines, they would be able to save trade there. If required, 15–16 tons of gold could be sent to pursue Japanese trade (Prakash, 1985: 119). The suspension of the Dutch trade was revoked in 1632, and it grew rapidly after that (Ibid.). The Chinese raw silk dominated the composition of trade with

26  Ishrat Alam

Japan between 1633 and 1640, from 239,540 pounds in 1637 to 340,650 pounds in 1640. Between 1634 and 1641, the average value of the annual Dutch cargo to Japan was f.2.55  million, which was nearly equal to what was being sent to Holland around this time (Ibid.: 120). With the start of the phase of the closed country era in 1639, the Portuguese were totally expelled, but the VOC was allowed to operate. It is a standard explanation that the shogun and his advisors had possibly realised that the expulsion of the Dutch would provide the Chinese with an opportunity where they would be the only suppliers of raw silk from China, which would disturb the lever of trade in favour of China (Ibid.). A group of Nagasaki merchants approached the central government to transfer the trade of the Dutch to their city. The shogun accepted the proposal primarily because the islet of Deshima off the Nagasaki harbour, originally built for the Portuguese in 1635, would provide an ideal place for confining the VOC officials. Accordingly, the VOC moved to Deshima in May 1641 (Ibid.). A series of restrictions was imposed on the Dutch. The commercial restrictions (1641) included a ban on the export of gold followed by wholesale implementation of the pancado system to Chinese raw silk imported into Japan (Ibid.). But the Dutch were willing to maintain the trade, if required, ‘even from the ships’ (Ibid.: 121). Pieter Sterthemius, the chief of the Nagasaki factory, observed, But I seem to hear a whisper in my ear that some vexations can purely be endured for the sake of Japan’s sweet gains, since Japan is the strongest sinew of the Company’s inland trade and of the Indian profits and this (in so far as our self respect allows us to endure it) is true.16 The ‘sweet gains’ were obviously the precious metals associated with trade there. The VOC trade continued and flourished under the umbrella of these restrictions. This affected their India trade as well. Director Sterthemius required ten tons more of gold to invest in Kasimbazar in purchase of silk but could not do it because of limitation of resources under the circumstances. He could purchase 800 packs for Japan, but he had only tin to sell, which gave 73% profit. He had only two tons in cash and coins from Batavia and could not get f.11,000,000 but only f.723,907 from Japan, which he could invest unsatisfactorily.17 At the same time, he had to justify their presence in Bengal, where they enjoyed certain privileges. Mir Muhammad Shahi, the Bengal governor, was pestering Sterthemius for failing in his promise.18 Small denomination coins were required for trade in Banda and Batavia. However, ‘Similar coins, according to the circumstances of the country and the people, are regulated, the same cannot be done from the Netherlands, but waiting for the consent’ (Prakash, 1985: 123). Import of Chinese raw silk into Japan by the VOC fell under the purview of the pancado system. Unlike the Chinese silk, silk from Bengal was not accepted by the people of Japan. It remained unsold for a very long time and was eventually sold at 36% profit. But the extension of the pancado system in 1641 reduced

Textiles in the Pre-Modern Economies of India and Japan  27

the import of this variety from 340,650 pounds in 1640 to 60,150 pounds in 1642 (Ibid.). Another reason was the threat to raise further the price on all imports of Chinese raw silk. Consequently, the attention shifted to other sources of silk like Persia, Bengal and Tonkin, neither of which was a part of the pancado system. So far as the Persian silk was concerned it was already found as early as 1644 that it was prohibitively expensive.19 In fact, the observation of Governor General Antonio van Diemen deserves to be reproduced: ‘In 1644 . . . there was notable difference but the Bengal variety found favourable response from the suppliers as well as consumers side’ (Prakash, 1985: 123). By 1647, the Bengal silk exported to Japan exceeded 30,000 pounds, constituting 29% of the total export (Ibid.). Om Prakash has noted that the gross profit earned on this variety exceeded more than 100% (Ibid.) and within two years had touched the 200% mark. By 1650, the VOC decided to send all Bengal silk to Japan. The following year it reached 126% in contrast to Tonkinese and Chinese variety being 72% and 25%, respectively. This level continued to fluctuate. As has been pointed out by Om Prakash, under the pancado system the Nagasaki guild was obliged to buy whatever Chinese silk was brought for sale by the foreign merchants or companies. According to the pancado system, price was announced on the basis of quantities imported into the country upto a certain date. The Chinese merchants who accounted for the bulk of the trade in this variety, as a policy used to import only limited quantities, until that time. As soon as the price was announced, they used to flood the guild with Chinese raw silk (Ibid.). At the same time, it was decided that silk should not be purchased from Tonkin.20 In 1644, the governor general of the VOC Batavia, Antonio van Diemen and his associates questioned the very idea of limitation put on import of Chinese silk piece goods, directly fighting against the freedom of the country. They asked how it was believable that a multitude of poor people, who earned their livelihood by preparing and weaving silk, should find themselves cramped by the supply of the Chinese silk piece works. It was argued that import of silk from Italy should be continued, and while the Portuguese continued to supply Chinese silk into the Netherlands and earn enormous profit, the company was prohibited from importing Chinese silk. So long as such rules continued, the company should try to supply profit-yielding silk work pieces. Mourning (Rouwe) white Chinese silk for the convenience of the poor artisans (Werkluyden) should be sent to the Netherlands as per the demand and capacity of the VOC, but the Indian trade and the fuss about it was of a different nature and situation. The concept was good, namely the expensive Persian silk should be excused and orders should be placed for the silk from Tonkin and Bengal (which yielded more profit). It was different in purchase and sale. It was notable and according to merchant’s style always preferable, but the difficulty in this proposal was about the rule. Still, the VOC was forced to purchase the Persian silk at an excessive price; a toll of 23% was paid on that; on Persian coins (silver content) 11% and at Masulipatam and Bengal, a total of 25%. The Persian silk cost f.5.1 for 1 pound and sold for 25 schell. On a rebate, after 18 months, the Chinese

28  Ishrat Alam

cost f.4.1, and sold for 36 schell, while Tonkin’s sold for 62.1/2 schell. Therefore, there was a notable difference.21 The West Indian Silver brought from Holland in the ship deVreede could be disposed of with great difficulty, partly in the Netherlands and partly at Batavia. 21,200 pieces of rials of eight incurred a loss of f. 1,593.12.22 Silver hardly yielded profit more than in Surat, so it should be sent to Surat, and copper was not in demand. In Masulipatnam, small amounts could be sold at 60 pagodas of 90 stuivers each per 480 pounds, and at Pulicat, Malaya’s broken cannon sold for 64 pagodas of Pulicat.23 It was desired that all the company’s copper at Masulipatnam’s price be set against old pagodas (which was worth two rix dollars), as this was better than silver or not-so-good quality gold. However, loss was also caused by the manner of reckoning. So copper from Japan, which got 30–35 per picol, would be a profitable venture.24 At Taroboan (?), a gold mine was being searched.25 Gold dust was available from two rivers – Iwatan and Papuro.26 From the following year, however, a licence would be required for exporting copper, cost of which had risen very high in Japan.27 The price paid for first-quality white raw silk was 275 per taël and for second quality, 245 tael per picol. Goods from Coromandel, in textiles and for 30,000 pieces of St. Tomes rochevellen (skin of snakes) cost 40,000; that from Siam and Cambodia was 78,000, and that from Tonkin, in silk piece goos and 600 picols silk was 300,000. In all, the total cost came to 2,012,000. Kasimbazar Oudagins and Seerpur could contribute to the purchase of silk. However, these was also the obstacle caused by merchants and brokers of Agra who used to come to Kasimbazar and people would patiently wait with their silver. However, still 150,000–200,000 guilders in good-quality gold was required.28 (Of the required 6,000–7,000 picol staafcoper (copper bars) only 4,130 picol could be obtained and sold.) The state of copper mining was particularly precarious. However, the king had permitted it to reopen. It was believed that the mine was closed to raise the prices for proof, a quantity of 5–6 picols of flat copper (plat copper) was sent to Coromandel and it sold well. It was argued that this would help Bengal silk trade.29 The purchase of silk in Tonkin was stopped for one season (another reason for preferring Bengal silk apart from cheapness). The silver yielded more profit in Bengal after a cargo of f.25 773.2 was sent to Palecatte.30 In 1655, VOC entertained the idea of starting sericulture at Batavia: Because (dewÿl) the harvest of silkworms has a good growth (teer) and will grow well in two successive years so from Tonkin as from Bengal some consignments of silk worms were summoned in order to attempt [its production] (because the air is sweet here), whether the silk rearing/sericulture in due course of time could be well informed. However usually such attempts came across certain misfortune, the same died in the voyages. It appears that the severe north wind causes this. As a last attempt even now some is again expected from Tonkin, so they could cope with present scarcity. The people of Tonkin have their superstition concerning rearing (opkweeken=opweken)

Textiles in the Pre-Modern Economies of India and Japan  29

of the worms, lacking the same scarcely allowing the Dutch to see, from the fear that thereby badly disposed (missegent) and desecrated. Apparently the enterprise could not take off.31 Governor Pit had notified the merchants in Pegu that while the small coins (pitgies) had been supplied in large quantity by the English East India Company, personnel in Bengal and Coromandel coast, let them spend all their remnant coins, have sober reduction and still continue to collect great quantity in store, that they stop purchasing expensive specie, till the English break up from there and left, when these small coins became cheap and undoubtedly became available for small demand large supply it is recommended that in such a situation meanwhile purchase as much gold and silver at the civilest price and send that over as was required for procuring textiles.32 Kasimbazar was well supplied with silk. Director Sterthemius wrote, notwithstanding the greedy (gretig) purchase by the merchants from Agra, Patna and Sayadabad (Shahjahanabad-Delhi), there will be (silk worth) f.1 000 000 gold as has been done now, could have been invested, if not in capital or deposited treasure there now and then before 14 days or at the most within a month, missing such arrangement was made that one could sit still for three months, only remain capable of purchasing as much as required. The VOC had started its own silk-manufacturing unit (zijderederij) in 1655.33 No silk will be purchased in Tonkin for Japan.34 Coromandel (silver has sharply declined in price and is not saleable) originating from the moratorium (sursantie) of the silver coin in Golconda, there the striking of a rupee has come to a standstill since considerable time, but gold renders striking by well.35 The records inform us that for Pegu, anyone could freely supply coins of small value of copper, which would continue to be of use in the trade between Bengal and Pegu. Small coins (for change) and copper are a virtuous stuff.36 It is reported that due to a lack of capital, the required amount of silk could not be purchased by the VOC factors. Even the demand of the Fatherland could be half met. The problem was further aggravated by the arrival of ships from Taiwan and after their departure on 31 March, 600–700 packs of silk for Japan could be gathered.37 In 1655 was brought to Bengal, primarily silver, bar as well as schuyt, from Japan worth f.90000. A capital of f.1 350.000 was ready at Taiwan and in return silk alone from Bengal was to be sent.38 In 1657, it was reported that prospect of purchase of silk in Tonkin was not good because of a continuous decline in sericulture. One reason identified was the regular flooding of the harvest (mulberry) fields. Second, there was no system of reclaiming the land after mulberry cultivation. The third reason was the political interferences in the conduct of business with mulberry silk producers.39

30  Ishrat Alam

In 1657, it was reported that the margin of profit in trade in Japan was 45% and the reason given was general gross decline of trade in Japan. The Bengal silk, which used to be the most profitable, had become more and more expensive every year. It was not the case for silk from Bengal alone, but it was true of all other commodities originating from Europe, Tonkin or the Coromandel Coast.40 Export of gold from Japan remained forbidden. At the same time taking up of coins was not absolutely permitted, and VOC had commodities worth f.1 488 517.8.8, of which f.743 109 in silver, copper, rice etc. was exported.41 After facing serious damage due to the devastating fire of March 1657,42 the following year (1658) the VOC reported profitable business. They received ten ships from different quarters at Nagasaki bringing in variety of commodities: 10 ships brought goods worth f. 1084210.13.4, namely 4 August from Siam met de Trouw f. 64, 276.8.2 15 August with Bloemendaal from Cambodia f. 37126.0 September with Veenenburg, Domburg and Breuckelen from Batavia f. 836638.18.8 From Taiwan 6 September with Arnemuyden f. 37165.1.7 – ”- with the Vink f. 25882.5.6 – ”- with the Haas f. 30072.1.10 8 -”-with the Zeeridder f. 21936.1.4 10 October with the Kalf f. 31034.4:7 13 -”- from Tonkin with a Chinese junk f. 159: 9:6 Together they made f.1 084 210:13:443 In August 1658, we hear about VOC entering into a contract for 3,000 picols (1 picol=125 lb). The records give us considerable information on prices of copper, with one mention of refined bar copper selling at 11:4 per 100 (the corresponding weight is not clear), which, inclusive of the cost of the chests for transport, came to f26 ½. Another estimate was that about 13,000 picols, which was invested in 148,200 tael silver.44 But at the same time it was proposed that sufficient quantity of copper could be provided at any time. The market for silk from Bengal was also profitable. It was noticed that Bengal silk constituted the gross of the trade and had yielded 110% advance: On the first quality at 393 taël per picol The second sort at 380 taël per picol The bariga pell mell 215 taël per picol The pee 94 taël per picol Thus, the entire lot worth f.571,793.8.14, was purchased for f.629 197.15.3, indicating an increase of 110%.45 VOC considered Japan as a profit-giving venture, and it was noted that it had given profit of f.1 042 298.14.10. Mir Jumla (now called Mosenchan [Mohsin Khan] had on his own offered a loan of 20,000–300,000 rials46 at

Textiles in the Pre-Modern Economies of India and Japan  31

Kasimbazar against supply of Japan’s schuyt silver, which in due time was to come out of Japan, but it was not received in gold owing to the scarcity of money, which had rendered the business at a standstill, 200,000 rupias were accepted and the remaining 200,000 rupias to be paid in schuyt silver from Japan. Mir Jumla also insisted that he had to pay to his troops, having around that time the chief of the merchants of Sayadabad (to extract money which was invested for sericulture) detained. The problem with local merchants was that the money at Rajmahal (West Bengal) was not serving them because of the wars. Also no one was prepared to accept the payment of uncoined silver.47 On 2 December 1659, ships arrived from Japan with a cargo of f.250508. Eight ships of the Company brought a cargo of f.1 170 711.2.10 to Japan. On 25 June, the ship Black Bull departed from Batavia with a cargo of f.365 277.17.2, with a requirement for 800,000 guilders in Nagasaki goods. Other than the goods from Tonkin, the goods acquired generally generated a profit. The total amount being f.185 372, gave 25% profit, that too mainly on expensive silk, forced by the king.48 A cargo of f.1 990 282.10.4 was sent from Japan comprising 568,700 taels schuyt silver and 6,500 picols bar-copper. Prices of course reacted to market conditions. One reference says that at Rajmahal, 700 man of bar copper was sold to the Gujarati merchant Sunder Das.49 But in 1660, because of the dearness of silk in Bengal, the Company got a profit of just 68.5% in Japan.50 In comparison silk from Tonkin rendered a profit of 25% only in Japan in 1660.51 Therefore, the VOC had ceased purchase of silk from Tonkin. (Ibid.). The VOC continued to make profit at its Nagasaki factory, a profit of f.678 976.15.12 was notified.52 The following year the Dutch factory in Japan reported a profit of f.924 210.10.7.53 The VOC officials believed that more than 5,000 bales of silk could be procured at Kasimbazar.54 Interestingly, a fraud in handling of Japan’s schuyt silver was done by a Hindu merchant (hindoekoopman). The fraud was done for 8,884 rupees in coins. On the basis of a quick reckoning, it was calculated that he had got each chest of chest of Japanese schuyt silver, holding 100 taels minted into coins, which would have given him 2525 rupees sicca or bank money, which commonly gave 5 to 6% profit. He had paid the penalty.55 Another merchant had to compensate for ₹1,890 for supplying poor-quality silk.56 At the end of 1662, VOC’s factory at Nagasaki had earned a profit of f.747 341.1.7.57 By 1662, we hear Tonkin had a good silk harvest. Again in 1664 Nagasaki registered a profit of f.680 197.13.5.58 The silk from Bengal in 1664 amounted to the tune of 1986 bales, which was too much for Japan, and so sold for 30% less what was expected.59 By 1665 Japan had succeeded in growing its own silk though it was made difficult in accepting by nobles.60 Around this time, Japan also received silk from Tonkin worth f.224 000 in Japan but yielded a profit of 21%.61 By 1665–1666, at the factory at Nagasaki, in Japan a profit of f.587 158.14.17 was reported.62 The year 1665 is particularly interesting. Japan’s market was generally favourable for Bengal’s cabessa silk. This silk, bought for 467.15.12 per picol, usually sold for tael 303.9. Another variety of silk, bariga silk, cost f.318.18 per picol, sold for tael 225.4. Thus together they gave a profit of 124%. Therefore, 1,200 bales of Bengal silk were ordered. The silk from Tonkin rendered 98%; Siam’s cargo gave 73%; the Chinese increased

32  Ishrat Alam

their visits to Japan for trade. The textiles from Coromandel Coast rendered 63.5% profit.63 Encouraged by such profit margins, VOC sent three ships from Bengal to Japan with a cargo of f.268 397.5; seven ships consisting of 560 bales of silk from Bengal.64 There was reconsideration on the import of Persian silk, and it was found that the Persian silk trade was extremely slow. In 1666, the VOC had sent f.200 000 in cargo to Persia. There it was found on 30 April 1669 that they had won f.463 651.3 and had given out f.32 159.5.8 and according to the latest news the sale was very slow.65 The quantity of Persian silk received at the court of Isfahan was very great, so much so that the VOC was embarrassed to continue the trade.66 160 bales were still at Batavia, and very few could be put up for sale in Japan.67 Some abortive attempts were made by VOC, but success evaded them.68 The VOC still found its factory at Nagasaki a profitable venture, and it had earned a profit of f.1 185 985.18.15.69 By December 1667, there was again a demand in Japan for silks from Tonkin. Not only the price for Tonkin’s silk had declined, but also it was available in large quantity.70 For the first time we hear of export of 2,500–3,000 packs of sugar from Bengal to Japan as ballast.71 Nagasaki factory continues to earn profit r in December 1667 it had won f.800 000.72 In 1668, of the required 1,200 packs in Japan only 927 packs of silk could be purchased at Kasimbazar. The difficulty was caused by the ban of export of silver from Japan. The trade with gold Mohur or Rupee of gold was done with great difficulty because the value of it rises or goes down, and usually it is not considered in handling usual merchandise. Besides, it was also said that Bengal did not have notable quantity of gold to retail (slŸten) and the factors requested for supply of at least one million in silver.73 It was observed that though rich in population, Bengal did not purchase much.74 In 1669, VOC tried to manage by diversion of the stock: In 1669, the VOC tried to manage a diversion of the stock, but not too much avail.75 Only the Dutch factory at Nagasake continued to enjoy a favourable position, and in early 1669, it won f.1,042,901.6.10.76 Meanwhile, Bengal did send several ships laden with silk presumably for onward transmission to Japan. It was found that Japanese Kobans had given a profit of 30%. So it was thought prudent to send Japanese Kobans (see Table 2.1 for the period) to Bengal, Coromandel, Persia and other places of India. Japanese gold was to be converted into fanums at Cochin.77 The export of gold at the earlier price of 5.6 taels was still expensive and encouraged the merchants to export copper. Therefore, the striped 9650 picols was required in the Netherlands because it was 6 stuivers cheaper. The copper gave an advantage of 82%. The yellow Latoen/Latten Copper (mixture of 65% copper and 35% tin) can hold the Japan on 73.3 taels and red stopper on 24.8 taels,78 which was about f.60%. The problems related to value fixation arose. To resolve such problems, it was decided that ‘yellow beaten Latten Copper, which the Japanese did not agree to give at less than 73.3 per picol, together with red beaten copper, which was rated at taël 24.8 per picol’.79

TABLE 2.1 Export and Import Between India and Japan, 1641–1669 To

Name of Ships, if any

3 Nov. 1641

Japan

ifluytschip de Meerman

Nov. 1641 Japan

Taiwan (21 Nov 1641) Taiwan

11642

Holland

Batavia

31,200

3 Nov. 1642 1642

Taiwan

Batavia

785,000

Japan

1643

Japan

Batavia

1644

Batavia

Surat Cambodia Tonkin

5 ships: Coningine, Orangieboom, Golden Buis, Roch & Meerman

Cargo (in Florins) 461,497

Merchandise Gold

222,926.9 + 150,032.2.15 in commodities

de Waterhond 450,000 Lillo 600,000 1,885,000

References

Mostly in silver

Dagh Register 1641–642, p. 101

Silver

222,926.9

It was hoped that there will be good business with this cash in Surat and Coromandel. Rials of 8 rix dollars etc. GM III, 1639– Not suitable for trade 1655, p. 172 Ibid. p. 175

11,000–12,000

1,005,011.17.5

Remarks

Out of which 300,000 expected profit from trade to Persia and 300,000 to other profit-giving factories 777,000 (for Coromandel)

777,000 in gold for Coromandel & 930,144.4.7 sent to Batavia in gold

Ibid. p. 188

Ibid. p. 215

In schuyt silver

Ibid. p. 224

200,000 f.1,885,000 remained in Taiwan

33

From

Textiles in the Pre-Modern Economies of India and Japan

Year

(Continued)

34

TABLE 2.1 (Continued) From

To

1645

Batavia

Coromandel

195,168

1645 1647

Taiwan Batavia

Coromandel Surat

818,000.00.00 356,121.17.9

Surat

455,000

1648

Batavia & Taiwan Batavia

Taiwan Batavia & Taiwan

Bengal

Batavia

Batavia

1649 1650

1651 1652

Name of Ships, if any

Cargo

Coromandel

Merchandise 863,462.13.8 in Chinese gold 178,000

1,600,000

2,096,853 + 200,000

1,130,000

Remarks

References Ibid. p. 297

600,000 200,000

Japanese schuyt silver

For conducting the trade in Bengal

Ibid. p. 316

114,000

Chinese gold & schuyt silver

Chinese gold for Coromandel & schuyt silver for Bengal

Ibid. p. 364

200,000 200,000 (in schuyt silver)

schuyt silver

Ibid. p. 386 f.2 096 853 was sent to Ibid. p. 408 Coromandel, which had f.813 603.18.11 in unminted gold f.600,000 to be invested bid. p. 622 in Kasimbazar for purchasing silk clothes f.120,000 in Dacca, Handiael etc. f.80,000 in Patna to be invested in opium, saltpetre & cotton textiles f.100,000 for Hugli and Nadia

Ishrat Alam

Year

f.120,000 in Oudagins or Kassuri in silk clothes f.50,000 to Balasore for sugar, textiles and rice f.60,000 to Pipli for sugar and rice Formosa

Coromandel

1653

Japan & Canton Batavia

Bengal

1654

21 Dec. 1654 28 Jan. 1655

Pegu

112,000

Coromandel

1,481,468.5.1

Surat Bengal Bengal Bengal

23,014.5.6 781,497.14.1 600,000 169,908

Cabo de Jack Zeerob. Brugen v/s

282,555

Comprising f.350 550 of schuyt silver 379,462.3.10 In silver + 256 000 In gold and schuyt silver Mostly in copper Mostly in copper

Ibid., p. 707

Ibid., p. 717 Ibid., p. 741

GM. Deel 285,000

III:1655–74, 30,000 schuyt silver

Paleacatte

p. 30

1655 1655

Batavia Coromandel

Coromandel 3 Dutch ships Batavia 3 Dutch ships

230,523.7.15 256,294.19.15

21 April  1655 12 Jan. 1655 6 Feb. 1655 4 May 1655

Pegu

Paleacatte

de Geldrea

42,345

In 600 packs of clothes pitjes and copper

Masulipatnam Gamboon

Cabo de Jack

419,442

Sugar and textiles

Taiwan

Bengal

2 Jachten

532,817.11

170,000 schuyt silver

Bengal

Batavia

1 boyer

21,786

35

Taiwan

Textiles in the Pre-Modern Economies of India and Japan

1653

(Continued)

36

TABLE 2.1 (Continued) From

To

Name of Ships, if any

Cargo

Merchandise

27 May 1655 23 Aug. 1655 1655 15 Aug. 1655 1655

Bengal

Batavia

1 boyer

373,972.9.8

647 packs of silk for Japan

Batavia

Pipli (Bengal) Batavia Surat

5 ships

578,908.15.18

de Griffssen 3 yachts

392,459 202,923.10.3

13 Dec. 1655 31 Oct. 1655 31 Oct. 1655 16 Feb. 1656 5 May  1656 1656

Bengal Batavia

583,000 & 130,000

Remarks

References

GM, Deel 24, p. 39

Persia (Winjun and Mocha) Taiwan

Surat

Batavia

de Enckhuysen 66,099.14.15

Sugar

Ibid., p. 45

Japan

Taiwan

4 yachts

1,150,000

Ibid., p. 47

1,335 494.7

Coromandel Bengal Masulipatnam Batavia

69,791.13.10

Masulipatnam Batavia

19,800.16.11

in golden ducats

Taiwan

Taiwan & Malacca

Bengal

3 ships

710,234.19.7

Batavia

Bengal

5 ships

Bengal

Batavia

4 ships

200,000 & 262,336.13.8 545,399

GM 1656– 1674, p. 101

2,250 taëls, schuyt silver, bar copper and tin Cash (coins) 889 pack silk, saltpetre and sugar

Ishrat Alam

Year

31 Jan. 1657

Nagasaki

4 ships

231,671.2.3

Nagasaki Nagasaki Nagasaki Bengal Bengal Bengal

Taiwan Coromandel Bengal Amsterdam Amsterdam Zealand

5 ships

1,536,458.11.6 920,401.74.7 400,000 323,848.4.4 767,178 529,959.16.12

Bengal Batavia Bengal

Rotterdam Bengal Batavia

Taiwan Taiwan

Coromandel Bengal

Bengal

Coromandel de Weesp

14,000

8 Feb 1660 Taiwan

Bengal

978,443.16.4

29 Mar. 1660

Batavia

Masulipatnam

1,008,772.19.12

26 Nov. 1660

Japan

Malacca

Jan. 1657

19 July  1657 & 1 Sept. 1657 Dec. 1658 19 Dec. 1659 7 Jan. 1660

Deer skin, Bengal silk and sugar schuyt silver 168,113.10.10

4 ships Arnhem Henriette, Lorisse & Avondster Slot Honingen 323,848.4.4 1,600,000 481,732.13.9

785 bales of silk

500,000

3 jachten

1 344 550.3.9

Ibid., p. 120

300,000 600,000

GM, Deel III. p. 166

Ibid., p. 238

Japanese lacquer work schuyt silver and bar copper Rials of Mexico, schuyt silver from Japan and tin 372 chests of schuyt 200 for Bengal silver 120 for Coromandel 10 for Malabar 10 for Ligor 32 for Batavia

Ibid., p. 340

Ibid., p. 338

Ibid., p. 369

37

(Continued)

Textiles in the Pre-Modern Economies of India and Japan

Taiwan

38

TABLE 2.1 (Continued) From

To

Name of Ships, if any

Cargo

Merchandise

Remarks

References

13 &14 Dec. 1661

Japan

Batavia

3 Fluyten

1,413,814

23 Jan. 1662 July–Sept. 1662 26 July  1662 & 15 Sept. 1662 15–18 Dec. 1662 1662 17 May  1664 18 Aug. 1664

Japan

Bengal

2 ships

494,300.11.15

400 000 taëls schuyt f.743,943 went in two Ibid., p. 385 silver ships to Bengal f.494,300 in two others to Coromandel f.188,199 in copper to Surat f.88,922 in copper to Persia Ibid., p. 426

Batavia

Bengal

9 ships

451,088.17.11

Japan

Bengal

Japan

Bengal

3 ships

572,812.14.17

Nagasaki Japan

Hindustan Bengal

3 ships

1,561,455.16.2 1,314,876.8.1

Batavia

Bengal

5 ships 27,599.16.3 (Lansmeer, Goeree, Cogge, Cattenburgh and the Vink)

Mostly in rupees of Surat Mostly in Ducats

494,300.11.15

Saltpetre

Mostly comprising Ibid., p. 439 120,000 schuyt silver and taël Ibid. p.440 Ibid., p. 497 Ibid., p. 469 Dagh Register limo 1664, p. 332

Ishrat Alam

Year

10 & 21 Oct. 1664 12 Dec. 1665

Batavia Coromandel

Bengal Bengal

Batavia

Coromandel 4 ships (3 for 1,662,186.10.6 Bengal 1 for Surat) Bengal 4 ships 661,312.8.12 Malacca 22,158.2.2

1665 Japan Dec. 1666 Tonkin & Siam 5 Oct. Bengal 1667 Batavia

Japan Bengal Malacca

5 ships

252,109.11 736,044.1.14 + 35,835.7.8 1 938 293.5.1

Batavia

5 ships

2,261,232

Batavia

5 Jan. 1668 1 June  1668 7 June  1668 Oct. 1668

Japan Hugli

Batavia Malacca

Malacca

Batavia

624,400

Japan

Bengal

133,927.15.11

Batavia

Bengal

771,879

f.746,441 to Coromandel Ibid., p. 495 f.620,464 to Bengal f.165,532 to Surat Ibid., p. 497 Mostly in gold for Ibid., p. 573 Coromandel Mostly in silk for Japan Ibid., p. 586 35,835.7.8 in commodities see Remarks under 20 Ibid., p. 573 Dec. 1667 Mostly in gold, silver and copper Ibid., p. 625

736,044.1.14

2,687,685

1 ship

2 204 270.16.10

de Bleyswegk 5 ships

4681,11 470,253.7.6

GM, Deel III, p. 469

Comprising cargo brought earlier. (see 27 Nov. – 1Dec. 1667)

Out of which; Ibid., p. 573 f.1,299,910.8.5 for Coromandel f.469,736.4.14 for Bengal f.85,350.12.10 for Ceylon f.285,954.10.11 for Surat f.63,317.10.2 for Persia Ibid., p. 625 Mostly silk, textiles and Ibid., p. 686 sugar for Japan 993 bales of silk for Ibid., p. 625 Japan Mostly in silver and Ibid., p. 625 copper from Japan Ibid., p. 627

(Continued)

39

20 Dec. 1667

Batavia for Coromandel Malacca

3.5 ton

Textiles in the Pre-Modern Economies of India and Japan

27 Nov.–1 Japan Dec. 1667 8 Dec. Japan 1667 8 Dec. Japan 1667

13,677.10 350,000

TABLE 2.1 (Continued) From

Name of Ships, if any

Cargo

7 ships

384,298.13.11 291,636

end 1668

Japan

Batavia Ceylon & Patria Malacca

Jan. 1669

Batavia Batavia Batavia

Persia Coromandel Coromandel

59,058.18.6 11,545.10.15 511,644.10.7

Coromandel Batavia Japan

Bengal Coromandel Batavia 4 ships

651,545.2.8 1,310,886 2,309,842

Japan

Malacca

284,221.14

Japan Japan Japan

Batavia Batavia Batavia

1669

Source: Author.

Merchandise

2,524,800.17.6

Mostly golden Kobans

100,000 5 ships

1,403,768 2,505,536

Remarks

References

Mostly in silk

Ibid., p. 689

Out of golden Kobans Ibid., p. 686 f.1,532,562.3.6 for Coromandel For Surat, mostly; f.956,075.14 for Bengal tin from Malacca, f.235,229.4.2 for Surat copper, porcelain f.3,306.19.12 for Persia and ivory f.30,098.5 for Malabar & Wingurla A total of f.2,757,272.6.19 Mostly in silk Ibid., p. 689 Mostly in silk Mostly in coins out of which f.207000 was sent to Coromandel in Rupees Mostly in silver coins Brought to Bengal Mostly in gold Wherein f.1,985,243 Ibid., in Kobans p. 689 Mostly comprising Ibid., p. 712 6,500 picols copper Gold from Java Ibid., p. 713 Van Dam II (I), In gold worth p. 48 f.1,985,243

Ishrat Alam

Nov. 1668 Bengal Batavia

To

40

Year

Textiles in the Pre-Modern Economies of India and Japan  41

In 1670, it was reported that supply of Japanese bar copper was insufficient and uncertain. The director proposed to import copper plates from Europe which will give benefit of 136–138%. As a proof, copper from Europe was asked for. Due to the handicap of public sale of goods, sale of VOC’s commodities was very little in relation to that expected.80 In January 1670, the gain in Japan was to the tune of f.1 134 740.6.14.81 According to one estimate, 16,000 picols could be procured at Japan.82 In 1671, Bengal received f.799 607.16.7 from Japan to purchase silk. It was found that silk was cheap and 2,500–2,600 bales of silk could be purchased as it had not risen higher than ₹4 per ser. The factors posted at Agra had also arrived to purchase silk before the prices rerise.83 Meanwhile, the director was expected to purchase silk worth 300,000–400,000 guilders. On 15,000 guilders ‘pee zijde’ (Pee silk) the gain was 283% in the Netherlands.84 What is clear from all this is the range of the trade between India and Japan and the significance of these two ends of the Indian Ocean spectrum in the mercantile and commodity exchanges that were typical of the century under review. Equally clear is the extent of the participation of the Dutch in this trade and of the importance of textiles on the one hand, and silver on the other, in this trade. Merchants, in the form of the VOC in the trans-Oceanic trade, Japanese merchants and the Japanese government in the supply of silver and the distribution of goods in Japan, and the Indian brokers were the three points of the triangle connecting the worlds of sea, land and mercantile enterprise. Notes 1 Pieter van Dam, Beschryvinge van de Oost Indische Compagnie, ed. F.W. Stapel, The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1931, Deel II (1), pp. 422, 442, 828 (sv. pancado). 2 Ibid. 3 W. Ph. Coolhas, ed., Generale Missiven van Gouverneurs- Generaal en Raden aan Heren XVII der Verenigde Oost Indische Compagnie, (henceforth: GM), S’-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960, Deel I: 1610–1638, pp. 194–196. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid., p. 182. 6 Nagahara Keiji, Choma, Kinu, Momen no Shakaishi, Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2004, pp. 216, 217, 220–201 and 230–262 cited by Kayoko Fujita, p. 183, GM, Deel I: 1610– 1638, p. 19. 7 GM, Deel I: 1610–1638, p. 19. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid., p. 128. 10 Ibid. 11 GM, Deel II: 1639–1655, p. 137. 12 GM, Deel I: 1610–1638, p. 136. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 15 GM, Deel I: 1610-1638, p. 257. 16 GM, Deel II: 1639–1655, p. 130. 17 GM, Deel II: 1639-1655, pp. 130–131. 18 Ibid. 19 GM, Deel II: 1639–1655, p. 232. 20 GM, Deel II: 1639–1655, p. 232. 21 Ibid.

42  Ishrat Alam

2 2 GM, Deel II: 1639–1655, p. 172. 23 GM, Deel II: 1639-1655, p. 207. 24 GM, Deel II: 1639-1655,p. 208. 25 GM, Deel II: 1639-1655, p. 210. 26 GM, Deel II: 1639-1655, p. 211. 27 GM: Deel II: 1639-1655, p. 215. 28 GM, Deel III: 1656-1674, p. 68. 29 GM, Deel III: 1656-1674, p. 69. 30 GM, Deel III: 1656-1674, p. 129. 31 GM, Deel II: 1639-1655, p. 779. 32 GM, Deel II: 1639-1655, p. 30. 33 GM, Deel III: 1656-1674, p. 30; Van dam, II(2), p. 16. 34 GM, Deel II: 1639-1655, p. 2. 35 GM, Deel II: 1639-1655, p. 30. 36 Ibid. 37 GM, Deel III: 1656-1674, p. 53. 38 Van Dam, II (2), p. 16. 39 GM, Deel III: 1656–1674, p. 185. 40 GM, Deel III: 1656-1674, p. 194. 41 Ibid. 42 Van Dam II(1), p. 106. 43 Van Dam, III(1), p. 407. 44 Ibid., p. 408. 45 Van Dam, II (1), p. 40. 46 GM, Deel III: 1656-1654. p. 300; 300 000 rupees; Van Dam, II(2), p. 8. 47 Van Dam, II(II), p. 8; GMIII, p. 300. 48 GM, Deel III: 1656-1674, p. 305. 49 GM, Deel III: 1656-1674, p. 343. 50 GM, Deel III: 1656-1674, p. 344. 51 GM, Deel III: 1656-1674, p. 347. 52 GM, Deel III: 1656-1674, p. 370. 53 GM, Deel III: 1656-1674, p. 391. 54 GM, Deel III: 1656-1674, p. 396. 55 GM, Deel III: 1656-1674, p. 425. 56 GM, Deel III: 1656-1674, p. 426. 57 GM, Deel III: 1656-1674, p. 450. 58 GM, Deel III: 1656-1674, p. 464. 59 GM, Deel III: 1656-1674, p. 469. 60 GM, Deel III: 1656-1674, p. 480. 61 GM, Deel III: 1656-1674, p. 491. 62 GM, Deel III: 1656-1674, p. 523. 63 Van Dam, II(1), pp. 432–433. 64 GM, Deel III: 1656-1674, p. 544. 65 GM, Deel III: 1656-1674, p. 571. 66 Ibid. 67 Ibid. 68 Ibid. 69 GM, Deel III: 1656-1674, p. 579. 70 GM, Deel III: 1656-1674, p. 604. 71 GM, Deel III: 1656-1674, p. 606. 72 GM, Deel III: 1656-1674, p. 615. 73 GM, Deel III: 1656-1674, p. 658. 74 Ibid. 75 GM, Deel III: 1656-1674, p. 665.

Textiles in the Pre-Modern Economies of India and Japan  43

7 6 Ibid. 77 GM, Deel III: 1656-1674, p. 692. 78 Van Dam, II(1), p. 438. 79 GM, Deel III: 1656-1674, p. 727. 80 GM, Deel III: 1656-1674, p. 732. 81 GM, Deel III: 1656-1674, p. 735. 82 GM, Deel III: 1656-1674, p. 741. 83 GM, Deel III: 1656-1674, p. 743. 84 Ibid.

Bibliography Boxer, C.R. (1966). The Dutch Seaborne Empire 1600–1800, London: Hutchinson. Boyajian, James C. (1993). Portuguese Trade in Asia under the Habsburgs 1580–1640, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Campbell, R.H. and Skinner, A.S. (1976, 1979). Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of the Nations, 2 vols, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Chaudhuri, K.N. (1978). The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company 1660– 1760, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chaudhuri, K.N. (1985). Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean, an Economic History from the Rise of Islam, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Coolhas, W. Ph. ed. (1960). Generale Missiven van Gouverneurs- Generaal en Raden aan Heren XVII der Verenigde Oost Indische Compagnie, ’s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, Deel I, pp. 1610–1638. Coolhas, W. Ph. ed. (1964). Generale Missiven van Gouverneurs- Generaal en Raden aan Heren XVII der Verenigde Oost Indische Compagnie, ’s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, Deel II, pp. 1639–1655. Coolhas, W. Ph. ed. (1968). Generale Missiven van Gouverneurs- Generaal en Raden aan Heren XVII der Verenigde Oost Indische Compagnie, ’s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, Deel III, pp. 1656–1674. Fujita, Kayoko (2009, 2012). ‘Japan Indianized, the Material Culture of Imported Textiles in Japan 1550–1850’, in G. Riello and P. Partharsarthi (eds.), The Spinning World – A Global History of Cotton Textiles 1200–1850, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Prakash, Om (1985). The Dutch East India Company and the Economy of Bengal, 1630– 1720, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Prakash, Om (2004). Bullion for Goods, European and the Indian Merchants in the Indian Ocean Trade, New Delhi: Manohar. Riello, G. and Roy, T. (2009). How India Clothed the World, Leiden and Boston: Brill. Riello, G. and Partharsarthi, P. (2009, 2012). The Spinning World – A Global History of Cotton Textiles 1200–1850, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stapel, F. (ed.) (1931). Pieter van Dam, Beschryvinge van de Oost Indische Compagnie, The Hague: M. Nijhoff. Souza, George Bryan (1986). The Survival of the Empire Portuguese Trade and Society in China and the South China Sea 1630–1754, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Paperback edition, 2004.

3 GOLD TRADE BETWEEN JAPAN AND INDIA BY THE DUTCH EAST INDIA COMPANY Ryuto Shimada

Introduction

Gold was one of key commodities that connected India with Japan through international trade during the early modern period. Japanese gold was delivered to India by the Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie: hereafter VOC), which was engaged in intra-Asian maritime trade between Japan and Arabia on a large scale. In fact, the VOC was a unique business organisation among East India Companies in western Europe. It conducted not only Euro-Asian trade but also intra-Asian trade. And by combining these two types of trade, this Dutch company obtained huge profits. Needless to say, Japanese gold was handled within the profitable framework of the intra-Asian trade by the VOC. This chapter sheds light on the Japanese gold trade by the VOC in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and examines the roles of the Japanese gold trade in terms of the VOC’s intra-Asian trade. For this purpose, this chapter first provides a set of fundamental pictures of the VOC’s trade between Japan and South Asia. It will be clear that Japanese silver had taken a crucial role in the Dutch intra-Asian triangular trade between Japan, South Asia and Southeast Asia until 1668, when the Japanese shogunate authorities prohibited the VOC from exporting Japanese silver. Second, the chapter gives a survey of Japanese gold export to South Asia by the VOC under the condition that the VOC was not permitted to export Japanese silver. Finally, the end of Japanese gold export trade in the 1760s will be analysed in connection with the Dutch trade in Japanese copper. Throughout the chapter the author aims to incorporate Japanese gold trade to India by the VOC into the whole structure of the intra-Asian trade of the VOC. The scientific concept of the intra-Asian trade of the VOC originated with the works by Om Prakash. He spent two chapters in the monograph on the Dutch trade with Bengal. One chapter was devoted to the intra-Asian trade with Japan, DOI: 10.4324/9781003396666-5

Gold Trade Between Japan and India by the VOC  45

and the second was the trade with others, namely Indonesian Archipelago and Persia (Prakash, 1985: Chapters 5 and 6). As indicated by Prakash, the trade between Japan and India was a key to examine the Dutch intra-Asian trade. In response to Prakash’s contribution, the author of this chapter enlarged the Dutch trade with Japan and India within the framework of the triangular trade of the VOC between Japan, South Asia and Southeast Asia by offering a case study of the Japanese copper trade of the VOC (Shimada, 2006). In this sense, this chapter is one of supplemental works to previous research by picking up another metal, that is Japanese gold. Two Types of Trade of the VOC

The initial purpose of the Dutch entry into Asian trading business in the late sixteenth century was to directly purchase Asian products by sending Dutch-owned vessels to Asian waters. In fact, several companies for Asian trade were established between 1595 and 1601, which were called Voor-Compagniën (Early Companies), and these companies sent their ships to Asia. However, to avoid excessive competition these companies were united as the Dutch East India Company in 1602 by the charter of the States General of the Dutch united provinces (Gaastra, 2003: 17–23). Main Asian products that the VOC procured in maritime Asia for the European market changed over time (Gaastra, 2003: 129–138; Jacobs, 2006). In the first half of the seventeenth century, the main Asian commodities for Europe were spices such as nutmeg, mace, clove, pepper and cinnamon. The VOC spent huge energy to establish its trading monopoly in eastern Indonesian Archipelago, which was the single place in the world at that time to produce nutmeg, mace and clove. Moreover, the VOC occupied Portuguese Colombo in Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka) in 1658, so as to enjoy the monopolist position to trade cinnamon while the VOC had many struggles to establish pepper monopoly elsewhere in maritime Asia. In spite of making enormous exertions, full monopoly in pepper trade was never established by the VOC because pepper was produced at many places in Southeast Asia and South Asia. Yet it is true that the VOC became one of key merchant groups in pepper trade in maritime Asia. Besides the spice trade, Javanese sugar and Indian cotton textiles were put into the VOC’s major cargo list for the European market in the second half of the eighteenth century. In the second half of the seventeenth century, sugar production rose in the island of Java, particularly around Batavia. Then the VOC exported Javanese sugar to the Netherlands as well as to Asia such as to Japan, India and Persia (Glamann, 1958: 152–166). At the same time, Indian cotton textile exports by the VOC grew as a result of the increase of demand in the European market (Prakash, 1998: 221–228). In course of time, Javanese coffee and Chinese tea became important Asian products for Europe. Coffee cultivation was introduced to Java around the beginning of the eighteenth century (Ohashi, 2010: 53; Breman, 2015: 64–68) and the Dutch trade at Canton (Guangzhou) began in the 1730s (Liu, 2007: 3–5). To procure these Asian products in Asia, the VOC had to export precious metals, which were mostly silver, to Asia from the Netherlands. As silver exports from

46  Ryuto Shimada

the Netherlands amounted to huge values, the VOC invented a unique system to save European silver exports. This system was successfully introduced by establishing the so-called intra-Asian trade. This system principally functioned as follows: European silver was delivered to Dutch trading posts in maritime Asia; then European silver was first invested in the intra-Asian trade; profits from the VOC’s intraAsian trade were spent to purchase Asian products for the European market. As a result, the VOC succeeded in saving silver exports from the Netherlands. It is a noteworthy fact that only the VOC was able to establish the combination of the Euro-Asian trade and the intra-Asian trade. This success of the VOC was due to the advantage that huge amount of capital was invested in the VOC and consequently to the VOC’s military advantage during the Dutch golden age. The VOC could have several trading posts in maritime Asia from Japan to Arabia, and thus the Dutch company could conduct its intra-Asian trade on a large scale. Among several trading businesses of the VOC within the framework of intra-Asian trade, the Japan–India trade was one of the most important businesses for the VOC. The Japan Trade by the VOC

The first contact of the VOC with Japan was in 1609. In this year, two vessels under the VOC arrived at Hirado. The VOC obtained the trading permission from Tokugawa Ieyasu, the former shogun, and the Dutch trading post at Hirado was opened. In 1641, the VOC’s trading post was moved to the Dejima Island in Nagasaki by the order of the Tokugawa shogunate authorities. This artificial island had been used by the Portuguese since 1636, but it was empty after they were expelled from Japan in 1639 (Goodman, 2000: 11–8). Since then, the Japan trade by the VOC was very limited under the aegis of Sakoku seclusion policy of the Tokugawa shogunate authorities, but the Dutch company could enjoy monopolistic benefits among European nations to have contacts with Japan for international trade until the mid-nineteenth century. The Japan trade was a key trade for the VOC in terms of its intra-Asian trade. Japan did not supply the VOC with any specific products which the European market demanded on a large scale such as spices and cotton textiles. In addition, Japan was not a good market for European products like woollen clothes. In this way, Japan’s economic link with the Netherlands was weak. Nevertheless, Japan was a good consumption market for Asian products, and also it was a good supplier of products such as silver, gold and copper for other Asian countries as analysed later in detail. In 1650, the VOC at Nagasaki sold the following products and the total sales value amounted to 4,531 kanme:1 Raw silk (55% at the value basis), silk textiles (11%), cotton textiles (3%), woollen textiles (9%), ray skins (10%), fragrant woods (3%), sappanwoods (2%), sugar (1%) and others (5%) (Yamawaki, 1978: 216, 218, 235). It is clear that the most important import item was raw silk in terms of value, and the share of raw silk was more than the half of the total sales to Japan. The production areas of raw silk imported into Japan at this year were Tonkin in northern Vietnam (55% of the total raw silk imports at the volume basis), Bengal (36%) and China (11%) (Yamawaki, 1978: 199). Besides raw silk, while several textiles were imported into

Gold Trade Between Japan and India by the VOC  47

Japan, other Southeast Asia products were brought by the VOC as follows: ray skins were mostly produced in Siam (present-day Thailand). It was used for the cover of the grip of samurai’s sword. Fragrant woods were also Southeast Asian products such as sandalwood while sappanwood was a dye for red colour, mostly exported from Ayutthaya in Siam (Shimada, 2009: 56–67; Shimada, 2010: 156–158). From the aforementioned data of the Japanese import trade by the VOC in 1650, two points can be summed up. First, products that Japan imported by the VOC were mostly Asian products. Woollen textiles were almost the single important European product, yet its sale amount was only 9% of the total sales. Second, the VOC imported into Japan not only Chinese merchandises but also other merchandises produced in Southeast Asia and South Asia. The VOC succeeded in organising a broad trading network in the China Seas as well as in the Indian Ocean. On the other hand, Japan was in the maritime network around the China Seas in East Asia and Southeast Asia, which had existed before the arrival of the VOC to maritime Asia in the late sixteenth century. It is a key point that Japanese direct trading links with India did not exist. Therefore, the participation of the VOC in the Japan trade meant that the Japanese trading links were enlarged to the Indian Ocean arena while the business activities of the VOC strengthened Japan’s economic links with the economies around the China Seas. In fact, the VOC’s contribution for the Japanese economy was to connect Japan with other Asian countries. The VOC was specialised in the Japan trade with Southeast Asia and South Asia in particular. This specialisation became much clearer after 1662. In this year, the VOC abandoned its trading post at Tainan in south-western area of the island of Taiwan in 1662 because of the attack by the troop led by Zheng Chenggong, who was a Ming royalist and a powerful leader of Chinese maritime traders. Although the VOC was engaged in the transit trade at Tainan between Mainland China and Japan before 1662,2 the VOC had to give up the profits from such transit trade with China. In addition to the imported items into Japan, when looking at Japan’s export trade by the VOC, Japanese economic links with South Asia created by the VOC become more obvious. Silver was almost the single important export Japanese item for the VOC’s trade around the middle of the seventeenth century. Figure  3.1 3,000,000 2,500,000 2,000,000 1,500,000 1,000,000 500,000 0

1620

FIGURE 3.1 Japanese

1630

1640

1650

silver exports by the VOC, 1622–1667 (unit: tael)

Source: Suzuki, 2012: 4–5, 13.

1660

1670

48  Ryuto Shimada

shows the Japanese silver exports by the VOC. Silver exports by the VOC rapidly grew during the second half of the 1630s, when the Portuguese trade with Japan was declining and finally the Portuguese were expelled from Japan in 1639. But in the beginning of the 1640s, silver exports by the VOC decreased, and afterwards the VOC continued to export about 500,000 taels per annum. Kayoko Fujita provides a set of quantitative data on the destination of Japanese silver re-exported at Tainan by the VOC (Fujita, 2013: 266;). By processing and analysing the data, the following becomes obvious: the VOC exported 5,648,000 taels of silver from Japan between 1650 and 1661; of this total value, 27% was sent to Bengal, 19% to Coromandel, 9% to Surat (in Gujarat) and Persia, 11% to Malacca, 10% to Batavia, 2% to Siam, 8% to Tonkin and 8% to Taiwan (The share of Taiwan is based on the net value. The shares of the other ports are based on the gross values, which means that the data includes possible re-exports.) (Shimada, 2012: 67–68). In other words, India was the most important recipient of Japanese silver handled by the VOC. In fact, South Asia and Persia accounted for almost half the shares of the total exports of Japanese silver by the VOC in the 1650s, although the VOC at Tainan was still engaged in the transit trade between Japan and Mainland China. Japanese Silver in the Triangular Trade

Japanese silver was a key item for the triangular trade of the VOC between Japan, India and Southeast Asia. Already in the 1650s, the VOC exported huge amounts of silver from Japan, as seen earlier. Japanese silver was sent by the VOC to South Asia, especially to cotton textile exporting areas such as Coromandel, Bengal and Gujarat. This is because the VOC used Japanese silver as one of the means of payment to settle the export trade in cotton textiles. Part of these cotton textiles was sold by the VOC in Southeast Asia. Ayutthaya in Siam imported Indian cotton textiles and in turn exported for the Japanese market Siamese products such as ray skins and sappanwoods, as well as deer hides which were not mentioned in the above case study in the Dutch import trade at Nagasaki in 1650. In addition to these Siamese products, Javanese sugar was also an important Southeast Asian product. During the second half of the seventeenth century, cane sugar cultivation and sugar production was taken up in the surrounding area, Ommelanden, of Batavia. Part of this sugar was sent to Nagasaki. In this way, the VOC realised a profitable triangular trade, and Japanese silver was an inevitable commodity item.3 By this triangular trade, the VOC obtained silver from Japan and it could save silver exports from the Netherlands. Table  3.1 shows export values of precious metals (mostly silver) from the Netherlands. Basically, the silver exports rose during the almost two centuries in the long run, but they were under stagnation from the 1630s to the 1650s. During these years, Japan continued to export silver annually by Dutch vessels as shown in Figure 3.1, and thus the VOC could save silver exports from the home country. It is very difficult to precisely calculate how much the VOC could save exports of precious metals thanks to obtaining Japanese silver. However, a rough calculation

Gold Trade Between Japan and India by the VOC  49 TABLE 3.1 Exports of Precious Metals From the Netherlands by the VOC, 1602–1795

(unit: guilder) Year

Values

Year

Values

1602–1610 1610–1620 1620–1630 1630–1640 1640–1650 1650–1660 1660–1670 1670–1680 1680–1690 1690–1700

5,207,000 10,186,000 12,360,000 8,500,000 9,200,000 8,400,000 12,100,000 11,295,000 19,720,000 28,605,000

1700–1710 1710–1720 1720–1730 1730–1740 1740–1750 1750–1760 1760–1770 1770–1780 1780–1790 1790–1795

39,275,000 38,827,000 66,030,000 40,124,000 38,275,000 58,396,000 53,542,000 48,317,000 47,896,000 16,972,000

Source: Gaastra, 2003: 139.

is possible by comparing the two numbers, namely the exports of precious metals from the Netherlands and the exports of silver from Japan by the VOC. The former numbers are shown in Table 3.1. In contrast, regarding the latter numbers, the VOC’s annual export of silver from Japan was around 500,000 taels after the mid1640s to 1668, as shown in Figure 3.1. Taking into consideration the exchange rate between tael and guilder (1 tael was equal to 2.85 guilders after 1636), the VOC’s exports of Japanese silver amounted to 1,425,000 guilders per annum. Hence, we can know that the Japan’s export was 14,250,000 guilders per decade (Shimada, 2012: 66). This rough calculation indicates that the Japanese silver exports by the VOC were higher in value than exports that the VOC brought to Asia from the Netherlands. Japanese Gold Trade by the VOC

The VOC had to begin the Japanese gold trade on a large scale in 1668. In this year, the Japanese shogunate authorities issued a new order to stop the silver export trade by the VOC (Nachod, 1897: 356–357). This ban of silver export trade was due to the shortage of production of silver in Japan. Although Japan exported huge amounts of silver since the mid-sixteenth century, but now Japan had to reduce silver exports.4 To maintain the trade with Japan, the VOC exported huge amounts of gold in place of silver. The VOC exported Japanese gold coins, which were Japanese regular gold currency named Koban in Japanese. The annual gold exports by the VOC are shown in Figure 3.2. This quantitative data is based on Japanese and Dutch records. After the ban of silver exports, the gold exports rapidly increased. During the peak years around 1670, about 100,000 pieces of gold Koban were exported by the VOC annually, and then the annual exports began to decrease. After the 1680s, the VOC’s gold trade continued by exporting roughly 10,000 pieces or less per annum until 1753.

50  Ryuto Shimada

120,000 100,000 80,000 60,000 40,000 20,000 0

1640

1660

1680

1700

1720

1740

1760

FIGURE 3.2 Exports

of Japanese gold Koban by the VOC, 1659–1753 (unit: piece)

Sources: Nachod, 1897: CCVII; Feenstra Kuiper, 1921: 303–305; Yamawaki, 1978: 124–125; Yao, 1998: 220.

100% 80% 60% 40% 20%

1669 1670 1671 1677 1679 1686 1688 1689 1690 1691 1692 1693 1694 1695 1696 1697

0%

gold

copper

others

FIGURE 3.3  Shares

of Japan’s exports of silver, copper and others by the VOC, 1669–1697

Source: Yao, 1998: 68.

It was a very short period when gold was the most important export item from Japan for the VOC. This is because Japan had other products to compensate the lack of silver for export, that was Japanese copper. Figure 3.3 shows the composition of Japanese merchandises in the export trade by the VOC. It is unfortunate that the accounting keepers’ records at the Dutch trading post at Nagasaki are nowadays available only for limited years, although a rough trend can be observed by consulting these limited remaining records. As shown in the figure, gold was the most important export item between 1669 and 1671. After the ban of silver export, gold was traded as a substitute product. However, the gold’s share declined in the second half of the 1670s, while Japanese copper exports grew, and copper became a more important export item than gold. Although the share of gold recovered in 1691, when the gold’s share accounted for more than the half of the total export by the VOC, gold’s importance was in the trend of decline in the long run. By and large, when the VOC was prohibited from exporting silver from Japan, the VOC first attempted to enlarge the gold export trade, but quickly the VOC directed its attention to Japanese copper and expanded the copper export trade.

Gold Trade Between Japan and India by the VOC  51

As gold and copper were substitute products, their consumption areas were basically the same as silver. In fact, both gold and copper were delivered to South Asia by vessels of the VOC and used for the payment to procure cotton textiles. However, if we look at the consumption areas in more detail, some differences can be found. In the case of Japanese silver, it was delivered to the Dutch trading posts in Bengal, Coromandel and Surat as mentioned earlier. Japanese copper was also destined for these areas, which exported large amounts of cotton textiles (Shimada, 2006: 17–20, 86–93). On the other hand, gold was mainly destined for the Coromandel Coast. This is because the VOC was conscious of the fact that gold was more favourably accepted in southern Indian subcontinent than other parts of South Asia (Perlin, 1987: 246). This tendency continued even in the eighteenth century. Between 1711 and 1712/13, the VOC sent out 2,081,000 Dutch homeland guilders an annual average of gold supplied mainly from Japan and Persia to the following areas: 49% to Coromandel, 24% to Ceylon (including the fishery coast in the south-eastern tip of the Indian subcontinent), 12% to Malabar, 8% to Bengal and 6% to Mocha in the Arabian Peninsula (Jacobs, 2006: 366). Obviously, South India was the largest recipient of gold from the VOC. In the late seventeenth century, the gold export trade by the VOC declined on a large scale (Yao, 1998: 66–75). In 1695, the Japanese shogunate government carried out the debasement of Japanese gold Koban coins. Old Koban coins, named Keichō Koban, contained 86.79% gold, while new Koban coins, Genroku Koban, had 57.36% gold (Taya, 1973: 35–36). It was about 33% debasement, but the shogunate government ordered that new gold Koban coins should be exchanged in market at the same value of the old ones. At the beginning, new gold coins were in circulation only in the Japanese domestic market, and they were not used for international trade. However, the Japanese shogunate authorities asked the VOC to accept the new gold coins. In response to this order from the Japanese side, the VOC at Nagasaki resisted, yet this was in vain. Finally, in 1698, the VOC had to accept the new gold Koban coins for export at the same price as before. By this debasement, the VOC at Nagasaki had to procure gold realistically at more than 30% higher price. Furthermore, bad things followed it for the VOC. In 1710, Japanese gold Koban was again debased, and the VOC had to accept this more debased Koban coins in 1713 at the same price as before (Yao, 1998: 117–134). In 1715, the Japanese shogunate authorities issued a new gold Koban coin, which had the same quality as the original Koban of Keichō Koban. Yet the VOC had to purchase this new gold coins at double the price (Yao, 1998: 157–158). In this way, the VOC lost huge profits by the Japanese gold trade. While the Dutch trade in Japanese gold continued on a small scale, the VOC attempted to develop the gold trade with other Asian regions such as Persia, Padang on the Sumatra Island and China. Actually, in the two fiscal years between 1751/1752 and 1752/1753, the VOC procured gold from China (420,300 homeland guilders per annum) and from Padang (280,300 homeland guilders per annum). At that time, the VOC bought gold Koban coins from Japan amounting to only 5,900 homeland guilders ( Jacobs, 2006: 366).

52  Ryuto Shimada

End of the Japanese Gold Trade

In the second half of the eighteenth century, the Japanese economy drastically changed from the point of view of global history. So far, Japan had been known as a supplier of large volumes of precious metals. Although the exports of precious metals declined during the first half of the eighteenth century, the export trade in precious metals still continued on a small scale. However, Japan was faced with a turning point in the 1750s and the 1760s. The final export of Japanese gold by the VOC was carried out in 1752 (Feenstra Kuiper, 1921: 304). Moreover, Japan began to import precious metals at Nagasaki. In 1763, Chinese traders began to bring silver and gold to Japan. On the other hand, the VOC at Nagasaki attempted to import silver on the private accounts of the company’s personnel in 1765, and then in 1769, the VOC officially undertook to bring silver coins of ducaton that was Dutch silver coins minted in the Netherlands (Shimada, 2015: 445–450). At any rate, the position of the Japanese economy drastically changed. Under a new situation, Japan imported gold and silver for the domestic use to mint coins while it continued to export huge volumes of copper by Dutch and Chinese traders. Table 3.2 shows the import volumes of precious metals into Japan by Dutch traders and Chinese traders. In terms of the imports by Dutch traders, it was conducted by the VOC and after the collapse of the VOC in 1799 by the Dutch colonial authorities at Batavia. While silver was imported by Dutch and Chinese traders, gold was imported only by Chinese traders. Dutch traders were not engaged in gold import trade. The project of import trade of precious metals can be regarded as a symbol of Japan’s mercantilism initiated by Tanuma Okitsugu (1719–1788), but even after his downfall in 1786, it continued until the first half of the nineteenth century. In this way, Japan put the precious metal export trade to an end, and the VOC gave up the gold export trade from Japan to meet the Indian demand for gold. Despite this end of gold trade, however, Japan continued to export copper, and thus the triangular trade between Japan, India and Southeast Asia could be conducted by the VOC. TABLE 3.2 Annual Averages of Precious Metal Imports Into Japan, 1763–1839

(unit: kg) Year

Silver imports by Dutch traders (kg)

Silver imports by Chinese traders (kg)

Gold imports by Chinese traders (kg)

1763(65) – 1780 1781–1800 1801–1820 1821–1839

300 217 89 145

1,150 288 412 211

33 73 90 53

Source: Shimada, 2015: 443–463.

Gold Trade Between Japan and India by the VOC  53

Conclusions

This chapter investigated the Japanese gold trade by the VOC in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The VOC was the single East India Company which could connect its intra-Asian trade with Euro-Asian trade. Japanese silver was a key merchandise in the intra-Asian trade by the VOC. Japanese silver was exported by the VOC to India, from where cotton textiles were supplied to the VOC for sale in Southeast Asia. Although the VOC obtained profits from this intra-Asian trade, this business fell into a crisis in 1668. In this year, the Japanese shogunate authorities banned the VOC from exporting silver from Japan. Japanese gold was a substitute for Japanese silver. By exporting gold from Japan, the VOC compensated the lack of Japanese silver. Japanese gold was sent to the Coromandel Coast in particular. This is because the South Indian economy preferred gold to silver. In addition to gold, Japanese copper was also a substitute for Japanese silver. Already in the second half of the 1670s, Japanese copper was a more important Japanese export item for the VOC. The VOC was faced with a new order by the Japanese shogunate authorities to accept the new debased gold Koban coins at the same price as the former gold Koban coins. Yet the Japanese gold trade continued in the first half of the eighteenth century although the exports were on a very small scale. The VOC distributed gold mainly to the Dutch trading posts on the Coromandel Coast while they delivered copper to the trading posts in Bengal, Coromandel and Gujarat, where cotton textiles were available for international trade. The Japanese gold export trade was put to an end in the 1750s. In addition, during this next decade, Japan began to import gold and silver by Dutch and Chinese traders at Nagasaki. This was a turning point of the Japanese economy from the point of view of global history. The Japanese role as supplier of precious metals to maritime Asia ended. In spite of this change of Japanese economic position, the VOC continued to procure copper from Japan and could maintain the triangular trade between Japan, South Asia and Southeast Asia by delivering Japanese copper to Indian ports as payment to obtain cotton textiles.

Notes 1 Kanme was a Japanese unit for weight. 1 kanme was equal to about 3.75 kg. 2 The transit trade based at Tainan under the VOC was realised by the cooperation with Chinese traders. The VOC was engaged in the trade between Japan and Tainan while Chinese traders conducted the trade between Tainan and Mainland China (Cheng, 2013). 3 This triangular trade by the VOC around 1700 is analysed by the case study of Ryuto Shimada (Shimada, 2006: 17–21). 4 It is not true that Japan fully stopped the silver export trade. Chinese traders were also prohibited from exporting Japanese silver in 1688, but this ban was relaxed in the next year (Yamawaki, 1964: 41). Moreover, Japanese silver continued to be exported through the trade of the Tushima clan with Korea (Tashiro, 1989).

54  Ryuto Shimada

Bibliography Breman, Jan (2015). Mobilizing Labour for the Global Coffee Market: Profits From an Unfree Work Regime in Colonial Java, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Cheng, Wei-chung (2013). War, Trade and Piracy in the China Seas, 1622–1683, Leiden and Boston: Brill. Feenstra Kuiper, Jan (1921). Japan en de buitenwereld in de achttiende eeuw, ’s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff. Fujita, Kayoko (2007). ‘Maritime Trade and Edo Material Culture: The Long-Term Trends in Textile Imports and Metal Exports of Tokugawa Japan, ca. 1600–1800’, in Shiro Momoki (ed.), Global History and Maritime Asia, Toyonaka: Osaka University, the 21st Century COE Program Interface Humanities, pp. 91–111. Fujita, Kayoko (2013). ‘Metal Exports and Textile Imports of Tokugawa Japan in the 17th Century: The South Asian Connection’, in Kayoko Fujita, Shiro Momoki and Anthony Reid (eds.), Offshore Asia: Maritime Interactions in Eastern Asia Before Steamships, Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, pp. 259–276. Gaastra, Femme S. (2003). The Dutch East India Company: Expansion and Decline, Zutphen: Walburg Pers. Glamann, Kristof (1958). Dutch-Asiatic Trade 1620–1740, Copenhagen and The Hague: Danish Science Press and Martinus Nijhoff. Goodman, Grant K. (2000). Japan and the Dutch 1600–1853, Richmond: Curzon Press. Jacobs, Els M. (2006). Merchant in Asia: The Trade of the Dutch East India Company During the Eighteenth Century, Leiden: CNWS Publications. Liu, Yong (2007). The Dutch East India Company’s Tea Trade with China, 1757–1781, Leiden and Boston: Brill. Nachod, Oskar (1897). Die Beziehungen der Niederländischen Ostindischen Kompagnie zu Japan im siebzehnten Jahrhundert, Leipzig: Rob. Friese Sep.-Cto. Ohashi, Atsuko (2010). Sekai Shisutemu to Chiiki Shakai: Nishi Jyawa ga Etamono Ushinattamono 1700–1830 (World System and Regional Society: Gain and Loss of West Java, 1700– 1830), Kyoto: Kyōto Daigaku Gakuzyutsu Shuppankai. Perlin, Frank (1987). ‘Money-use in Late Pre-colonial India and the International Trade in Currency Media’, in John F. Richards (ed.), The Imperial Monetary System of Mughal India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 232–373. Prakash, Om (1985). The Dutch East India Company and the Economy of Bengal, 1630–1720, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Prakash, Om (1998). European Commercial Enterprise in Pre-colonial India, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shimada, Ryuto (2006). The Intra-Asian Trade in Japanese Copper by the Dutch East India Company during the Eighteenth Century, Leiden and Boston: Brill. Shimada, Ryuto (2009). ‘Siamese Trade in Agricultural Products with Japan and China in the Eighteenth Century’, in A.J.H. Latham and Heita Kawakatsu (eds.), Intra-Asian Trade and Industrialization: Essays in Memory of Yasukichi Yasuba, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 52–75. Shimada, Ryuto (2010). ‘Siamese Products in the Japanese Market During the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, in Yoko Nagazumi (ed.), Large and Broad: The Dutch Impact on Early Modern Asia: In Honor of Prof. Dr. Leonard Blussé, Toyo Bunko Research Library (TBRL) No. 13, Tokyo: The Toyo Bunko, pp. 147–165. Shimada, Ryuto (2012). ‘Kinsei Kaiiki Ajia to Nihon Gin: Oranda Higashiindo Kaisha o Chūshinni (The Maritime Asian Trade and Japanese Silver in the Early Modern Period: A Perspective Based on the Historical Study of the Dutch East India Company)’, Shigaku Kenkyū (Review of the Study of History), 277: 59–73.

Gold Trade Between Japan and India by the VOC  55

Shimada, Ryuto (2015). ‘Import Trade in Precious Metals and the Economy of Japan, 1763c.1850’, in Jane Kate Leonard and Ulrich Theobald (eds.), Money in Asia (1200–1900): Small Currencies in Social and Political Contexts, Leiden and Boston: Brill, pp. 443–463. Suzuki, Yasuko (2012). Japan-Netherlands Trade 1600–1800, Kyoto and Melbourne: Kyoto University Press and Trans Pacific Press. Tashiro, Kazui (1989). ‘Exports of Japan’s Silver to China via Korea and Changes in the Tokugawa Monetary System During the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, in Eddy H.G. van Cauwenberghe (ed.), Precious Metals, Coinage and the Changes of Monetary Structures in Latin America, Europe and Asia, Leuven: Leuven University Press, pp. 99–116. Taya, Hirokichi (1973). ‘Edo Jidai Kaheihyō no Saikentō (Currency in the Edo Period)’, Shakai Keizai Shigaku (Socio-economic History), 39(3): 261–279. Yamawaki, Teijiro (1964). Nagasaki no Tōjin Bōeki (Chinese Trade in Nagasaki), Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan. Yamawaki, Teijiro (1978). Kaigai Kōshōshi (History of Foreign Relations), Tokyo: Hōsei Daigaku Tūshin Kyōikubu. Yao, Keisuke (1998). Kinsei Oranda Bōeki to Sakoku (The Dutch Trade and National Seclusion in Early Modern Japan), Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan.

4 SURAT AND NAGASAKI A comparison of two international port cities in the seventeenth century Hiromu Nagashima

Quantitative comparison of the two port cities

The main aim of this chapter is to compare some qualitative or administrative aspects of the two port cities, Nagasaki and Surat. But before that we will compare the quantitative aspects of the two ports very briefly. Area

Nagasaki city consisted of 26 inner wards and 54 outer wards in the seventeenth century. The total area of the city was about 200 hectares (Akase, 2005: 15). It was not a walled city in the seventeenth century, though the original six inner wards of the city had been surrounded by a stone wall and moats for the Society of Jesus at the end of the sixteenth century. Surat city had become encircled by dual city walls by the beginning of the eighteenth century. The area inside the inner wall was about 440 acres or 178 hectares. The area between the inner wall and the outer wall was 1,818 acres or 736 hectares. The total area of Surat was 914 hectares (GBP, 1877 II: 301). The total area of Nagasaki city was, therefore, almost equal to the area inside the inner wall of Surat. The total area of Surat was about 4.6 times the total area of Nagasaki. Population

The highest peak in population in Nagasaki during the Edo period was 64,523 in 1696. The population of Nagasaki, however, decreased rapidly to 41,553 in 1715 due to reasons such as a shortage in production of copper for export and a subsequent decrease in trade and so on. Her population decreased gradually from then and reached 27,381 at the end of the Tokugawa era (Nagasakiken, 1986: 372–383). DOI: 10.4324/9781003396666-6

Surat and Nagasaki  57

The population of Surat city in our period of interest was estimated by one European traveller to be more than 100,000 and by another to be 200,000.1 If the population of Surat was between 100,000 and 200,000, it was not a very large population. In fact, Tavernier, a French merchant and traveller in the middle of the seventeenth century, says ‘Surat is a city of moderate size’ (Tavernier, 1977 I: 6). Officers of the English factory at Surat surveyed the population of Surat and counted 124,406 in 1816 (Plan, 1817; References, 1817). A. Das Gupta, following the note on the Plan, considers that the result of the survey might have been lower than the actual population, but there is no reason to suppose that the population of Surat exceeded 150,000 souls (Das Gupta, 1979: 29; Plan, 1817). As seen in this comparison, the population of Surat city was probably from about twice to four times of that of Nagasaki city at the end of the seventeenth century. Volume of trade

Only the VOC (Dutch East India Company) and Chinese ships were allowed to enter Nagasaki port for trade after the promulgation of the national seclusion policy by the Japanese government in around 1639. Although some ships from Southeast Asian countries were also allowed to enter Nagasaki port, they are counted as Chinese ships in the following calculation. Though we skip the details of the calculation here, the total value of exports for both the VOC and the Chinese ships at Nagasaki at the end of the seventeenth century was 14,400 kanme, which came to about 5,040,000 Dutch guilders (f.5,040,000 hereafter). The ceiling for exports of the Chinese ships came to 10,200 kanme and that for the Dutch (VOC) came to 4,200 kanme (the conversion rate between 1666 and 1732 being one kanme of silver = f.350). The total volume of import and export trade was, therefore, about twice that volume, that is about f.10,080,000 (cf. Yao, 1998: 75). Das Gupta estimates the value of the trade of Surat around the year 1700 on the basis of the volume of customs in Surat. According to him, the records of the Mughal customs have been lost; even the rates for custom charges are obscure. Skipping the details of his calculations, the total customs (both imports and exports) for the season were ₹816,000, based on the diary of Jean Diodati, a member of the VOC at Surat. The rate of customs was on average 5%. Based on these data, Das Gupta estimates that Surat’s total trade came to around ₹16,320,000 in the year 1698/1699. Das Gupta himself considers that this amount was the minimum for the probable total trade of Surat (Das Gupta, 1979: 17–18). According to the study of K. Glamann, the exchange rate of one rupee at Surat in the latter half of the seventeenth century changed as follows: before 1665, 24 stuivers, from 1666, 28 stuivers, from 1683, 30 stuivers, from 1693, 35 stuivers and in 1699, 37½ stuivers. One reason for this very high exchange rate of one rupee at the end of the seventeenth century was because the Dutch government at Batavia had to rely heavily on the import of the rupee coins from Surat in those years (Glamann, 1981: 66, 68).

58  Hiromu Nagashima

If we can rely on the conversion rate of one rupee = 37½ stuivers (f.1.875), the value of total trade around 1700 comes to f.30,600,000. Though this is a very rough estimation, we may say that the volume of the total trade of Surat was about three times of that of Nagasaki at the end of the seventeenth century. We have some data of the volume of Dutch trade at Nagasaki and Surat around the year 1700. It may be of some interest to compare both volumes. The annual average sales of the Dutch East India Company at Nagasaki between 1696 and 1715 was f.1,212,357 and the annual average exports of the company from the port was f.1,128,162 (calculations based on the tables prepared by K. Yao and Y. Morioka, respectively) (Yao, 1998: 68, 93; Nagasakiken, 1986: 327–329). The total of the annual sales and exports of the company, therefore, comes to about f.2,340,000. According to Das Gupta’s study, the total amount of the Dutch trade at Surat in the year 1698/1699 was ₹1,227,362. Using the conversion rate of one rupee = f.1.875, this amount comes to about f.2,300,000. We may, therefore, infer that the total value of Dutch trade at Nagasaki was roughly equal to that of Dutch trade at Surat around the year 1700. Qualitative comparison of the two port cities Magistrate (bugyo) of Nagasaki and governor (mutasaddi) of Surat

(1) Nagasaki was one of the territories under the direct control of the shogunate (bakufu, i.e. central government) of Japan. According to T. Nakamura, under the national seclusion policy, Nagasaki had the following characteristics:  (i) Diversity and broadness in the subjects of administration: Nagasaki was involved in the national distribution of imported goods and collection of exported goods such as copper and marine products (tawaramono) from other areas of Japan. Every administrative order on foreign trade and foreign policy issued by the shogunate was promulgated also at Nagasaki city in the name of the magistrate (bugyo) of Nagasaki, and every foreign ship which drifted ashore in any place in Japan and every foreign ship which sailed to Japan was to be sailed round to Nagasaki port. The magistrate had the right to issue orders to feudal lords (daimyo) in the name of the shogunate, and he had to perform all the administrative duties at Nagasaki for such things as trade, foreign affairs, law and justice (especially for the prohibition of Christianity and smuggling), coastal defence, town administration, and accounts and personnel management of the local officers. (ii) Existence of a conspicuously large number of local officials: Local officials were not necessarily needed for practical purposes. The aim of their appointment and payment was rather to subsidise the local inhabitants. The number of local officials was 1,041 in the year 1681, a period of prosperity in trade, which was

Surat and Nagasaki  59

one-fiftieth of the whole population of Nagasaki. It increased to 2,069 in the year 1838, near the end of the Edo period, that is one-thirteenth of the whole population. (iii) The rights of officials sent to Nagasaki by the shogunate such as magistrates were apt to become hollow while the actual rights were apt to be in the grip of the local people such as the ward elders (machidoshiyori) and downward. As the term of the office of a shogunate official such as a magistrate was short, it was virtually impossible for them to be well informed concerning the local administration. The initiative for actual administration was, therefore, kept by the local officials (Nagasakiken, 1986: 388–390, 415). The number of magistrates for Nagasaki was limited to only one at first (from 1603). It increased to two from 1633, and one of them was to work at Nagasaki for one year while the other stayed in Edo (the capital of the shogunate). After that, the number of magistrates at one time changed to three (from 1686), four (from 1699), three (from 1712) and two (from 1713). Under the national seclusion, the magistrate was appointed from the ranks of hatamoto or direct retainers of the shogun, except for the final magistrate at the end of the Edo period. The hatamoto belonged to the warrior class. The largest number of magistrates was appointed from the officers of metsuke or inspectors. But the appointment from among fiscal officials increased after the firm establishment of the magistrate system at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Earlier, most of those who had finished their respective terms as a magistrate retired from public service. Later, however, many who had finished their respective terms were appointed to the magistrates (bugyo) of some other sections, especially to chief treasurers (kanjobugyo). So far as the length of term for magistrates is concerned, including one term of 16 years and another of 15 years, only seven magistrates held the office for more than ten years out of the total of 124 office-bearers throughout the Edo period. All seven were appointed by 1736. The total number of years for terms of the first 36 magistrates (1603–1711) was 194  years. The average term for the office of magistrate was, therefore, 5.39  years during the seventeenth century. The term became shorter after that, and after the end of the eighteenth century, the terms for half of the magistrates became two years or shorter. The salary for magistrates of Nagasaki increased later and they could therefore employ their own subordinate officials to enhance their prestige. The value of several kinds of presents of goods and money from local officials, townspeople, merchants, Chinese and Dutch merchants and so on was, however, more than the official salary (Nagasakiken, 1986: 414–418). (2) Roughly speaking, under the Mughal empire there were three units of local administrative and territorial areas, that is, suba (province), sarkar (subdivision of suba) and pargana (subdivision of sarkar). There was another unit for revenue purposes called mahal. Mahal was, when territorial, identical with pargana but was also non-territorial, for example market dues, customs house, mint, and so on (For mahal, see Habib, 2014: Index). In case of an ordinary sarkar, roughly speaking, there were two chief officials, that is fawjdar, commandant in charge of peace and

60  Hiromu Nagashima

order, and amalguzar, official in charge of revenue (Śaran, 1973: 193). In the case of some important ports such as Cambay (pargana) and Surat (sarkar), the chief officials were mutasaddi and fawjdar. They, or at least the mutasaddi, are considered to have been appointed directly from the Mughal central government. There was another chief who was called qil‘adar, commander in charge of the fort (qil‘a) of Surat. The Europeans of that period usually called the mutasaddi at Surat ‘the governor of Surat’, probably because he was the most important official with whom they had the closest trade and administrative relations. According to the Mir’at-i Ahmadi, fiscally, Surat sarkar consisted of 31 mahals, and Surat city (balda) itself consisted of one mahal together with the mint, corn market, etc. (MAH, Supplement: 222, 223). The mutasaddi of Surat was actually the governor of Surat sarkar and not of Surat city only, as he was usually responsible for the revenue collection not only from the non-territorial mahal in the city but also from parganas in the rural areas of Surat sarkar. It is not very clear how many changes of the mutasaddi occurred during the seventeenth century, but according to my count, there were about 15 changes (or 15 mutasaddis) in the Jahangir reign (1605–1627), 16 changes in the Shahjahan reign (from the end of 1627 to 1658) and 18 changes in the Aurangzeb reign (from the middle of 1658 to 1707), including the periods of the de facto mutasaddi and the periods for persons who are unknown and counting one period of the jointmutasaddis of the two persons as two.2 The average term of one mutasaddi was, therefore, 1.47 years under Jahangir, 2.06 years under Shahjahan, and 2.72 years under Aurangzeb. The average term of a mutasaddi between 1605 and 1707 (adding two years for the period of the joint-mutasaddis) was 2.12 years. This average term was much shorter than that of a magistrate of Nagasaki in Japan (5.39 years) in the seventeenth century, and it must have been too short for a mutasaddi to sufficiently carry out any important work (Nagashima, 1983: 67–80; cf. Rezavi, 1983: 216–217; Hasan, 1992–93: 276–280). The office of the mutasaddi was farmed out several times during the reigns of Jahangir and Shahjahan. Under their reigns the office of the ‘head of the suba’ (subadar) of Gujarat was sometimes given out to princes, and the princes seem to have had some influence over the appointments of the mutasaddi of Surat. The province of Gujarat was also sometimes assigned to a prince as his jagir (territorial revenue assignment). When Prince Khurram (Shahjahan) was the subadar cum jagirdar of Gujarat (1618–1622), Is-haq Beg, a merchant of Surat, was appointed to mutasaddi twice (1618–1619, 1621–1622). He must have been officially appointed to the post by Jahangir, but the appointments were probably decided under the strong influence of Prince Khurram, according to English correspondence at that time (EFI, 1618–1621: 150, 275, 281). At least in the latter case of the two appointments (and probably in both cases), the office was farmed out to the merchant. Shahjahan was an enterprising emperor and he farmed out the office of mutasaddi of Surat and Cambay several times to the merchants and enterprising officials during the 1630s and 1640s (cf. Nagashima, 1983: 73–74; Rezavi, 1983: 216–218; Hasan, 1992–93: 277–278). He farmed

Surat and Nagasaki  61

out the monopoly right on indigo trade to a merchant in the 1630s and had about ten big ships built and had them trade in Bandar-e Abbas and Mukha in 1651 and after. These ships had precedence over other ships in collecting freight for those ports (Van Santen, 1982: 67, 162–169). There were several rebellions and wars of succession during the reigns of Jahangir and Shahjahan. During such periods of rebellion, the mutasaddi of Surat was not appointed properly and another official seems to have taken his place as the de facto mutasaddi. Some of the mutasaddis such as Muqarrab Khan (tenure: from pre-1608 to 1615) were high-ranking officers and many of the mutasaddis held more than one post simultaneously. Muqarrab Khan, for example, was the mutasaddi of Surat and Cambay at the same time and was also appointed to several other posts: ambassador to the Portuguese at Goa (c.1610–1611) and subadar of Delhi (1612–1613). He was called to the court in 1615 and appointed as the subadar of Gujarat (1615–1616). Under such conditions, he probably could not concentrate his attention on the office of the mutasaddi of Surat. In fact, he stayed in Cambay, posting a merchant to the office corresponding to deputy-governor at Surat. There were several such cases of one and the same person being appointed to the offices of mutasaddis for Surat and Cambay: Mir Musa (Mu‘izz ul-Mulk) in 1629, Mirza Ali Akbar (1646), Mu‘izz ul-Mulk (1648), Hafiz Muhammad Nasir (1652) (cf. Rezavi, 1983: 215–219; Nagashima, 1983: 75, 77). Under Aurangzeb, there seems to have been no such case. Sometimes, the mutasaddi of Surat was appointed as the fawjdar of Surat at the same time or a little after the former: Hafiz Muhammad Nasir (mutasaddi in 1652, fawjdar in 1653), Shaykh Muhammad Amin (mutasaddi, fawjdar and diwan of Surat in 1656) (EFI, 1651–1654: 140 & n; MAH I: 229; EFI, 1655–1660: 62; MAH I: 234). Shahjahan seems to have assigned the revenue of Surat together with the income of the port to his daughter, Jahan-ara as in‘am (revenue-free land granted in reward for service but without any obligation in this case) in 1644 (PN II: 397; MAH I: 219; for i‘nam, see Habib, 2014: 131,300). Surat remained under her in‘am at least until 1657 (MAH I: 236). According to F. Hasan’s study, the practice of farming out of the post of mutasaddi was abolished by Shahjahan in 1641 (Hasan, 1992–93: 715; EFI, 1637–1641: xxvii; EFI, 1642–1645: 23–24). The mutasaddis of Surat were probably appointed directly by the emperor, even though the revenue and customs of Surat were assigned to his daughter as in‘am. After studying many aspects of mutasaddi in the seventeenth century, S.A.N. Rezavi concludes as follows: By and large, then, our information shows that the Mughal Court was generally well aware of the importance of Surat and took special interest in its administration. Important matters generally went to the Emperor himself, who also appointed the mutasaddi from amongst fairly high ranking officers of the empire. (Rezavi, 1983: 219–220)

62  Hiromu Nagashima

It is true that the Mughal Court took special interest in the administration of Surat port. But at the same time, we have to admit that there was no consistent Mughal policy in its administration. As we have seen, there was no unity in the types of mutasaddi, and the term of a mutasaddi was usually very short. Comparison of local officials of Nagasaki with those of Surat

Here we will compare the local officials of Nagasaki such as deputies (daikan), ward elders (machidoshiyori), ward headmen (machi otona) and interpreters with the local officials of Surat such as deputies (na‘ib), heads of police and town/city (kotwal), ward headmen (mir-i muhalla), spokesmen for the foreign merchants (shahbandar) and interpreters. (1) As mentioned earlier, the virtual right of the administration of Nagasaki was apt to be in the hands of local officials (jiyakunin), who belonged to the ‘townspeople’ (chonin) class. Though in the beginning a feudal lord was appointed as the first deputy (daikan) of Nagasaki, all the deputies after him were appointed from among the townspeople. The deputies from the third to sixth were Suetsugu Heizo, a famous shipowning trader and his descendants. In 1676, the office of the deputy was abolished, and its duty became in fact an additional duty of the ward elders (machidoshiyori). In 1739, however, the post of deputy was restored, and it became a hereditary post of the family of Takagi Sakuemon. Though the main duty of the deputy was initially the administration of the outer wards (sotomachi) of Nagasaki and several neighbouring villages, it later became limited only to the administration of the neighbouring villages from 1676 (Nagasakiken, 1986: 419–420). The ward elders (machidoshiyori) supervised the administration of all the wards (machi) of Nagasaki. The number of ward elders in Nagasaki was four in the earlier period. It increased to six in 1699 and finally to seven in 1766 (Nagasakiken, 1986: 422). Their offices were hereditary. Earlier, they were active as prominent merchants as well. But after the systematisation of the administration of Nagasaki, they seem to have increased their participation as active local officials while their names disappeared from the list of prominent merchants (Nagasakiken, 1986: 449–456; cf. Matsui, 2009). Each ward was represented by a ward headman (machi otona), who managed finances and preserved law and order under the supervision of the ward elders. When the systematisation of the rules for Nagasaki city was completed, there were three kinds of ward headmen. First, there were 77 ward headmen consisting of one for each of the 77 usual wards. Second, there were two ward headmen for the two wards of licenced prostitutes. Third, there were one or two ward headmen for Deshima (the small artificial island for the isolated residents of the Dutch) and two, three or four ward headmen for Tojinyashiki (the enclosed residence of the Chinese which was established in 1689), all of which were additional offices for the ward headmen of some usual wards. The Deshima ward headmen did office work in trade as assistants for interpreters, supervised repair of houses in Deshima and supervised the Japanese who were working in Deshima and so on (Nagasakiken, 1986: 425–426; Hesselink and Matsui, 2000: 51,53).

Surat and Nagasaki  63

(2) There were many minor officials under the office of the governor (mutasaddi) of Surat. Some of them were probably the governor’s subordinates coming from other places together with the governor. Some others were local officials. We will, at first, take up the position of deputy, kotwal and the position of shahbandar as representative examples of the local officials. As we have seen, a mutasaddi sometimes ruled both Cambay and Surat, and he often stayed at Cambay. In such cases, he usually appointed a deputy at Surat. The deputies were often appointed from the merchants of Surat. For example Cojanozan or Cojenassan (Khwaja Nizam?), deputy of Surat, at least in 1610–1612, and in 1614–1616, was one of the leading shipowners of Surat (Jourdain I, 1905: 138, 208; Purchas III, 1905: 180; Van den Broecke, 1962–63: 101; Downton, 1939: 23, 26, 87, 170; SC, 1928: 47). It is not very clear whether a deputy was always appointed at Surat. When the governor was staying at Surat, the deputy might not have been necessary. According to Hasan, however, the situation was as follows: where the governor was directly appointed by the imperial centre he would in turn farm his office out to his deputies (na’ibs) or split it into ‘shares’ to be farmed out to different persons. When, for example, Inayat Khan was appointed the governor of Sind and Cambay in 1663, he governed both places through his deputies. Hasan also says that Mughal administration in the localities was crucially dependent on the participation of the local gentry and merchant groups, for which the state had to provide them with gifts of ‘offices’ and a ‘share’ in imperial perquisites and privileges (Hasan, 2004: 38). The local administration of Surat was, therefore, very similar to that in Nagasaki, depending heavily on the participation of the local gentry and merchants. But the administration of Nagasaki was more systematised than that of Surat, as the farming out of offices was not common at Nagasaki. There was probably a kotwal in every town in Mughal India. On the basis of Hasan’s study, we may summarise the duties of the kotwal as follows: he was responsible for the safety and protection of the people living in a city or town. He would hunt down thieves, punish criminals, imprison delinquents and keep a record of all people living in the various quarters of the town (muhalla). He was also a kind of censor of morals. He had his officials from among the local gentry assess and collect a ‘protection cess’ from the dwellers and shopkeepers. For the maintenance of peace in the town, the kotwal depended on the dominant elements in the wards (muhalla). The ‘chief of the ward’ (mir-i muhalla) provided him with details of the ward and the spies of the kotwal were in regular contact with him. When a person first arrived in the town, he had to report his arrival to both the mir-i muhalla and the kotwal (Hasan, 2004: 39–40). The role of the kotwal may, therefore, be compared with that of the ward elders (machidoshiyori) in the case of the inner wards of Nagasaki and that of the deputy (daikan) in the case of the outer wards and the neighbouring villages, and the role of the mir-i muhalla may be compared with that of the ward headman (machi otona). The shahbandar was another local official of Surat. This official was often identified with the mir-i bahr and/or the darogha of the furza. These three officials were, however, basically different from each other. According to Das Gupta, the mir-i

64  Hiromu Nagashima

bahr was the harbour master whose men watched out for smuggling along the river banks of the Tapti River in Surat. The darogha of the furza was the customer or the head of the customshouse. These two officials were important officials under the governor (mutasaddi) of Surat. The shahbandar at the port of Surat was the spokesman for the merchants coming from abroad. Contrary to the other two officials, the shahbandar of Surat was never more than a minor figure in the beginning of the eighteenth century (Das Gupta, 1979: 23–27). The shahbandar, the mir-i bahr and the customer were basically separately held offices in the seventeenth century as well. They were held separately, for example, in 1616–1620, 1636–1637, 1641 and 1663.3 However, sometimes, a shahbandar might have held the office of mir-i bahr and/or the office of customer concurrently. Moreover, the Europeans of those days might have confused one with another (Nagashima, 1996: 1–28). Under such circumstances, it is very difficult to distinguish the original function of the shahbandar from other additional duties. But as Das Gupta says, his main duty at Surat was to mediate, for example, between the foreign merchants including the Europeans and the Mughal officials (Das Gupta, 1979: 27). One of his usual duties was to bring provisions to the foreign ships which entered the harbour of Surat. Also, he performed the duty of issuing a licence or a certificate for crossing over the Tapti River and going to Swally (i.e. outer harbour of Surat) or for a caravan’s despatch. Hendrik Zwaardekroon, chief of the VOC at Surat in 1699–1701, also identifies shahbandar as the head of the licensing office (licentie-meester) (HRB 834: 22). However, licensing does not seem to have been a monopolistic function of the shahbandar. The mutasaddi and the customer also sometimes performed the similar functions (Nagashima, 1996: 23). The term of each shahbandar usually seems to have been longer than that of the mutasaddi of Surat. In this aspect, the shahbandar was similar to the local officers of Nagasaki. Khwaja Hasan Ali (1611–1614 or 1611–1616), Mirza Is-haq Beg (probably 1616–1622 at least) and Khwaja Jalal al-Din (at least 1626–1628) seem to have been in the office for several years, and Hajji Zahid Beg probably for nearly 40 years (1629–1669), though the tenure of Mirza Mahmud was only for a very short term of one year (1628–1629). All the aforementioned shahbandars were leading Muslim merchants of Surat who originated or whose ancestors may have originated from abroad and who also widely traded abroad. Most of them were major shipowners. The shahbandars and their relatives were sometimes in charge of some other offices of Surat at the same time. When Is-haq Beg was appointed as the mutasaddi of Surat (1618–1619, 1621–1622), he probably held the office of shahbandar concurrently, as there is no evidence that someone else was the shahbandar during his tenure of mutasaddi (Nagashima, 1996: 1–28). Compared with the deputies and ward elders of Nagasaki, who increased the nature of hereditary local officials and decreased their role as leading merchants in foreign trade under the seclusion policy of the bakufu, the deputies and shahbandars of Surat seem to have retained their roles as leading merchants in foreign trade, at least during the seventeenth century.

Surat and Nagasaki  65

(3) As for interpreters, we will take up the case of Surat first. According to A.J. Qaisar’s study concerning the Indian response to European technology and culture in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, at the outset of the encounter between Indians and Europeans, the function of an interpreter seems to have been performed by a specialised professional group of individuals called dobhashi, but in course of time the tasks of brokers and dobhashis merged. Thus, a large number of middlemen who gradually acquired a good working knowledge of one or two European languages emerged (Qaisar, 1982:110). The Portuguese language held sway throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in India. Qaisar agrees with C.R. Boxer’s remark that Portuguese was, at that time, the commercial lingua franca of the Far East to such a degree that even the Japanese could speak and write it (Boxer, 1968: 57; Qaisar, 1982: 112& 185, n15). There were Indians who spoke very good Portuguese in Gujarat and North India (Qaisar, 1982: 111). We know, however, that the English sometimes complained of the insufficient interpretations by the Indian brokers. Thomas Roe, the English ambassador to the Mughal Court in the early years of the seventeenth century, complained that the brokers (interpreters) did not interpret the English king’s letter and Roe’s words literally at the Mughal Court. Roe said, These [i.e. the brokers] speak not what I command but what they conceive is fit, by example of others that have ever sought to content and not to contest, which is here very needful and works as well as physic [i.e. medicine]. (Letters Received IV: 13) The English were, therefore, dissatisfied with the interpreters, not simply due to their ability but due to their attitude. As we will see later, such attitudes in the interpreters were the same as in Japan. As Qaisar says, the Mughal central government does not seem to have had any official interpreters for foreign languages such as Portuguese, English and so on (Qaisar, 1982: 184), though we know that Asaf Khan, brother of Nur Jahan (Jahangir’s queen), had his Armenian subordinate translate the letter of the English king to Jahangir. The letter was at first translated by the English into Portuguese and then by the Armenian into Persian (Letters Received III: 64). Roe also relied on his Armenian subordinate who used to write in Persian, for Persian was the only language that reached the Mughal king (Letters Received IV: 13). When Roe had an audience with Jahangir in 1615, the latter asked Roe’s interpreter if he had told Roe what he had said (Letters Received III: 15). However, when Thomas Kerridge of the English Company had an audience with Jahangir in 1613, ‘the Jesuits being present made a sinister construction [against the English] to the king’ (Letters Received I: 282; II: 108). The Jesuits seem to have played the role as a kind of unofficial anti-English adviser to the king. On the basis of Boxer’s study, Qaisar briefly comments on the condition in Japan as follows: ‘Boxer adds that guilds of interpreters had grown up in Japan whose membership was hereditary. Besides, there were official Japanese interpreters too.

66  Hiromu Nagashima

We do not hear of such guilds in India, nor of official Indian interpreters’ (Qaisar, 1982: 184). We will examine the conditions in Japan a little more, based on the studies of Y. Arano, Y. Matsui and K. Katagiri. In the beginning of the seventeenth century, there were several kinds of interpreters at Hirado (a Japanese port town where the Portuguese ships visited since 1555 and the Dutch (1609–1640) and English (1613–1623) also had factories there), and the distinction among them was not clear: (1) interpreters who belonged to the European factories, (2) those who belonged to a member of the factories, (3) those who belonged to the feudal lords, (4) those who didn’t belong to any factories or any feudal lords. There were more part-time interpreters than full-time interpreters. The interpreters were not yet established completely as a profession. In the earlier stage, the interpreters for both the Dutch and English factories were mainly interpreters for the Portuguese language. Even after the national seclusion in 1639, the interpreters for the Dutch used both the Portuguese and Dutch languages till the end of the seventeenth century (Arano, 1993: 243–254; Nagasakiken:690; cf. Boxer, 1968: 58; Qaisar, 1982: 112). After the promulgation of the national seclusion order by the central government of Japan, among the European factories, only the Dutch factory was allowed to stay in Japan. The Dutch factory was, however, forced to shift from Hirado to Nagasaki (to the island called Deshima). The interpreters had been merchants (and/or brokers) in Hirado previously. But in Nagasaki, the interpreters were not allowed to remain merchants. They were made officials under the magistrate of Nagasaki and were not allowed to get a salary from the Dutch factory. The Orandatsuji (a Dutch interpreter) did the office work of trading and diplomatic and cultural negotiations with the Dutch. They were to play the role of watchers and inspectors of the Dutch rather than their agents while the Dutch themselves were prohibited to learn Japanese under the seclusion policy (Arano, 1993: 255–257). It is true that, as Boxer and Qaisar say, guilds of interpreters had grown in Japan whose membership was hereditary (Boxer, 1936: 58; Qaisar, 1982: 184). But the guilds were organised under the supervision of the government and hereditary membership developed only gradually, during 20 or 30 years after the introduction of the seclusion policy (Matsui, 2007: 147–161). There were still many private (i.e. unofficial) interpreters who worked as intermediaries between the Japanese and the Dutch in the earlier years after the seclusion (Arano, 1993: 256). They were organised into a lower rank of interpreters for Dutch called naitsuji (private interpreters) later (Katagiri, 1985: 31–32). According to Engelbert Kaempfer, when he was at Nagasaki (i.e. 1690–1692), there were four daitsuji (elder interpreters), four kotsuji (younger interpreters), more than eight keikotsuji (apprentice interpreters) and more than 100 naitsuji (private interpreters) among the interpreters for Dutch (Nagasakiken, 1986: 689; Kaempfer, 1906 II: 198–206). The government appointed interpreters for several languages such as the Portuguese, Nanjing Chinese, Tonkinese (Vietnamese), Siamese, Moor language (mainly Persian) and a language used in Luzon Island (the Philippines), besides

Surat and Nagasaki  67

the interpreters for the Dutch. Inferring from extant documents, the interpreters for the Dutch in Japan translated the documents of the VOC not literally but in accord with the Japanese style of writing documents. Sometimes, they asked the Dutch to change the original Dutch documents to something Japanese authorities would accept (Matsui, 2007: 153). In this respect, as we have seen, their attitude was similar to that of the interpreters of the English Company towards the Mughal authorities. Control of the foreigners and foreign trade

(1) The territory called Nagasaki was donated by a local feudal lord to the Society of Jesus in 1580. But Toyotomi Hideyoshi, on the eve of his unification of Japan, confiscated Nagasaki from the Society of Jesus and made it a territory under direct control of the central government and prohibited Christianity there. Even then foreign trade continued as more or less free trade. In the Edo period, especially after the promulgation of the national seclusion policy, the foreign trade in Japan came under close government control, and Japanese were prohibited from going abroad. And after the Portuguese expulsion from Japan in 1639, only Chinese ships (including those which came from the Southeast Asian ports) and Dutch ships were allowed to trade with Japan. Foreign trade was allowed only at Nagasaki and from 1641, the Dutch of the VOC were confined to Deshima, a small artificial island in Nagasaki bay. The Chinese were also forced to live inside the Tojinyashiki (A walled Chinese settlement) in Nagasaki from 1689.4 The trading system was changed several times during the seventeenth century as follows: (i) the itowappu or pancado system (1604–1655), (ii) the aitai shobai or ‘trade by common consent’ system (1655–1672), (iii) the shiho shoho or ‘taxation trade’ system (1672–1684), (iv) the jodaka or ‘limitation trade’ system (1685–1715). The aitai shobai system was advantageous to the Dutch while the shiho shoho system was disadvantageous to them. But mainly due to shortage of space, I will trace only the main points of the final system, relying mostly on Matsui’s study. In 1685, the implementation of ‘limitation trade’ (jodaka system) started. In 1683, the Qing Court of China succeeded in defeating the Ming loyalists in Formosa. As a result, the number of Chinese junks coming to Japan suddenly increased. Facing this new situation, the Japanese government put a limit on the total volume of foreign trade. Among the goods Dutch ships brought to Japan, those products brought in by private individuals were also subject to strict regulations. In practice, with the exception of raw silk, trade negotiations took the shape of ‘transactions by mutual consent’ or free trade. However, surplus merchandise that was over the allowed volume had to be taken back home. During the Genroku period (1688–1704), foreign trade was again reorganised. In 1695, a system called shiromonogae or ‘barter’ was introduced in response to the need to expand trade without increasing the outflow of precious metals. In 1697, the Nagasaki kaisho or Nagasaki accounting office was established. This office fell under the jurisdiction of the central accounting office of the bakufu. The Nagasaki

68  Hiromu Nagashima

accounting office controlled (i) the trade in Nagasaki and (ii) the finances of the city’s wards as a unit. It paid the local officials at Nagasaki, as well as the costs for managing the trade, out of income derived from profits on the sale of the imported bulk merchandise to domestic merchants, tax connected with shiromonogae and various commissions and tolls. From what was left over, the accounting office distributed subsidies to the citizens of the wards of Nagasaki and the rest became income for the bakufu.5 These changes had important consequences for the Dutch trade in Japan. The total volume of the trade decreased, and so did the amount of gold exported as compared to former periods of the taxation trade. Chinese trade in Japan was probably also affected in the same way (Hesselink and Matsui, 2000: 41–51). Matsui remarks on the new regulations introduced in 1715 as follows: In 1715 regulations known as ‘the new laws of the Shotoku period’ (Shotoku shinrei) [the Shotoku period being 1711–1716] were issued, representing a synthesis of all the changes previously tried during the Jokyo (1684–1688) and Genroku (1688–1704) periods. The main aim of the new regulation was a fully controlled system of trade under the Nagasaki accounting office. They put additional limits on the total volume of the yearly trade and the amount of gold, silver and copper allowed for export. The value of the imports was again decided by the Japanese. The system remained basically unchanged until the last days of the Tokugawa bakufu. (Hesselink and Matsui, 2000: 51) It was, therefore, probably not the local officers but the central government of Japan that made the master plan for each trade system introduced in Nagasaki, though at the same time it had to consult with the local officers and attend to the welfare of the merchants and citizens of Nagasaki. (2) Concerning the characteristics of the Mughal fiscal system, Hasan points out as follows: The Mughal fiscal system had two distinct elements. One was purely local where a large number of cesses not sanctioned by the imperial court were realized from the merchants. The other element was ‘imperial’ wherein belonged the taxes authorised and sanctioned by the court; the court even laying down the exact percentage to be taken. However, even in the case of ‘imperial cesses’, . . . the local officials enjoyed considerable discretion and freedom of action. (Hasan, 1993: 711) The court, it seems, considered itself as an adjudicator of disputes between the merchants and officials, rather than an active authority controlling the fiscal administration of the port-cities. (Hasan, 1993: 716)

Surat and Nagasaki  69

The Mughal central government’s control of foreigners who were also merchants was, therefore, not as strong and systematic as it was in Japan. The European companies could have their factories and other related facilities in areas both inside and outside of the inner wall of Surat city. The companies changed the locations of their factories within Surat city several times in the seventeenth century. They constructed huge mausoleums with arches and domes in their cemeteries in Surat, while no such huge mausoleums were built by the Dutch company in Nagasaki (Nagashima, 2009: 192–228). At Surat, it happened many times that as a result of some trouble a European company closed the entrance of the port and in retaliation for that, the governor of Surat arrested the members of the company or confined them to their factory (Nagashima, 1988: 92–93). At Nagasaki, the control of the shogunate on the Dutch company was so strong that the Dutch never tried to close the entrance of the port of Nagasaki. Under the Mughal empire, the rate of customs for imported and exported items was lower than in many of the other countries around the Indian Ocean. The official rates for customs of the Mughal empire were usually from 2.5% to 5% ad valorem, though they were sometimes changed for some specific groups due to specific reasons. Indian ships had to pay customs to the Portuguese at the ports controlled by the Portuguese such as Diu and they had to buy passes from the Portuguese and later also from the English and Dutch factories. However, the merchants and the authorities of the Mughal empire usually seem to have submitted to the payments, as these payments were not very huge for them. Some items of trade, such as raw materials for ammunition, were declared to be prohibited goods. For example the English Company was allowed to sell lead to no one except the governor of Surat. Lead was said to be the king’s commodity (EFI, 1651–1654: 140). Saltpetre, which was produced in some parts of the empire, was also considered a prohibited commodity, though the prohibition was not very strict and the English, for example, could buy it by paying ‘some acknowledgement to the governor of the place where it was produced’ (EFI, 1634–1636: 182). As we have seen, Shahjahan was an enterprising ruler. He monopolised the indigo trade for some time in the 1630s, and he had about ten large ships built and had them sent to Bandar-e Abbas and Mukha to earn precious metals in the 1650s. These ships had precedence over other ships in gathering freight for abroad. The revenue and customs from Surat sarkar were usually kept by the imperial treasury but were sometimes granted to some of the royal family members. The only clear aim of the administration of Surat was probably to increase the income of revenue and customs and keep law and order. The rates of revenue and customs were to some extent fixed. Thus, to increase income, an increase in the volume of trade was necessary, and the mutasaddis who failed to increase the income of revenues and customs or who oppressed people, especially merchants, too much and brought about their open resistance were naturally recalled to the imperial court. But there seems to be no more positive policy than the one mentioned earlier, except perhaps during some years under Shahjahan’s reign.

70  Hiromu Nagashima

Conclusion

We have seen that at Surat or probably in a large part of the Mughal empire there does not seem to have been such strong and systematic control of trade as was introduced in Japan in the same period. The government of India or the Mughal empire usually did not restrict foreigners coming into India for trade or people of India going out for trade from India. Traders had to pay customs, but the rates for the customs were rather low. However, in other words, this means that there was no need for strict control of trade in India at that time, probably because India was a country of abundant exportable items such as cotton goods and indigo, and getting precious metals and copper in exchange for Indian goods was not very difficult, though as we have seen, Shahjahan took special interest in importing precious metals from abroad. The main item of export in Japan at the beginning of the seventeenth century was precious metals and a large amount was exported. But in the latter half of the century, the government of Japan felt the shortage of precious metals, and later copper also, as a result of such abundant export. The government, therefore, began to limit the export of precious metals and copper by limiting the volume of trade itself. Besides the above reasons, compared with the East Asian region and European region, trade control on foreigners seems to have been weak in the Indian Ocean region, as M. Haneda shows in the case of Iran in the seventeenth century (Haneda, 2009: 13–23). But it is also said that even in Japan control of foreigners and foreign trade before national seclusion was rather as weak as it was in countries in the Indian Ocean region, as we have seen at Hirado. The strong control of foreigners and foreign trade was a rather exceptional outcome which appeared after the national seclusion in Japan (Arano, 1993: 243–263). It is, however, yet to be examined whether control of foreigners and foreign trade before national seclusion was really as weak as that in the Indian Ocean region. Notes 1 The former is Manuel Godinho’s estimate in 1663, and the latter is that of Alexander Hamilton around 1700 (cf. Raychaudhuri and Habib, 1982 (Section by I. Habib): 171). 2 Mainly according to my study (Nagashima, 1983: 69–80) and making up for its deficiencies by the studies of some other scholars (Das Gupta, 1979; Rezavi, 1983; Hasan, 1992–93), we may get a following list of the governors (mutasaddi) (including de facto mutasaddi and periods for persons who are unknown) of Surat in turn: In the reign of Jahangir: ①Muqarrab Khan, ②Zulfiqar Khan, ③Ibrahim Khan, ④Jamal Khan, ⑤Mirza Is-haq Beg, ⑥Mirza Jamshid Beg, ⑦Mirza Is-haq Beg, ⑧Mirza Jamshid Beg (?), ⑨Hakim ‘Abd Allah, ⑩Bahadur Khan, ⑪Mirza Shadman, ⑫Bahadur Khan, ⑬Sayf Khan, ⑭Unknown, ⑮Mirza Jan Quli Beg. In the reign of Shahjahan: ①Mir Shams al-Din, ②Mir Musa (Mu‘izz al-Mulk), ③Hakim Masih al-Zaman, ④Mu‘izz al-Mulk, ⑤Mirza Jan Quli Beg, ⑥&⑦Sharaf al-Din Husayn & Mir Hashim, ⑧Mirza Amin, ⑨Mirza ‘Ali Akbar Isfahani, ⑩Mu‘izz alMulk, ⑪Mirza ‘Arab, ⑫Hafiz Muhammad Nasir, ⑬Shaykh Muhammad Amin, ⑭Muhammad Qasim, ⑮‘Abd al-Latif, ⑯Mirza Mina.

Surat and Nagasaki  71

In the reign of Aurangzeb: ①Sadiq Muhammad Khan (?), ②Amini Gujarati (?), ③Mirza ‘Arab Khawafi, ④Mustafa Khan (Mir Ahmad Khawafi, son of ③), ⑤‘Inayat Khan, ⑥Ghiyas al-Din Khan, ⑦Unknown, ⑧Rustam Zamir (or Rawshan Zamiir), ⑨Mirza Sayf Allah, ⑩Ghiyas al-Din Khan, ⑪Mirza Muhammad Beg (later Kartalab Khan, Shuja‘at Khan), ⑫Salabat Khan, ⑬I‘timad Khan (Mulla Muhammad Tahir), ⑭Amanat Khan (Mir Husayn), ⑮Diyanat Khan, ⑯I‘tibar Khan, ⑰Najabat Khan, ⑱Amanat Khan. Based on SD: Supplément 482 (manuscrits persans. Anquetil 51), Bibliothèque Nationale de France (Paris): f. 49(a), Hasan points out that from 1642 to 1645 the responsibility of the administration of Surat (i.e. office of mutasaddi) was jointly shared by two brothers, Mir Sharafuddin Husayn and Mir Hashim (⑥ & ⑦ in Shajahan’s reign [Hasan, 1992–23: 278]. However, according to (DRB 1643–44: 196; EFI 1642–45: 160 & n), Salahuddin Husain was appointed to the mutasaddi of Surat on 6 October 1643 and Mirza Jan Quli Beg, former mutasaddi, left Surat at the end of 1643 (by Gregorian calendar). We have, therefore, counted the number of mutasaddis in Shahjahan’s reign as 16 and have added two years (instead of three years) to the Jahangir’s reign of 22 years to calculate the average term for the office of a mutasaddi under his reign. 3 Hasan considers that the mutasaddi of Surat entrusted the task of realisation of customs dues from overseas trade to the shahbandar, who was described in the English sources as ‘customer’ (Hasan, 2004: 38). But when ‘Inayat Khan was the mutasddi in 1663, the customer (‘head of the custom-house’) was his eldest son and the shahbandar was Hajji Muhammad Zahid Beg, one of the leading merchants of Surat, as Hasan himself admits that Zahid Beg held the office for a long time from 1629 to 1669 (Hasan, 2004: 38; see EFI 1661–1664: 206). There is some doubt whether he held the office of shahbandar from 1629 to 1669 continuously, as a Dutch letter despatched from Surat to Batavia in 1645 mentioned him as ‘former shahbandar in Surat’ (geweesen sabandaer in Suratte) (DB 1644–1645: 257). There is no doubt, however, he and Virji Vohra were two persons who represented the merchants of Surat at least in the 1950s and 1960s of the seventeenth century (ML II: 7, 250; EFI 1661–1664: 299, 308, 313; Tavernier, 1977 I: 6; cf. Nagashima, 1996: 8). 4 Strictly speaking, there were four foreign trade ports in Japan after implementation of the national seclusion policy: (i) Nagasaki for the Dutch and the Chinese ships including those from the Southeast Asian countries, (ii) Tsushima for the Korean kingdom, (iii) Satsuma (Kagoshima) for the Ryukyu kingdom, (iv) Matsumae at the entrance of Ezochi (modern Hokkaido) for the Ainu nation. 5 According to K. Yao, the Nagasaki kaisho was essentially a government office that monopolised the trade of all the merchandise imported by Chinese and Dutch ships. It purchased all the Dutch imports en masse, deducted Dutch living expenses and paid off the remainder in export products. The city of Nagasaki was under direct shogunal control but at the same time, as many people of Nagasaki were appointed to the local officials of the Nagasaki kaisho, the entire city of Nagasaki operated in a way as a national trading enterprise under the Nagasaki kaisho (Yao, 2000: 60).

Bibliography Unpublished sources with their abbreviations HRB: Hooghe Regeering te Batavia, 834 (Memoir of Hendrik Zwaardecroon in 1701), National Archives, the Hague.

72  Hiromu Nagashima

Published sources with their abbreviations Downton (1939). Voyage of Nicholas Downton to the East Indies as Recorded in Contemporary Narratives and Letters, (ed.) Sir William Foster, London: Hakluyt Society. DRB (1887–1931, 1964). Daghregister gehouden int Casteel Batavia vant passerende daer ter plaetse als over geheel Nederlandts-Indie 1624–82, (eds.) J.A. Van der Chijs and J.E. Heeres a. o., 32 vols., Batavia: Landsdrukkerij and Hage: M. Nijhoff. EFI (1907–27). The English Factories in India, (ed.) W. Foster, 13 vols., Oxford: Clarendon Press. Jourdain (1905). The Journal of John Jourdain Describing His Experiences in Arabia, India and the Malaya Archipelago, (ed.) Sir William Foster, Cambridge: Hakluyt Society. Kaempfer, Engelbert (1906). The History of Japan Together With a Description of the Kingdom of Siam 1690–92, (tr.) J.G. Scheuchzer, 3 vols., Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons, (First edition, London, 1727, 2 vols). Letters Received (1896–1902). Letters Received by the East India Company From Servants in the East, (ed.) W. Foster, 6 vols., London: Sampson Low, Marston & Company. MAH: ‘Ali Muhammad Khan (1927–28, 1930). Mir’at-I Ahmadi, (ed.) Nawab Ali, 2 vols. & Supplement, Baroda: Oriental Institute (Part I & Supplement) & Central Library (Part II). ML：Muammad Hasim Khafi Khan (1860–74). Muntakhab al-Lubab, Part II, (ed.) K.D. Ahmad and B. Haig, Calcutta: Bibliotheca Indica. Plan: Survey Office (1817). Plan of the City of Surat, Surveyed by Lieutenant Adams and Newport of the Revenue Survey Department Goojerat. Preserved in the British Library [The British Library Shelfmark: IOR: X/2737]. PN: ‘Abd al-kamal Lahori (1866–72). Padshahnama, (eds.) Kabir al-Din Ahmad, Abd alRahim and W.N. Lees, 2 vols., Calcutta: Bibiotheca Indica. Purchas, S. (ed.). (1905). Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas His Pilgrimes, 20 vols., Vol. III, Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons. References: Survey Office (1817). References to the Plan of the City of Surat Executed by the Officers of the Revenue Survey Department, Goojerat, Preserved in the British Library [The British Library Shelfmark: IOR: X/2738]. SC (1928). A Supplementary Calendar of Documents in the India Office Relating to India or to the Home Affairs of the East India Company, 1600–1640, (ed.) W. Foster, London: India Office. Tavernier, J.B. (1977). Travels in India, 1640–67, (tr.) V. Ball, 2 vols., 1st edition 1889, London; 2nd edition revised by W. Crooke, London, 1925; First Indian Edition, 1977. Van den Broecke, Pieter (1962–63). Pieter van den Broecke in Azië, (ed.) W. Ph. Coolhaas, 2 vols., s-Gravenhage: Linschoten-Vereeniging.

Modern works with their abbreviations Akase, Hiroshi (2005). ‘Kabushiki Kaisha’ Nagasaki Dejima, Tokyo: Kodansha, (in Japanese). Arano, Yasunori (1993). ‘Tsuyakuron: Josetsu (On the Interpreters: An Introduction), (in Japanese)’, in Arano Yasunori, Ishii Masatoshi and Murai Shosuke (eds.), The History of Japan in Asia, Vol. V, Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, pp. 243–263. Boxer, Charles R. (1936). Jan Compagnie in Japan, 1600–1817, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Boxer, C.R. (1968). The Portuguese Seaborne Empire, London: Hutchinson, Das Gupta, Ashin (1979). Indian Merchants and the Decline of Surat c. 1700–1750, Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag. GBP (1877). Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, (Gujarat, Surat and Broach), (ed.) J.M. Campbell, Vol. II, Bombay: Government Central Press.

Surat and Nagasaki  73

Glamann, Kristof (1981). Dutch -Asiatic Trade 1620–1740, s-Gravenhage, 1st Edition: 1958, Copenhagen: Danish Science Press and The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Habib, Irfan (2014). The Agrarian System of Mughal India 1556–1707, 3rd Edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press (abbr. OUP), (1st Edition, New York: Asia Publishing House, 1963). Haneda, Masashi (2009). ‘Canton, Nagasaki and the Port Cities of the Indian Ocean: A Comparison’, in Haneda Masashi (ed.), Asian Port Cities, 1600–1800: Local and Foreign Interactions, Singapore: NUS Press and Kyoto: Kyoto University Press, pp. 13–23. Hasan, Farhat (1992–93). ‘The Mutasaddi of Surat- Evidence of Persian Records of the 17th Century’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress (abbr. PIHC), 53rd Session (Warangal), pp. 276–280. Hasan, Farhat (1993). ‘The Mughal Fiscal System in Surat and the English East India Company’, Modern Asian Studies, 27(4): 711–718. Hasan, Farhat (2004). State and Locality in Mughal India: Power Relations in Western India, c. 1572–1730, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (abbr. CUP). Hesselink, Reinier H. and Matsui, Yoko (2000). ‘Sakoku, or Japan “Closed off” From the World: A New Stage: The Second Half of the Seventeenth Century’, in Leonard Blussé, Willem Remmelink and Ivo Smits (eds.), Bridging the Divide: 400 Years The Netherlands― Japan, Hilversum: Teleac/NOT, pp. 35–53. Katagiri, Kazuo (1985). Oranda Tsuji no Kenkyu (A Study of the Interpreters for the Dutch) (in Japanese), Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kobunkan. Matsui, Yoko (2007). ‘Edojidai Deshima ni okeru Nichirankankei no Ninaitetachi (Those Who Played Important Roles in the Japan-Dutch Relations at Deshima in the Edo Period)’, in Haneda Masashi (ed.), Eurasia ni okeru Bunka no Koryu to Tenpen (The Exchange and Change of Cultures in Eurasia), (in Japanese), Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Toyobunka Kenkyujo, pp. 147–161. Matsui, Yoko (2009). ‘The Factory and the People in Nagasaki: Otona, Tolk, Compradoor’, Paper presented at the conference of ‘Canton and Nagasaki Compared’, Tokyo and Nagasaki, 29 November and 4 December. Nagasakiken, P. (ed.) (1986). Nagasakikenshi: Taigai Kosho Hen (History of Nagasaki Prefecture: Foreign Relations) (in Japanese), Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kobunkan. Nagashima, Hiromu (1983). ‘A Table of the Governors (Mutaaddī) of Surat Sarkar of the Mughal Empire (1605–1707) (in Japanese)’, The Research and Study (Published by Culture and Economy Research Institute, Nagasaki Prefectural University of International Economics), 14(1): 69–80. Nagashima, Hiromu (1988). ‘Merchants and Rulers in Gujarat during the 17th Century: Didn’t the Merchants of Surat City Want to Be Protected by the Rulers?’ in H.I.H. Prince Takahito Mikasa (ed.), Cultural and Economic Relations between East and West: Sea Routes, Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassouwitz, pp. 89–96. Nagashima, Hiromu (1996). ‘The Shahbandar at Surat in the Mughal Empire’, Nagasaki Prefectural University Review, 29(4): 1–28. Nagashima, Hiromu (2009). ‘The Factories and Facilities of the East India Companies in Surat: Locations, Building Characteristics and Ownership’, in Haneda Masashi (ed.), Asian Port Cities, 1600–1800: Local and Foreign Interactions, Singapore: NUS Press and Kyoto: Kyoto University Press, pp. 192–228. Qaisar, Ahsan Jan (1982). The Indian Response to European Technology and Culture (A.D. 14981707), Delhi: OUP. Raychaudhuri, Tapan and Habib, Irfan (eds.) (1982). The Cambridge Economic History of India, Vol. I: c.1200-c.1750, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rezavi, Syed Ali Nadeem (1983). ‘The Mutasaddis of Surat in the Seventeenth Century’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, PIHC, 44th Session (Burdwan), pp. 214–222.

74  Hiromu Nagashima

Śaran, P. (1973). The Provincial Government of the Mughals 1526–1658, 2nd Edition, New York: Asia Publishing House, (First Published, 1941). Van Santen, H.W. (1982). ‘De Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie in Gujarat en Hindustan, 1620–1660’, Unpublished Ph. D thesis, Leiden. Yao, Keisuke (1998). Kinsei Oranda Boeki to Sakoku (The Dutch Trade and National Seclusion in Early Modern Japan) (in Japanese), Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kobunkan. Yao, Keisuke (2000). ‘The Geldkamer’, in Leonard Blussé, Willem Remmelink and Ivo Smits (eds.), Bridging the Divide: 400 Years The Netherlands－Japan, Hilversum: Teleac/ NOT, p. 60.

PART 2

Merchants and Trading Networks

5 ROADS AND SECURITY BETWEEN AGRA AND SURAT DURING THE SEVENTEENTH AND EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES Shinsaku Kato

Introduction

This chapter explores the two main routes between Agra and Surat during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. One of early modern India’s characteristics is the development of long-distance overland trade that connected markets that were spread over the Indian subcontinent. For example according to O. Prakash, regular trade was conducted between Gujarat and Bengal during the Mughal period (Prakash, 2012: 26). Furthermore, I. Habib argued that even food crops were affected by the demands of long-distance trade, although due to cost, they hardly became an object of long-distance trade (Habib, 2014: 82). This progress in long-distance land trade was realised as a result of the welldeveloped infrastructure or transportation system, which was also developed in the late medieval and early modern period. From the end of the fifteenth century, the rulers of the Lodi Sultanate were eager to furnish the highways with facilities of communication and transportation such as bridges and caravanserais. These facilities improved the state of transportation and strengthened links among towns or between towns and villages. The Mughal emperors also briskly provided communication facilities. Consequently, roads radiated in all directions within the territory of the Mughal empire from Agra, the centre of the empire. All the important urban centres had been linked with each other by roads through Agra (Naqvi, 1972: 59–60, 66). During the Mughal period, the communication and transportation system saw considerable improvement. The government placed watchmen on the highways to safeguard against thieves prowling the highways for travellers. Provincial governors and district officers assumed responsibility for safety and improvement of roads. Village chiefs, such as zamindars, also played important roles in protecting travellers, peddlers, and merchants from burglars and other attacks. These measures enhanced DOI: 10.4324/9781003396666-8

78  Shinsaku Kato

the condition of roads. People came to travel easier and more safely. This led to an increased commodity flow and the development of long-distance trade by land (Naqvi, 1972: 66; Farooque, 1977: 12–15). The development of land transportation and long-distance trade contributed to the growth of maritime trade in this period. According to H.K. Naqvi, the regions between Surat and Agra ‘appear to have enjoyed the best communication facilities that the period could offer’ (Naqvi, 1972: 69). Surat was the most prosperous port in the Mughal empire, located on the north-west coast of the Indian subcontinent. From the middle of the sixteenth century, Surat gradually grew into the main port of Gujarat. This was because Cambay began to decline in the late sixteenth century due to siltation in the Gulf of Cambay (Subrahmanyam, 2000: 31–32). Furthermore, Surat’s development was accelerated by the annexations of Gujarat (1573) and Khandesh (1601) into the empire. After the annexations, Surat formed a deep connection with North India, a production centre of cotton textiles and indigo. There was strong demand for these two commodities from overseas markets. Due to the aforementioned annexations and the resultant strong connection between Surat and North India, merchants could bring increasingly large volumes of these goods from North India to Surat and export them overseas from there with ease. Surat thus developed into the major port in the Mughal empire and enjoyed its heyday during the late seventeenth century. Considering that Surat’s growth was closely related to its connection with North India, the routes that supported this important connection deserve to be examined. There were two main routes that connected Surat with North India, especially Agra. The first extended eastwards from Surat to Burhanpur, then turned northwards to Agra. The second route led from Surat to Agra, passing through Ahmadabad and Ajmer. As stated earlier, these two routes are considered to have been well provided with communication facilities by the Mughal empire. However, because there are few studies about the actual state of these routes, it remains a question as to what kinds of difficulties travellers faced, how dangerous these highways were and how travellers defended themselves from danger. This chapter analyses routes between Agra and Surat with consideration to their actual states. It specifically focuses on caravanserais in highways, which were lodges that offered safe accommodation and food to travellers and merchants, thus serving as indispensable rest house. As J. Deloche observed, the caravanserai was a vital organ in the system of land communication and transport during the Mughal period. The Mughal rulers vigorously established caravanserais on highways to assure travellers’ comfort and welfare on their journeys (Deloche, 1993: 168). First, I will explain the features of caravanserais in Mughal India. I will then analyse the Mughal policy on caravanserais and argue that their construction proceeded gradually in the seventeenth century. Furthermore, the number of caravanserais on the roads between Agra and Surat will be scrutinised. Lastly, this chapter examines ways of assuring travel safety.

Roads and Security Between Agra and Surat  79

Caravanserais in Mughal India

In the pre-railway days, long-distance travel was time-consuming, and travellers had to take rest on their way. Some pitched tents in fields; however, this practice was dangerous because there were often numerous bandits lurking, wating for opportunities to attack vulnerable highway travellers, such as those camping in fields.1 To avoid this risk, travellers preferred caravanserais, which offered comfortable, safe lodgings. At every caravanserai, there was an official who was charged with closing the gates at sunset for security. After shutting the gates, the official would call out to everyone, reminding them to secure their belongings, including their horses, which they should picket by their fore and hind legs. At six o’clock the next morning, before the watchman reopened the gates, he gave travellers three warnings, crying out again, in a loud voice, that everyone was advised to secure their possessions. This practice ensured safe, comfortable accommodation for travellers. It is important to note that the caravanserai’s chief purpose was to offer travellers safe rest. These establishments were intended for travellers only; soldiers did not use such facilities (Della Valle, 1892, Vol. 1: 95; Jourdain, 1905: 152, 164; Manucci, 1907–1908, Vol. 1: 68–69; Tavernier, 1676, Vol. 2: 34). Caravanserais can be divided into two categories. One was the highway caravanserai, and the other was the caravanserai in relatively large cities, such as Agra, Delhi, Ahmadabad and Surat. The former provided travellers, including merchants, with food and lodging, as has been stated earlier; the latter also offered accommodation to foreigners. One important characteristic of this latter category of caravanserais is that these were located close to one of the frequented gateways and a main city marketplace (Khan, 1987–88: 134–135). This type of caravanserai served as a rendezvous for foreign merchants, who might remain in the caravanserai for a few days until they had seen their acquaintances. Such caravanserais functioned as warehouses as well as lodges, with commercial activity being conducted there (Bernier, 1891: 280–281). In addition, there was a certain caravanserai that a particular merchant group used exclusively as a trading post or that which the Mughal official utilised as a provincial treasury (De Thevenot, 1684: 209; Van den Broecke, 1962, Vol. 2: 268). Following local demands, the Muslim monarchs of India invested in building caravanserais to ensure travellers’ comfort both in towns and along highways. Caravanserais were also set up for charity by private individuals or corporate bodies (Naqvi, 1972: 67; Khan, 1987–1988: 113). Some of those charitable persons were Mughal royal family members and high officials. For example Nur Jahan, the Mughal empress, established a considerably large stone caravanserai at Agra. Begum Saheb, one of Shah Jahan’s daughters, also constructed caravanserais in Delhi and Kirka at her own expense (Bernier, 1891: 280–281; Mundy, 1907–1936, Vol. 2: 78; Pelsaert, 1979: 299; Tavernier, 1676, Vol. 2: 30). To perpetuate their names, these patrons briskly founded new caravanserais, replete with gardens, reservoirs and ponds. In addition to caravanserais, they built wells or tanks near the busy highways, from which travellers could drink (Early Travels, 1921: 325; Manucci,

80  Shinsaku Kato

1907–1908, Vol. 1: 116). Some of the wealthy merchants also funded the construction of caravanserais (Sarkar, 1925: 42). According to I.A. Khan, most caravanserais were supported by endowments created by the founding individuals or collective bodies. The incomes from endowments covered expenses for the general maintenance of the caravanserais while payments from the visiting travellers sustained the various caravanserai service groups (Khan, 1987–1988: 113–114). A caravanserai usually consisted of a square or rectangular compound enclosed by four wings, with rows of rooms fronted by narrow porches. It contained different rooms, halls and verandas, with trees inside the courtyard. Each caravanserai had one or two gateways, with high, arched portals that were always fitted with wooden doors. Gateways were always located in the middle of a courtyard. A small mosque and one or two wells on the compound also featured in the basic plan for a caravanserai (Bernier, 1891: 280–281; Manucci, 1907–1908, Vol. 1: 69; Khan, 1987–1988: 132–133). The capacity differed among caravanserais. According to Tavernier, for example, each caravanserai included 50 to 60 thatch-roofed huts. On the other hand, Niccolao Manucci, a Venetian who served the Mughal Court in the late seventeenth century, reported that each might accommodate, more or less, from 800 to 1,000 persons, along with their horses, camels and carriages. Some caravanserais were even larger. Furthermore, J. Deloche observed that Mundy witnessed the caravanserai built by Nur Jahan at the entrance to Agra, which was constructed entirely of stone with vaulted rooms surmounted by domes; this caravanserai could lodge from 2,000 to 3,000 persons and shelter some 500 horses (Manucci, 1907–1908, Vol. 1: 69; Tavernier, 1676, Vol. 2: 34; Deloche, 1993: 168–170). Johannes Albertus Schlesser, a factor of the Dutch East India Company, saw a beautiful red-stone caravanserai at Jajaw, the outer circumference of which was 1,600 steps.2 A caravanserai usually included a bazaar and played an important role as an active market that attracted the peasants who would come from the surrounding villages to sell their agricultural products, including flour, rice, butter, vegetables (Khan, 1988: 133; Deloche, 1993: 168). There were also dealers who offered different kinds of cloth as well as many who sold grass and straw for horses (Manucci, 1907– 1908, Vol. 1: 116; Tavernier, 1676, Vol. 2: 34). A  caravanserai was also a place where people exchanged information. Those who visited a caravanserai could hear the latest gossip and commercial and political news, seal business deals and make new and potentially urgent contacts (Farooque, 1977: 104). There were some men and women who prepared bread, cooked rice and arranged the rooms and beds for travellers in a caravanserai. They were called bhatiyaras. Those who were accommodated by bhatiyaras paid one pice or two pices to them in the morning (Manucci, 1907–1908, Vol. 1: 69; Mundy, 1907–1936, Vol. 2: 121; Tavernier, 1676, Vol. 2: 34). Bhatiyaras were usually Muslims. This was because Muslims were excluded from caste laws and taboos that made it difficult for Hindus to prepare food for everyone. As inn-keepers, bhatiyaras sold firewood, tobacco and other articles. They would buy any item for a lodger, and they

Roads and Security Between Agra and Surat  81

often earned some extras by leasing bullocks and carts (Farooque, 1977: 102–103).3 In addition, there were musicians, dancing boys, female dancers, barbers, tailors, washer men, farriers with horseshoes and others who attended to travellers’ various needs (Manucci, 1907–1908, Vol. 1: 116). Mughal Policy and Construction of Caravanserais in the Seventeenth Century

At first, the Mughal emperors developed means of transportation not for commercial purpose. According to Deloche, Babur considered the route to be an instrument of government. Babur intended to develop rest houses to convey orders more easily, and according to this intention, the imperial caravanserais were constructed as postal relay stations (Deloche, 1993: 167–168). According to Khan those caravanserais at the initial stage were intended to use as thanas (military outposts) as well as to furnish travellers with protection and rest house facilities. This model was fit for the unstable political situations that prevailed in the early sixteenth century (Khan, 1987–1988: 133). The Mughal monarchs began to found caravanserais for travellers from the early sixteenth century, and the pace of construction accelerated from the last quarter of the same century. According to Manucci, since Humayun’s reign, large numbers of caravanserais were built on the royal highways throughout the empire, from one end to the other (Manucci, 1907–1908, Vol. 1: 116). However, it would appear that the Mughal empire systematically attempted to establish caravanserais throughout the empire from the thirty-first year of Akbar’s reign (1586–1587) onwards. From Akbar to Aurangzeb, emperors and provincial governors launched impressive construction to meet administrative and massive commercial requirements (Khan, 1987–1988: 115; Deloche, 1993: 168). Akbar decided to build caravanserais throughout the territory for the comfort of travellers, and he entrusted their construction to the kotwals, who served in towns and cities as the chief officers of the police (Abū al-Faz̤l, 1872–1877, Vol. 1: 167, 284). When the next emperor Jahangir acceded to the throne, he gave directions consisting of 12 articles. Through these articles, he prohibited the levying of zakat (taxes) as tamgha (stamp-tax), mir bahri (port-dues) and other duties, which the jagirdar of each subah or sarkar had imposed for his own profit. In addition, to ensure safe lodging, he charged the mutasaddis or jagirdars with the foundation of caravanserais on the highways, where thefts and robberies often occurred. Also, he decided to use the estates of those who were heirless for the maintenance of the caravanserais (Jahāngīr, 1359 (1980/1981): 6). Notwithstanding such policies of the Mughal emperors, European travellers reported few caravanserais on the highways, at least, between Agra and Surat in the second decade of the seventeenth century. For example Edward Terry wrote; In this kingdome there are no innes to entertaine strangers. Onely in great townes and cities are faire houses built for their receit (which they call Sarray),

82  Shinsaku Kato

not inhabited; where any passengers may have roome freely, but must bring with him his bedding, his cooke, and other necessaries wherein to dresse his meate; which are usually carried on camels, or else in carts drawne with oxen, wherein they have tents to pitch when they meete with no Sarras. (Early Travels, 1921: 311) Terry’s description tells us that there were very few caravanserais that served as rest houses for foreigners on the highways; rather these establishments existed primarily in large towns and cities. The German traveller Von Mandelslo corroborated this claim (Von Mandelslo, 1669: 65). At that time, lodgers had to bring their personal necessities while there was no accommodation charge. On the other hand, some caravanserais imposed a charge for sheltering horses, and travellers could purchase food (Early Travels, 1921: 225). The only exception was between Agra and Ajmer, where there seems to have been a caravanserai at every ten kos interval (approximately 20 miles), which is a distance equivalent to an ordinary day’s journey. Ajmer was dedicated to the great Muslim saint ‘Hoghee Mondee’. When Akbar wanted children, he made a pilgrimage on foot from Agra to Ajmer begging for this desired issue. At this time, he also caused a pillar to be erected at each kos and a caravanserai to be set up at every ten kos interval (Early Travels, 1921: 148–149, 225). However, Mundy mentioned few caravanserais on this road when he travelled on it in 1634 (Mundy, 1907–1936, Vol. 2: 248, 264). Therefore, it is doubtful whether the caravanserais that Akbar established were maintained in good condition, as this chapter will investigate later. The number of caravanserais seems to have increased during the second half of the seventeenth century. Manucci wrote that there were many caravanserais for the use of wayfarers on every route throughout the Mughal empire (Manucci, 1907–1908, Vol. 1: 68). At first, caravanserais were charitable institutions that did not charge lodgers. However, as time passed they seem to have become commercial properties (Fryer: 99; Khan, 1987–88: 114). Thus, the construction of caravanserais by the Mughal state progressed gradually during the seventeenth century.

Caravanserais on the Routes Between Agra and Surat, c. 1600–1720

During the Mughal period, the trunk land routes radiated in different directions from Agra. The north-west route, starting from Agra and passing through Delhi led to Lahore and further on to Kabul and Qandahar. The eastern route linked Agra with important cities along the Ganges, including Allahabad, Benares and Patna, and further extended to Hooghly and Dacca in Bengal (Kondo, 2012: 163). Agra was the centre of the royal highways in the Mughal empire, and among these roads, the routes that connected Agra and Surat were the most important. However, communications facilities were not distributed equally; instead, they were the most profuse near Agra. The following sections will investigate the number of caravanserais on the routes between Agra and Surat and how often they were available to travellers as lodgings.

Roads and Security Between Agra and Surat  83

Agra–Burhanpur–Surat

It usually took 35 to 40 days from Agra to Surat using the routes via Burhanpur, although a caravan carrying a large cargo of goods often required more than two months. The Agra – Burhanpur routes were the main military and strategic roads from the Deccan; their length traversed the imperial territories that were directly managed by the emperor’s deputy (Deloche, 1993: 53). The roads from Agra to Sironj were mountainous, especially around Gwalior. There were two routes from Sironj to Burhanpur. One route was to advance westwards from Sehore, crossing the Narmada River at Akbarpur, and the other extended south from Sehore, traversing the same river at Handiya. The two routes joined again at Borgaon. The Tapti River flows through Surat into the Arabian Sea. However, it is difficult to use this river for transportation. J. Deloche explains the difficulty as follows: ‘this river encounters a rocky barrier, where passage must be forcibly cleared, traversing blocks of rock, cataracts, and rapids that preclude any continuous communication between the highlands and the coastal plain, between the old capital of Burhanpur and the sea’ (Deloche, 1994: 37). For this reason, those who travelled westwards from Burhanpur always took land routes. They proceeded on the right side of the Tapti and traversed the river to the left side at Chopda to reach Surat. Most of the regions around these routes were directly controlled by the Mughal empire, but there were some that were ruled by local hereditary chiefs who paid annual tribute to the Mughal Court. For instance Akbar entrusted a part of the Baglan district, which spread between Kirka and Nandurbar, to a local chief named Partab Shah (Early Travels, 1921: 136–137). Table  5.1 and Map  5.1 show the locations of the caravanserais on the routes between Agra and Surat. Agra and Surat during 1600 and 1720. There were 45 towns or cities with caravanserais between Agra and Surat. Most of them were on the way from Agra to Burhanpur. Thirty towns with caravanserais were identified between Agra and Sironj. In this segment, travellers could lodge almost every night, providing there were available rooms, at least at the end of the seventeenth century. For example the Dutch factor, Schlesser, travelled from Agra to Sironj for 13 days in 1699.4 He lodged in caravanserais for nine nights and camped in the fields on the other four nights, at Kolaras, Kala Bag, Shadora and Sironj. However, among these places, Kolaras, Shadora and Sironj had caravanserais. Unfortunately, when Schlesser arrived at these towns, these caravanserais were full of lodgers, and he was forced to pitch his tent in the field outside each town. Among the four, the only place that had no caravanserai was Kala Bag. Thus, in general, safe, comfortable accommodations were available to travellers on their journeys between Agra and Sironj. Two routes from Sironj to Burhanpur had 13 caravanserais altogether. If travellers chose to take the route through Ujjain, they could lodge in caravanserais in 11 towns. If they took the other route, they were able to use caravanserais in eight towns. It usually took about 15 to 20 days from Sironj to Burhanpur. Therefore, travellers could stay at caravanserais for about half of their itineraries. The highway between Agra and Burhanpur was one of the most important and frequent roads in the Mughal empire because it linked the centre of the

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

Sources

Mulukchand Serai* Gelani-ki-Serai* Jajaw Mania Fatehabad Dholpur Jarah Kunwari Mende-ki-Serai Nurabad Pater-ki-Serai* Gwalior Kotah-ki-Serai Barh-ki-Serai Antri Non-ki-Serai Gulli-ka-Serai* Paraich Magroni Narwar Dongar Sesai Kolaras Hasanpur

Finch (1610)

Jourdain (1611)

Mundy (1631)

Tavernier (c. 1640–1660)

Adrichem (1662)

Schlesser (1699)

Diodati (1716/17)

Other

○ -

○ ○ ○ ○ -

○ ○ ○ ○ ○

○ ○ ○ ○ ○ -

○ -

○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ -

○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ -

-

Shinsaku Kato

Name

84

TABLE 5.1 List of the Places With Caravanserais Between Agra and Surat via Burhanpur

Shadora Kachner Serai Paul-ki-Serai* Mughal Serai Surantal Sironj Imlani Pomaria Powa Nala Piplod Sarangpur Ujjain Kaneriya Mandu Nau Serai* Sehara Borgaon Nimbola Burhanpur Nandurbar Kirka

○ ○ -

○ -

○ ○ ○ ○ -

○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○

○ ○ -

○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ -

-

Roe (1615) -

Sources: Early Travels, 1921: 133–146; Jourdain, 1905: 134–153; Roe, 1899, Vol. 1: 91; Mundy, 1907–1936, Vol. 2: 39–67; Tavernier, 1676, Vol. 2: 29–40; Van Adrichem, 1941: 205–216; NA: VOC 1625, ‘Voagie door Joannes Albertus Schlesser’, pp. 63–102; NA: VOC 1913, ‘Kort dag-verhaal van Simon Diodati’, pp. 86–129.

○: The source refers the existence of caravanserai at the place. *: The source does not give any information about caravanserai at the place.

Roads and Security Between Agra and Surat  85

25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

86  Shinsaku Kato

MAP 5.1 

Caravanserais on the Routes Between Agra and Surat, c. 1600–1720

* Places estimated from each traveller’s account.

empire with the Deccan plateau, and the military forces made expeditions very often on this route. A  large number of soldiers were stationed at Burhanpur, and they had to be supplied with grains and other necessities. A  kind of peddler called banjaras gathered grains and other foodstuff from peasants and brought them into Burhanpur and other military bases, using their cattle or oxen (Jahāngīr, 1359 (1980/1981): 393; Mundy, 1907–1936, Vol. 2: 53–55). These necessities were mainly produced in Malwa or North India. Thus, traffic between Agra and Burhanpur was very busy, and road facilities like caravanserais were concentrated on this highway. In contrast, few caravanserais could be seen on the route from Burhanpur to Surat. The regions on this route were rather dangerous to travel through at the time, and burglars are said to have been constantly lying in wait to attack caravans.5 Nevertheless, only Nandurbar and Kirka had caravanserais. The caravanserai at Kirka was established by Begum Saheb just around 1640 due to a lack of rest houses on this route (Tavernier, 1676, Vol. 2: 30). In general, travellers were always forced to camp in the fields in this area.

Roads and Security Between Agra and Surat  87

MAP 5.2 

Details of the Route

Source: drawn by the author.

88  Shinsaku Kato

On the routes between Agra and Surat via Burhanpur, caravanserais were constructed primarily between Agra and Sironj, or Burhanpur. Meanwhile, very few caravanserais were available to travellers in Gujarat, which was far from the core of the empire. Although these routes were significant from a commercial point of view, the extent of the provision of communication facilities differed from region to region. Agra–Ajmer–Ahmadabad–Surat

The second route is the highway through Ajmer and Ahmadabad, extending westwards from Agra and reaching Merta via Bayana and Ajmer. Travellers had to detour the Mount Abu between Ajmer and Ahmadabad, and the road forked in two directions at Jalor, then joined again at Mehsana. Between Ahmadabad and Surat, the main road crossed the Mahi River near Baroda and the Narmada River at Broach. There were also several roads connecting the various markets of this region (Deloche, 1993: 53). In particular, it was difficult to obtain food and water on the roads between Agra and Ahmadabad because these areas were dry and sandy with very few rivers or ponds (Mundy, 1907–1936, Vol. 2: 250, 264). Hereditary chiefs governed much of the region between Jalor and Ajmer. As listed in Table 5.2, there were 12 towns or cities with caravanserais on this highway, which is less than the number of caravanserais on the routes via Burhanpur. TABLE 5.2 List of the Places With Caravanserais Between Agra and Surat via Ahmadabad

and Ajmer Name

Sources Finch Jourdain Mundy Tavernier Schlesser Other (1610) (1611) (1631) (c. 1640–1660) (1699)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Mundiapura* Fatehpur Sikri Bayana Sikandra Sop Mughal Serai* Lalsot Merta Ahmadabad

10 Isanpur 11 Baroda 12 Karvan

○ ○ ○ ○ -

○ ○ -

○ -

○ -

-

-

-

○

-

○ -

Broecke (1622) Mandelslo (1638) Mandelslo (1638) -

Sources: Early Travels, 1921: 148–152, 170–175; Jourdain, 1905: 167–175; Van den Broecke, 1962, Vol. 2: 268; Mundy, 1907–1936, Vol. 2: 225–276; Von Mandelslo, 1669: 22, 34; Tavernier, 1676, Vol. 2: 41–56; NA: VOC 1625, ‘Voagie door Joannes Albertus Schlesser’, pp. 63–102.

○: The source refers the existence of caravanserai at the place. *: The source does not give any information about caravanserai at the place.

Roads and Security Between Agra and Surat  89

We can identify seven places with caravanserais between Agra and Ajmer. As previously stated, this is because Akbar ordered that caravanserais be built every ten kos between Agra and Ajmer. In fact, William Finch, an English factor, witnessed four caravanserais between Agra and Ajmer in 1610; yet these caravanserais fell into disrepair by 1630. Mundy reported that there were few or no caravanserais from Agra to Ahmadabad and referred to Sop as the only place with a caravanserai in his account (Mundy, 1907–1936, Vol. 2: 248, 264). There were also very few caravanserais on the route from Ajmer to Ahmadabad, although these regions were full of burglars and very dangerous.6 According to Tavernier, Merta was the only city with a caravanserai. These regions were not governed by the Mughal emperors directly; the actual rulers were Rajput princes who were the subjects of the Mughal empire. They paid annual tribute to the Mughal Court, and, in turn, they enjoyed autonomy in their hereditary territories. Compared to the Mughal monarch, the princes were not so keen on building caravanserais on the roads. From Ahmadabad to Surat, four cities or towns were found to have caravanserais. Thus, construction of caravanserais was concentrated near Agra and few caravanserais were maintained in the middle of the seventeenth century on this route. Other Routes Between Surat and Agra

When Europeans travelled from Agra to Surat, they usually used the two aforementioned routes, that is, the route through Sironj and Burhanpur or the one through Ajmer and Ahmadabad. Nevertheless, both Joannes Albertus Schlesser and Simon Diodati travelled on different routes on their respective journeys to Surat.7 When Schlesser travelled from Agra to Surat in 1699, he passed Sironj and arrived at Pawa Nala, before turning westwards. He then went to Ujjain and advanced further to Dahod in Gujarat. From there, he proceeded to Thasra and went southwards to Baroda, finally arriving at Surat. On his journey from Pawa Nala, he found caravanserais at Piplod, Sarangpur, Ujjain and Dahod. Among these, the one at Dahod had been constructed on Shah Jahan’s order.8 Diodati also took a less-used route. He began his travel southwards from Agra, with the intention of heading to Sironj. However, when he arrived at Sesai, he received the news that Sironj was being besieged by rebels. He therefore decided to go towards Udaipur, and he advanced westwards from there.9 He found no caravanserais on his way. The routes that Schlesser and Diodati took were not the usual ones, for European travellers at least, and it is unclear how often people used them when travelling between Agra and Surat. However, apart from the caravanserai that Schlesser found at Dahod, no caravanserais were found between Ujjain and Baroda. It is therefore likely that these routes were not well provided with facilities of communication at the end of the seventeenth century or in the early eighteenth century. We have examined the functions and distribution of caravanserais between Agra and Surat. Caravanserais were intensively constructed and maintained near Agra

90  Shinsaku Kato

or on the highway between Agra and Burhanpur. In other words, although both routes between Agra and Surat are thought to have been the most significant and well-provided routes in the Mughal empire, the provision of communication facilities there was not systematic. Indeed, it is necessary to examine other accommodations on highways such as mosques or temples. However, when the Jesuit, Antonio Monseratte, travelled from Surat to Agra via Ujjain and Sironj in the late sixteenth century, he witnessed that Muslims had destroyed all the Hindu temples, which used to be very numerous (Monserrate, 1922: 27). Therefore, such temples were not likely to function as lodging places. It is clear that the situation pertaining to communication facilities was different from place to place. Security on Highways

Besides the means of transportation, there were other ways to safeguard travellers from danger. This section explores some of those methods on the routes between Agra and Surat. Safety was a main concern for travellers. Since travelling alone was generally quite dangerous during this period, travellers organised large caravans as security measures when they moved from one place to another. The English traveller, Thomas Coryat, explained this practice as follows: I alwayes go safely in the company of caravans from place to place. A caravan is a word much used in all Asia; by which is understood a great multitude of people travelling together upon the way, with camels, horses, mules, asses, etc., on which they carry merchandizes from one country to another, and tents and pavilions, under which instead of houses they shelter themselves in open fields, being furnished also with all necessary provision, and convenient implements to dresse the same. . . and the caravan in which I travelled betwixt Spahan [=Isphahan] and India contained 2,000 camels, 1,500 horse, 1,000 and odde mules, 800 asses, and sixe thousand people. (Early Travels, 1921: 259–260) The caravan that Coryat joined consisted of 6,000 people. This caravan was rather large, probably because it had a long distance to travel from Isphahan to India. We can find many other cases of people travelling with caravans for their security. For instance the Italian, Pietro della Valle, joined a caravan from Cambay to Surat to avoid travelling a dangerous route alone. The caravan that he joined consisted of more than 100 coaches in addition to footmen, horsemen and big wagons (Della Valle, 1892, Vol. 1: 92–93). Mundy described how the number of people in his caravan grew along its journey. When he travelled from Surat to Agra in 1630, he departed Surat with 150 people, about 15 or 20 carts and some camels. After ten days, when he arrived at Nimgul, he found that his caravan then had no less than 1,700 or 1,800 people and 250 or 300 carts besides oxen and buffaloes of burthen. This was because people heard the news of Mundy’s caravan and decided to join

Roads and Security Between Agra and Surat  91

it for their security (Mundy, 1907–1936, Vol. 2: 45–46). Thus, travellers ensured safe passage by gathering in large caravans. Notwithstanding this widely accepted view, Schlesser’s travel report evinced one risk of travelling by caravan. According to his report, the size of caravan was regarded as proportionate to the fear of attack; therefore, burglars viewed large caravans as carrying large sums of money.10 A caravan always hired guards from a certain caste of people to accompany it. One such group was the ‘Tcheron’ caste, whose people lived mainly in Broach, Cambay and Ahmadabad. They were highly esteemed there. A traveller who was accompanied by a Tcheron believed that his safety was guaranteed because it was generally known that when robbers met caravans that were guarded by the Tcheron, the criminals understood that the Tcheron would single-handedly cut their throats if they dared to approach them. All the Hindus in these regions believed that it was a great misfortune to cause the death of a ‘Tcheron’, and any criminal became scum in all the castes, suffering social expulsion and lifelong reproach as punishment for causing a Tcheron’s death (De Thevenot, 1684: 38–39). According to Tomè Pires, the pattamars (couriers) of Cambay were the most honoured Brahmans, and they seemed to have been Tcheron. Pires explained that even when travellers passed through robber-infested country, they were not molested by bandits once they were accompanied by a pattamar. When thieves attacked them, the pattamar would kill or wound himself with a dagger (Pires, 1944, Vol. 1: 42). Pires’s description about pattamars agrees with the aforementioned account of Tcherons. By the middle of the seventeenth century, however, Tcherons no longer practised this custom. Instead, they made agreements with robbers in advance whereby they paid the robbers a certain sum from the amount that the travellers paid them and, in turn, the robbers overlook any caravan protected by the Tcherons (De Thevenot, 1684: 38–39). Regardless of the particulars of such arrangements, ultimately, travellers were able to purchase safe journeys by employing a Tcheron as security guard. Caravans also hired soldiers to join the convoy when it was necessary. For example in 1633, Mundy departed from Agra with his caravan, which was composed of 170 soldiers, 268 camels and 109 carts. When he passed Sirohi in Rajasthan, he received the news that 600 or 700 thieves were waiting to plunder his caravan. He therefore decided to employ eight cavalries and 115 infantries for his safety (Mundy, 1907–1936, Vol. 2: 225, 256). Van Adrichem also hired soldiers on his journey to Agra. At Palanpur, he contracted 25 soldiers, at the cost of two and a half rupees each, to travel with him in a convoy to Jalor (Van Adrichem, 1941: 95). Similarly, at Badgaon, Tavernier added 50 soldiers to his caravan, which had already included 60 peons, to lower the risk of robbery (Tavernier, 1676, Vol. 2: 54–55). In general, travellers tended to employ extra guards on the high-risk route between Ajmer and Ahmadabad, which was under the rule of hereditary chiefs. Within the realm of the Mughal empire, such a convoy was often provided by governors or local officers. It was considered a ruler’s duty to compensate travellers for damage sustained as a result of robbery (De Thevenot, 1684: 40–41; Von

92  Shinsaku Kato

Mandelslo, 1669: 24). Consequently, town and city governors prioritised travellers’ safety, often providing them with soldiers (Early Travels, 1921: 78, 205–206; Mundy, 1907–1936, Vol. 2: 39–40; Roe, 1899, Vol. 1: 88; Van Adrichem, 1941: 87, 93–95). However, when travellers left a governor’s jurisdiction the soldiers he had provided were considered to have served their purpose, and they would then take leave of the travellers, who would upon entering another jurisdiction become another governor’s responsibility. For example when Schlesser departed from Agra on 1 May 1699, officers such as karori and amin provided his party with a convoy of chubdars. When the party reached the river Chambal three days later, the chubdars were considered to have fulfilled their duty, and they returned to Agra after receiving some rewards.11 The hereditary chiefs also provided travellers in their territories with convoys because, in addition to paying an annual tribute to the Mughal Court, the chiefs were bound to protect the caravans in their territories in the interest of ensuring the safe conduct of merchants (Early Travels, 1921: 137). De Thevenot’s account shows such an instance. When he travelled from Cambay to Broach, he crossed a region that was governed by a local raja. Each man in his caravan paid ten rupees to the raja, who, in turn, provided the caravan with some foodstuff along with several horsemen who would secure their passage through his territory (De Thevenot, 1684: 41). De Thevenot’s account reflects a typical occurrence, and many European travellers reported similar experiences (Tavernier, 1676, Vol. 2: 53–55; Van Adrichem, 1941: 85, 96–98). Thus, rulers or officials provided travellers with safeguards in the territories that were directly governed by the Mughal empire as well as in those that were under the control of hereditary chiefs. In both cases, the rulers or chiefs received travellers warmly, offering them foodstuff and other gifts. In turn, travellers brought presents or money to accompany their requests for the rulers to provide guards who would ensure their protection as they passed through their territories. Apart from the presents, travellers paid a toll and, in exchange, rulers provided convoys for their security (Mundy, 1907–1936, Vol. 2: 258–260; Tavernier, 1676, Vol. 2: 53–55). In addition to that reciprocal system, there were officers, such as faujdars, who were charged with protecting the highway. Faujdars were invested with the authorities of the police, and they had jurisdiction in all criminal matters.12 They were obliged to keep the country safe and free and respond to all instances of robbery (De Thevenot, 1684: 58). They were also entrusted with ensuring the safety of all the travellers in their respective jurisdictions. To assist them in fulfilling these duties, they were permitted to keep soldiers and servants under them (Ovington, 1696: 232). Faujdars watched over the roads in their territories and arrested any bandits that they found. They sometimes hanged such offenders on trees as a warning to others. Faujdars also offered travellers the services of the soldiers who were under their control, and they often sent their spies to investigate whether thieves were posing any imminent threat. In turn, the faujdars demanded some money as rahdari or a toll.13 However, on the routes through the tributaries to the Mughal empire, there were no faujdars. In this case, the chiefs of those tributaries were

Roads and Security Between Agra and Surat  93

entrusted with protecting the highways (Early Travels, 1921: 136–137). In addition to faujdars, thanadars, who were subordinate officers under faujdars, were expected to aid in protecting travellers from burglars. For instance when Schlesser’s company camped at Shadora, they were attacked by robbers. They reasonably expected that the thanadar would, as duty-bound, come to help, along with his soldiers, but the official did not actually come.14 In the territory of the Mughal empire, caravans travelled with guards that the governors or faujdars had provided. Otherwise, they privately hired soldiers (Van Adrichem, 1941: 82–83, 87, 93–95). In the territories that were ruled by the hereditary chiefs, travellers paid tolls or made presents to the chief in exchange for the offer of soldiers as a safeguard (Van Adrichem, 1941: 97–99). These methods of obtaining protection enabled travellers to conduct their safe passage. Conclusion

This chapter investigated the two main routes between Agra and Surat in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, examining the role of caravanserais as well as their distribution. Methods of assuring travellers’ safe passage were also analysed. As important facilities that offered travellers comfortable lodgings, the construction of caravanserais on the highways had already begun, at the Mughal monarch’s behest, in the first half of the sixteenth century, but it was not until the late sixteenth century that the Mughal emperors eagerly attended to furnishing the caravanserais in their territory. In addition, some royal family members and high officials spent portions of their personal treasures on building caravanserais, thus contributing to smoother communication. However, the construction of communications facilities was concentrated in the areas that surrounded the centre of the empire, especially between Agra and Sironj. In fact, these regions were well provided with the facilities of communication such as some fair bridges which were constructed by the Mughal monarch in the seventeenth century.15 In contrast, there were fewer caravanserais on the routes between Burhanpur and Surat and between Agra and Surat through Ajmer and Ahmadabad. The only exception was the highway from Agra to Ajmer, where caravanserais were constructed at every ten kos interval in the late sixteenth century. However, those caravanserais had fallen into disrepair by the 1630s, and travellers were forced to camp in the fields. Travellers in this situation were motivated to seek alternative methods of ensuring their own safety. One such method was to organise a large caravan, which acted as a security measure when they moved from one place to another. Furthermore, caravans always hired guards to accompany with them. Meanwhile, political entities and officials such as faujdars also prioritised highway security. They were conscious of their responsibilities to keep their countries safe, and they offered convoys to caravans in their jurisdictions, in addition to having their servants patrol the travel routes. Faujdars, for instance, took care of the roads in their respective territories and arrested bandits when they could. Thus, although the highways were always

94  Shinsaku Kato

vulnerable to danger, these practices helped realise efficient transportation between Agra and Surat in this period. Notes 1 Peter Mundy, an English factor, demonstrated just how dangerous it was to lodge in fields, and he introduced the surveillance method as follows: The manner of watchinge in Caphilaes is by the Continuall beateinge of a great Kettle Drumme (which most commonly they carry with them), and once in a quarter of halfe an hower one or other cryes, Covardare [Khabardar], when all the rest of the people answer with a showte, Covardare, which is as much to say as take heede. (Mundy, Vol. 2: 42) 2 NA: VOC 1625, ‘Voagie door Joannes Albertus Schlesser’, p. 66. 3 For example if bhatiyaras found that a Muslim came to lodge, they went to nearby villages, looking for fowls or muttons for him (Tavernier, Vol. 2: 34). 4 Schlesser went to Delhi to protest against the royal order to compensate a Turkish merchant for his damage due to European piracies in 1698. After negotiating with the court, he returned to Surat in 1699. The account that this chapter analyses was written during his return journey to Surat. For more information about the royal order issued after Schlesser’s negotiation, see Corpus diplomaticum, Vol. 4: 150–152. 5 There are a plenty of traveller accounts that tell us how dangerous it was to travel through these regions (Early Travels: 136–137; Jourdain: 143; Mundy, Vol. 2: 39–42, 45–46; Roe, Vol. 1: 88). 6 Mundy, receiving the news that the Dutch caravan was plundered by thieves during its journey in these regions, hired eight horsemen and 115 footmen to accompany his caravan and guard against likely attacks (Mundy, Vol. 2: 256–257). 7 Diodati was the chief factor of the Dutch factory at Agra. In 1716, the Dutch East India Company decided to abandon the Agra factory due to insecurity and disputes with the Mughal Court. According to this decision, Diodati closed the factory and left for Surat. 8 NA: VOC 1625, ‘Voagie van Agra na Souratta gedaen door den ondercoopman en gewesen opperhooft van ’t Nederlants comptoir tot gemeld plaatse Joannes Albertus Schlesser, ende desselvs secunde, den boekhouder Joan Josua Ketelaer mitsgaders etc. adsistent Isaccq van der Hoeve en de onder chirurgijn Otto Muller’, pp. 94–95 9 NA: VOC 1913, ‘Kort dag-verhaal van de Agrase residenten den ondercoopman Simon Diodati en boekhouder Jan Coenraadkok over de afreijse van gemeld residentie tot Souratta’, pp. 103–104. 10 NA: VOC 1625, ‘Voagie door Joannes Albertus Schlesser’, pp. 83–84. 11 NA: VOC 1625, ‘Voagie door Joannes Albertus Schlesser’, pp. 65–67. 12 About general roles of faujdar, see Siddiqi, 1998: 234–251. 13 Mundy, Vol. 2: 73; NA: VOC 1625, ‘Voagie door Joannes Albertus Schlesser’, pp. 67, 79–81, 83; NA: VOC 1913, ‘Kort dag-verhaal van Simon Diodati’, pp. 95–96. 14 NA: VOC 1625, ‘Voagie door Joannes Albertus Schlesser’, p. 77. 15 NA: VOC 1625, ‘Voagie door Joannes Albertus Schlesser’, pp. 68, 72–74.

Bibliography Primary Sources Unpublished Sources De Archieven van de Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC), 1602–1795. National Archief (NA), Den Haag.

Roads and Security Between Agra and Surat  95

VOC (1625). Voagie van Agra na Souratta gedaen door den ondercoopman en gewesen opperhooft van ’t Nederlants comptoir tot gemeld plaatse Joannes Albertus Schlesser, ende desselvs secunde, den boekhouder Joan Josua Ketelaer mitsgaders etc. adsistent Isaccq van der Hoeve en de onder chirurgijn Otto Muller, pp. 63–102. VOC (1913). Kort dag-verhaal van de Agrase residenten den ondercoopman Simon Diodati en boekhouder Jan Coenraadkok over de afreijse van gemeld residentie tot Souratta, pp. 86–129.

Published Sources Abū al-Faz̤l (1872–1877). Ā’īn-i Akbarī, 2 vols. (ed.) H. Blochmann, Calcutta: The Baptist Mission Press. Bernier, François (1891). Travels in the Mogol Empire 1656–1668, (tr.) Archibald Constable, London: Archibald Constable & Co. De Thevenot, Jean (1684). Voyages de Messer de Thevenot, contenant la relation de l’Indostan, des nouveaux Mogols, et des autres peuples et pays des Indes, Paris. Della Valle, Pietro (1892). The Travels of Pietro della Valle in India, 2 vols., (ed.) Edward Grey, London: The Hakluyt Society. Foster, William (ed.) (1921). Early Travels in India, 1583–1619, London: Oxford University Press. Fryer, John (1698). A New Account of East-India and Persia, in Eight Letters: Being Nine Years Travels, 1672–1681, London: R. I. Chiswell. Heeres, J.E. and Stapel, Frederik Willem (eds.) (1907–1955). Corpus Diplomaticum NeerlandoIndicum, 6 vols, s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff. Jahāngīr (1359, 1980/1981). Jahāngīr Nāmah: Tūzuk-i Jahāngīrī, (ed.) Muḥammad Ḥāshim, Tehran: Intishārāt-i Bunyād-i Farhang-i Īrān. Jourdain, John (1905). The Journal of John Jourdain, 1608–1617: Describing His Experiences in Arabia, India, and the Malay Archipelago, (ed.) William Foster, Cambridge: The Hakluyt Society. Manucci, Niccolao (1907–1908). Storia do Mogor or Mogul India 1653–1708, 4 vols., (tr.) William Irvine, London: The Government of India. Monserrate, Antonio (1922). The Commentary of Father Monserrate, S.J.: On His Journey to the Court of Akbar, (tr.) J.S. Hoyland, London: Oxford University Press. Mundy, Peter (1907–1936). The Travels of Peter Mundy, in Europe and Asia, 1608–1667, 5 vols., (ed.) Richard Carnac Temple, London: The Hakluyt Society. Ovington, John (1696). A Voyage to Suratt, in the Year, 1689, London: Jacob Tonson. Pelsaert, Francisco (1979). De Geschriften van Francisco Pelsaert over Mughal Indië, 1627: Kroniek en Remonstrantie, (eds.) D.H.A. Kolff and Hans Walther van Santen, s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff. Pires, Tomè (1944). The Suma Oriental of Tomè Pires: An Account of the East, from the Red Sea to Japan, Written in Malacca and India in 1512–1515, 2 vols., (ed.) Armando Cortesão, London: The Hakluyt Society. Roe, Thomas (1899). The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to the Court of the Great Mogul, 1615– 1619: As Narrated in His Journal and Correspondence, 2 vols., (ed.) William Foster, London: The Hakluyt Society. Tavernier, Jean Baptiste (1676). Les six voyages de Jean Baptiste Tavernier, ecuyer Baron d’ Aubonne qu’il a fait en Turquie, en Perse, et aux Indes, 2 vols., Paris. Van Adrichem, Dircq (1941). Journaal van Dircq van Adrichem's hofreis naar den Groot-Mogol Aurangzeb 1662, (ed.) A.J. Bernet Kempers, s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff. Van den Broecke, Pieter (1962). Pieter van den Broecke in Azië, 2 vols., (ed.), Willem Philippus Coolhaas, s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff.

96  Shinsaku Kato

Von Mandelslo, Johan Albrecht (1669). The Travels of John Albert de Mandelslo from Persia, into the East-Indies, (tr.) John Davies, London: John Starkey.

Secondary Works Deloche, Jean (1993). Transport and Communications in India: Prior to Steam Locomotion: Volume I: Land Transport, (tr.) James Walker, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Deloche, Jean (1994). Transport and Communications in India: Prior to Steam Locomotion: Volume II: Water Transport, (tr.) James Walker, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Farooque, Abul Khair Muhammad (1977). Roads and Communications in Mughal India, New Delhi: Idarah-i Adabiyat-i Delli. Habib, Irfan (2014). The Agrarian System of Mughal India 1556–1707, 3rd Edition, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Khan, Iqtidar Alam (1987–1988). ‘The Kārwānsarāys of Mughal India: A Study of Surviving Structures’, The Indian Historical Review, 14(1/2): 111–137. Kondo, Osamu (2012). The Early Modern Monarchism in Mughal India: With a Bibliographical Survey, Kyoto: Shoukadoh Book Sellers. Naqvi, Hameeda Khatoon (1972). Urbanisation and Urban Centres Under the Great Mughals 1556–1707, Lucknow: Indian Institute of Advanced Study. Prakash, Om (2012) (Originally published in 1985). The Dutch East India Company and the Economy of Bengal 1630–1720, New Delhi: Manohar. Sarkar, Bejoy Kumar (1925). Inland Transport and Communication in Medieval India, Calcutta: Calcutta University Press. Siddiqi, Noman Ahmad (1998). ‘The Faujdar and Faujdari Under the Mughals’, in Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (eds.), The Mughal State 1526–1750, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 234–251. Subrahmanyam, Sanjay (2000). ‘A Note on the Rise of Surat in the Sixteenth Century’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 43(1): 23–33.

6 MERCHANTS OF THE COROMANDEL COAST IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY From Masulipatnam to Fort St. David Radhika Seshan

The English arrived on the Coromandel Coast in 1611, at Masulipatnam, the key outlet of the Golconda Sultanate, and in many ways, occupying a position similar to that of Surat, the Mughal port. This remained their main settlement on the coast for the next two decades, even though smaller settlements were established at various points along the coast – Petapoli (Peddapalli) or Nizamapatnam (subordinate to Masulipatnam, and to the south of that place), Kunimedu, Nagore, Devanamapatnam (in the south Coromandel), Armagon (near Pulicat) and finally, Fort St. George in 1639–1640 and Fort St. David in the 1690s. With the establishment of the fort at Chennapatnam/Chennai/Madraspatnam/Madras, that became the headquarters for the ‘Coast and Bay’ and for the ‘West Coast’ – Sumatra, Priaman and so on. Towards the end of the century, they received the grant for one more fort on the coast, near Cuddalore, which became the site of Fort St. David. Other than Fort St. George and Fort St. David, all other settlements went through phases of being dissolved and re-established. As the centre, ships were sent out from Fort St. George to collect the goods collected at all the other factories, either for shipment to England or for storage at Fort St. George prior to such shipment, and records of all this activity had to be maintained. By the same logic, obviously, all letters and consultations of all the subordinate factories, details of the kinds of goods to be ordered, lists of such orders, the merchants to be contacted for such supplies, instructions from England to either Fort St. George or the factories, were sent to Fort St. George first and then sent on from there. There were three different kinds of activities that had to take place before goods could be sent to England. The first was of course finding merchants to supply the goods and to make a contract with them. The contract was necessary first to ensure a supply of goods and second to give money through them to the weavers. This was the second part of the activity – supplying the musters of the cloth, that is the detailed list of the quality and quantity of each type of cloth and then pay DOI: 10.4324/9781003396666-9

98  Radhika Seshan

an advance to the weavers. It was said that the weavers were too poor to supply cloth without this advance and the factors reported that ‘customary and of course to deliver mony aforehand to the Merchants for the more timely accomplishing of their investments’.1 It was calculated that ‘to provide hundred thousand pagodas worth of Callicoes, he must be fain to give out for above half so much more to allow for disappointments’.2 The third stage was examining the finished cloth and packing it to send to England. The starting point was the merchants. While Fort St. George was the centre, each of the individual factories had to some extent act independently, in terms of procurement of goods through contracts with the merchants and arrangements for washing the textiles that reached, examining the finished goods (‘sorting’), etc. Who were the merchants? What was the hinterland that these merchants accessed? What was the nature of the organisation of the coastal trade, and who were the participants in this trade? How did the Europeans insert themselves into this trade, and what was the role of private trade (especially Portuguese and English) in this trade? Finally, in the course of the seventeenth century, in the process of the establishing of competing and overlapping structures of trade, how did the English navigate with or through merchants? This chapter therefore focuses first on the different merchants who operated along the coast and into the interior, their networks, of both knowledge and production, and also examines some of the routes that led into the interior from the ports. It is divided into two broad sections, the first concerned with the merchants and their networks and the second with the routes that they used, both along the coast and into the hinterlands. Merchants

The first reference to some merchants comes from 1618, when, in a letter from the factor Matthew Duke at Peddapalli, he reports that he was but newly returned from viseting cometies [komatis, one of the castes of merchants on this coast] and weavers in the cuntrie, where I was all this last weeke looking over the clothe and yearne, wherof I let none pase without carfull vew, comparing it with the musters, and what I found grose I thrue out or cutt; but, to say truthe, ther is no great faulte to be found eyther with cloth or yearn.3 The Dutch, it was reported, were planning to send two ships home laden with indigo acquired from the region around Masulipatnam; but the English apparently had no idea where this indigo was grown, or the method of procurement, other than direct purchase from the markets of Masulipatnam.4 No details of names of merchants are to be found at this time. However, we do get indirect references of their existence and of the links between merchants and the bureaucracy. For example in 1621, it was reported that Even of late a new governor, haveing rented this goverment for 15,000 pagodas per annum more then his predecessors, hath devised some parte of this

Merchants of the Coromandel Coast in the 17th Century  99

excesse per farmeing out the monopoly of one man onely buying, selling, and changing of all gould and silver brought unto this porte; from whence it happens that wee cannot put of our ryalls but as that onely sharoffe please to take them, which is to more losse then wee have reason to stoope unto.5 But there are, as said, hints of the trade and production, for the same record also mentions the uncertainties of engaging in a continuous trade for Bengal silk, because of there being ‘some years noe marchaunts, other whilst noe passadge; and the last year (as I  formerly advised) all taken or stranded by the Portugall’.6 One item that the English regularly sent out to India was coral, which found a fairly steady market through Surat. When coral was sent to Masulipatnam, William Methwold, chief of the factory at Masulipatnam, reported that there was little or no demand for coral there, but that artisans who worked with coral existed in India. He said that, in the country of the Adelsha [Bijapur, Adil Shah], 10 or 12 daies journey from this place, at a citty or towne called Lantegree there resides most of the artificers which are accustomed to polish corrall, for which they have 10 pagodas per maen for their workemanship.7 The point here is that the Bijapur Sultanate lay in the western part of the Deccan, but the Surat factory did not report the artisans, the Masulipatnam one did. Here is a clear indication of the kinds of networks that existed in and across the Deccan. One question that has to be raised is that of knowledge. How did the English get access to such bits of information? Obviously, such information came from Indian merchants who had access to the interior markets, something that the Europeans at this time either did not have at all or had in very limited fashion. Another related question is, did they verify the information that they got, or did they merely accept it, and leave it either for later verification or as random information to be merely mentioned and then ignored? For the second question, based on the records, it seems that verification was sought only when there was potential for trade, which is not surprising. And here again, verification was through the local merchants. In the first half of the seventeenth century, we find many references to two important merchants on the Coromandel Coast. One was the Mir Jumla of the Golconda Sultanate, Mir Muhammad Sayyad Ardestani, and the other was Malaya Chetti, whose sphere of operation was the territory of the beginning-to-be-defunct Vijayanagar empire. I have elsewhere spoken at length about Malaya Chetti and Mir Jumla8 and therefore will not repeat myself. In the English records one of the first mentions of him comes in the year 1629, when, after the dissolution of their factory at Masulipatnam and the establishment of one at Armagon, they stated that which our unfriendlie neighbours the Dutch hath sought to prevent by there large presents and bribes; and when these could not prevaile, they sent there Molayan [Malaya] a cheef negotiator of there affaires, to farme the goverment of Armagon at tribble its usuall rent, purposely to disturb our trade.9

100  Radhika Seshan

The extended family was active all along the coast – so Malaya’s younger brother Chinanna was one of the most important merchants in the kingdom of the Nayak of Thanjavur while his nephew Sesadri was the chief merchant for the English at Fort St. George. They were active along the coast and in the interior and apparently had some connections across the Bay of Bengal as well. Malaya, in particular, moved between the worlds of mercantile enterprise and the court very comfortably. Mir Jumla was yet another merchant whose networks spread all over the Indian Ocean world, and who, like Malaya, spanned the worlds of bureaucracy, the military and trade very comfortably. His ships sailed across the Bay of Bengal – he was reported to have ten ships that went to different ports dotted along the eastern shore of the Bay of Bengal, as well as overland, particularly to North India.10 Even after his move away from the Golconda Sultanate to the Mughal empire, his agents continued to operate in the Deccan, as is clear from the European records. What happened after his death to his considerable estates is not clear. In addition to his activities in trade, what is particularly noteworthy is that, like Malaya, he used his political position to bring pressure on the Europeans. For example he lent money to the English at Fort St. George and demanded a brass gun from one of their ships as payment (or part payment). Malaya and Mir Jumla were, however, only two of the merchants. Granted that they worked on a very large scale, but it was the scale of operation, not the operations themselves, that made them distinctive. What I will focus on in this chapter is smaller merchants who did not rise to the heights of Malaya Chetti and Mir Jumla, or of Virji Vora or Abdul Ghafur in Surat, but nevertheless had a role to play, both as independent merchants and as suppliers to the Europeans. From 1628 to 1629, we find any number of references to merchants, commodities and markets. In a letter written by a factor at Armagon to another at Peddapalli in 1632, there is mention of ‘the leade merchants’.11 The same letter also talks about sourcing ‘painted pilloberes [pillow covers], very good workes and collers, as alsoe s[ome] red broade lansoles [bedcovers] for England’.12 However, no indication is given of the names of the merchants or how they were contacted. More important is another letter of the same year where we can get some information about the markets lying within reach of Masulipatnam and Peddapalli. This letter was written by one Ralph Cartwright from a place called Vetapalemu,13 which he seems to have made a base from where he could travel to other nearby places. He wrote that having left Peddapalli, he reached Bapatla14 on 28 September 1632, but he left the next day because ‘the sorts he required were not to be had’. He then went to a place he called ‘Nynapooly’ (Nayanapalli) where he said that ‘having visited his former acquaintances, both “committes” [komatis] and weavers’, realised that he would be ‘able to perform some service in this neighbourhood. . . . Hopes to bring with him a thousand pieces of cloth, and also ten or more washers’.15 Here one sees the first reference of the English trying to get artisans to move to an area where the English had a permanent factory. Obviously, such a move would not have been considered without some guarantee of a place to stay; and so the letter says that ‘for their accommodation the “Bramon” [Brahman] and “Janga” are to buy two pagodas

Merchants of the Coromandel Coast in the 17th Century  101

worth of toddy trees, with whatever else is necessary to build them a house “in our great court next to the cookroome” ’.16 Who this Brahmin was is made clear in another letter where his name is given as Guruva Reddi (mentioned in the record as Grua). But other than the name we have no information on Janga, but he was probably some kind of an agent for work in the vicinity of Bapatla and Peddapalli. Guruva seems to have acted as the chief agent of the British for instructions were also given that when the merchants brought in their cloth, he was to be instructed to examine the cloth, arrange the price and then deliver the cloth to the washers. Factors at Peddapalli were told that Guruva would inform them about the time of delivery to the washers as well as the money to be paid to the merchants. In addition, he was to be told to buy cotton cloth, presumably unbleached, to make bales for the goods that had been purchased. Another name that occurs in the same letter is of a merchant named ‘Commer Bampa’ [Kammavaru Bampa] who ‘promised to bring samples to the house; should he offer any good cloth, it may be bought for gold at 70 pagodas per sere17 or Venetianoes [sequins] at 14 fanam per piece’.18 In later records, we often find references to some people as rogues or thieves; here too there is mention of ‘Canchee [Kanchi], that rougue, should not be allowed to come into the house’,19 which would imply that he had been given this permission earlier. As only merchants (or brokers) were permitted, the assumption would have to be that he was someone who had earlier supplied something but who was now persona non grata. For a short period, the English traded from the Dutch settlement at Pulicat. An early letter from this place talked about the help that the English received from the ‘native merchants’, particularly from one (not named) who kept them ‘secretly informed of the proceedings of the Dutch’.20 Merchants were also part of the private trade networks of the English factors. In yet another letter of 1632, one Richard Hudson wrote that there was ‘an account betwixt himself and “Singere” [Singarayya]’ and that he had accepted some goods from the latter, for which he would settle accounts when he went to Masulipatnam. Other names associated with Hudson were ‘Ananto’ and ‘Narrayna’, both of whom claimed that Hudson owed money. Hudson declared that Guruva Brahmin had enough money in his hands to pay Ananto.21 Hudson was later accused by the company of fraud and was asked to reimburse the company. What we can see here is the beginning of the formation of different levels of networks and the involvement of Indian merchants both in the work of the company and in private trade. Guruva seems to have worked with the company as a broker involved in different kinds of activities. Whether it was through him that the other networks were established or vice versa is unclear, but the networks existed. A similar accusation of private trade was later made against Sir Edward Winter at Fort St. George, and it was said that he had used the Brahmin brothers Venkata and Kanappa, the chief merchants at Fort St. George, to further his own interests at the cost of the company. Private trade and the involvement of Indian merchants in such trade remained an important feature throughout the period under review, with almost every new governor accusing former governors of having made fortunes at the cost of the company’s trade.

102  Radhika Seshan

In Masulipatnam, there were of course a large number of merchants. The records mention one ‘Mohammad Taqi’, who was the governor of the port, and who, among other things, tried to enforce a monopoly on money-changing. He was reported to have appointed one sarraf (money-changer) to whom all Europeans were to take their money to be changed into the local coinage.22 In 1628, the English resolved to leave Masulipatnam because the governor of the port had ‘Farmed the trade of merchandizing to three Gentew committees’ and ‘debarred’ all other komatis from trading with the English. In addition, the English stated that ‘Noe cuntrie comittie dare bee soe hardie as to com within the presinct of your government uppon payne of beating and his goods forced from him’. Money owed to the English by ‘Lingana’ and ‘Rama’, apparently two of the suppliers, had still not been repaid, despite the English having appealed to the governor for help.23 In Fort St. George, starting with Sesadri, the two brothers Kanappa and Venkata (all of whom have been mentioned earlier), we get a large number of other names as well. The chief merchants who dominated the scene for much of the seventeenth century were Beri Timanna and Kasi Viranna, who were apparently partners, with Viranna carrying on alone after the death of Timanna. Viranna was a very important figure in Madras, not only as chief merchant but also as revenue farmer of a number of places along the coast, including Armagon and San Thomé. In 1672, when the French were besieged by the Golconda troops in San Thomé, he was reported to have supplied information and supplies to them by night.24 He and Timanna had earlier built a ‘Paddy Bancksall’, and, in return, had collected a small fee on the paddy and rice brought into the town.25 In 1676, he rented the paddy grounds at the rate of 40 pagodas per annum26 and was reported to have gone to considerable expense in ‘clearing the Sand from the Sea wall’.27 When the company decided to levy a small charge of 2 fanams per house to recover the money they had paid in fortifications, ‘all the Inhabitants any their own Merchants all but Cassa Verona had shut up their shops . . . [and] had stopped all provisions from coming to Towne’.28 Questions were raised about the extent of his control over the trade of Madras by the Court of Directors in London, but it was stated that it was because of him that the English in Madras had no ‘bad debts’.29 The factors also reported that his town could supply a good quantity of cloth to meet the company’s requirements – ‘4,000 ordinary ginghams and 1,000 fine ones’.30 All these factors clearly made him a valuable person to have in the settlement. After Viranna’s death, the English managed to set up a joint stock of Indian merchants in Fort St. George, following a pattern that had earlier been tried out by the Dutch. In this, an association of Indian merchants was created, with 100 shares distributed among different Indian merchants – this was not a joint stock of the European variety but one which was primarily aimed at reducing the company’s investment costs and replacing this with the money of the Indian merchants themselves, through the agency of the joint stock of the settlement. The chief merchants here were Timanna’s brothers, Pedda and Chinna Venkatadri.31 The point is that, from the time of the death of the last of the great merchants of Madras, the position

Merchants of the Coromandel Coast in the 17th Century  103

of the merchants as a whole began to be rather lower than that at the beginning of the century. When one moves away from Masulipatnam to the south Coromandel, the markets of the hinterland of course change. We find mention of places like Chinglepet, Wandiwash, Kancipuram and Kaveripakkam, as well as a more general mention of ‘the Gingee country’, the country of the Nayaks of ‘Madura’ and ‘Tanjur’ and of the possibility of better quality commodities, especially cloth and pepper being available there. When the English set up a factory at Fort St. David, part of the reason was definitely to get away from Golconda and/or the Mughals but was also in an effort to get closer to the production centres. Thus, in the Fort St. David records, we find more mention of the Pearl Fishery coast and of Ceylon in addition to the already existing networks that this Fort shared with Fort St. George. To the south of Fort St. George, two important ports in both the coastal trade and the trade across the Bay of Bengal were Porto Novo and Kunimedu. Both these ports would be easier to reach if the English had a settlement in the Nayak kingdom of Jinji. From the 1680s, the English tried to get a port in this kingdom. It is connections with the negotiations for getting a port, and later, after a place was granted the problems with the political elites in and around the port, that we find information about merchants. A point of interest that is to be noted is that, for the initial negotiations, a dubash – a man named ‘Narain’, called ‘Dubash Narain’ in the records – was sent from Fort St. George. This is the first mention of a dubash being employed on company work rather than a vakil or a hajib, an agent. This is far from being the only name that appears in the records. A letter from a person named ‘Markaindo’ (probably Markandeya, a fairly common name in Tamil Nadu) says that, if the company routed their trade through him, he would ‘stand to ye quarter part of the trade, both at Cudalore and Porta Nova’, and would help in both supplying goods and to make the investment on behalf of the company. If, on the other hand, the company decided to appoint other merchants for the investment in the hinterland, then he would still supply a quarter of the total investment. He further stated that he had ‘two or three Shipps of my owne’ which he offered to the company for their trade; if they did not want the ships, then he would continue to use them for his own trade. In that case, he suggested that the English give him a pass and permit 4: or 5: Englishmen [to travel on board] and carrying ye Ship to such Ports as I shall desire in Your Worps: [names, then sic] in such case deducting ye Officers & Lascars pay, & all other expencesYor: Worp&ca: shall have 1/3 of ye profitt, & the other two shall be upon my Accot.32 Nor is this the only letter of offer. Another individual, one ‘Nagogee Tirumala Pontula from Coodaloor’, offered his services as go-between in the negotiations with the Maratha subedar in Jinji, Harji Raja, so as to get permission for the English to ‘build the ffactory neere the river’, and get ‘Letter .  .  . to preserve a good friendship betwixt you’. He further offered to get an official qaul from Sambhaji,

104  Radhika Seshan

the Maratha king. The letter went on to say that he particularly brought to the company’s notice the bearers ‘herof Erram Rajoo &Vallabhia of what they shall acquaint your Worshipp by word of mouth I shall obtaiue leave for yor Worships people to live in Circawnes house this yeare for 6 months’.33 One of these names, that of ‘Erram Rajoo’, appears in later records also, as the one who had taken up the tobacco farm in Fort St. David. His name continues to appear until 1712, usually in connection with his delays in payment, but it is probably significant that, despite his constant tardiness, he was still regarded as a worthwhile person to have in the town. Other names also appear – one ‘Viboge Chitte’, who was a resident of Cuddalore but not trusted because he was a ‘Dutch Merchant’, a ‘Chinna Tambi’ and after 1696, when Fort St. David had been built and a joint stock after the Fort St. George established, Serapa was the chief merchant of the joint stock of Fort St. David. From this time onwards, however, in both places, the merchants occur much more in connection with the company work and are less frequently mentioned as trading on their own account or being important enough to be used in political negotiations. The hinterland for the supplies for the company trade was the same. The main centre seems to have been Udaiyarpalayam,34 and in 1697, it was reported that there were 3,000 looms in the area that were supplying the company’s requirements.35 A word of caution was also sounded – that if the weavers were not paid in time, they would send off the cloth to be sold to other Europeans. Clearly, it was still a sellers’ market. The networks of contacts across the peninsula worked for both sets of merchants, so that we have mention of ‘Tauta Chitte, Comma Chitte,  & Ranga Chitte’ promising to supply pepper brought by the overland route at the same price as that brought by sea, that is 22½ pagodas per candy. In Fort St. George at the same time, pepper had to be purchased for 23½ pagodas per candy; perhaps this, in itself, vindicated the choice of a factory further to the south of Madras. A point to be remembered is that even at this time, merchants continued to be engaged in trade on their own account, along the coast as well as to Sri Lanka across the Bay to Myanmar and Malaysia. In association with the Portuguese, some trade seems to have been carried on to Manila as well. Networks

What kind of networks can we distinguish from the above? I would suggest that there are three kinds of networks that can be identified – of knowledge, of trust and of lineage. Going in reverse order, we could argue that networks of lineage are to be seen in the early decades of the century, in the Malaya Chetti family. As I have said earlier, members of the family were involved in trade (and politics) at different points along the coast. These apparently began to break down later, so merchants like Viranna and Serapa are not mentioned as being part of any established lineage; on the other hand, new lineages were possibly being set up, as can

Merchants of the Coromandel Coast in the 17th Century  105

be seen in the mention of Timanna’s brothers being partners and being involved in the trade with Viranna. Networks of trust were built up in a number of ways, some of which can be seen in the relationship built up between Viranna and the company. The factors in Fort St. George did argue in his favour when the court of directors questioned the extent of dependence on a single merchant, for they were wary of the monopoly that he had on supplies; but the factors stated that it was because of him that they had no ‘bad debts’. Yet another level of trust is that which existed between Viranna and the local bureaucracy, so that when Viranna died, the local Golconda governor supported the cause of Pedda Venkatadri for chief merchant and told the company that he had to be given enough time to build up as strong a position as that which Viranna had enjoyed. Information about mercantile networks can be found in various aspects, as, for instance, in descriptions of routes and methods of transport of commodities. Another aspect of mercantile networks is that of routes and mechanisms of transport. For example in addition to the standard references to palanquins, horses and ox-drawn carts, we also find the occasional mention of ‘sangri’, which were rafts made by putting boards or planks across two river boats, loading goods onto the boards and transporting them across the river. This method seems to have been very common in the Krishna delta but is not mentioned for the Kaveri delta. Yet another aspect of the networks of the merchants is to be seen in reports from the early years, which talk of the merchants taking cloth to be washed. For example in 1622, it was reported that as the water near Pulicat was so brackish that cloth was sent ‘six Jentes [Gentoo] leagues, and being in another government [the merchants] are forced to pay junkan [chumgam, toll or tax] on every cloth or painting’.36 What were the markers of such networks? Asked differently, the question could address issues such has who had access, who was denied access and how, what kind of identity formation was asserted through the existence and access to certain networks and the methods of establishment of exclusion and inclusion. A  further question has to be the ways in which the Europeans attempted first to enter these networks and later how they modified them to suit their requirements. An example of the former could be the embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to India, where he did have access to the emperor but needed to reinforce this access through the agency of Asaf Khan – and still did not get the concessions for trade that he sought! Viranna as a ‘free merchant’, Malaya as a merchant and commander-in-chief of the Vijayanagar troops, the grants for trade made by various nobles and Nayaks to the Europeans, the attempts to subvert or reframe such grants – all these address the issues of access and denial outlined earlier. In the course of the seventeenth century, these networks began to change. I have argued elsewhere that the decline of the traditional political structures (Vijayanagar, and later Golconda), had resulted in a situation where the merchants were totally dependent on the European companies.37 Networks of trade were therefore at the disposal of the Europeans and not used against them. Thus, there was a shift here, in the course of the seventeenth century, from ‘merchants, brokers and the English

106  Radhika Seshan

Company’ to ‘the English Company and its brokers’, with ‘merchants’ in individual capacities being either small scale or associated with the private trade of the English factors alone. A certain tension between merchants and companies, as well as companies and the political systems can be clearly seen. Factors were often advised not to place any reliance on the promises made by the merchants and from the 1680s, as the joint stocks of the Indian merchants became a much more common method of arranging for contracts, we find steadily increasing mention of shortfalls in the amount supplied. Merchants too seem to have regularly threatened to give up supplying the company. Letters from London instructed factors to observe alwayes the Rule we gave for the sorter and all his Assistants, to set each their particular marke respectively to every peice of cloth sorted by them and let each mans sorting near as it can be, be embaled by themselves that we may observe who serves us well and who is dealt with underhand. . . . We know it is an old trick of your black merchants to delay the bringing in of their goods in all factories, . . . pretending sometimes, that their Goods are stopt in the country and divers other excuses of the same kind.38 One part of the trade was necessarily the coastal trade. This was something that Asian merchants participated in regularly throughout the seventeenth century. The records of Fort St. George as well as the Dutch records provide ample information about smaller ships putting into many ports along the coast and carrying goods from one port to another. The point that I am trying to make is that as said right at the beginning, the networks of markets, commodities and merchants continued to function very effectively throughout the seventeenth century. There was a shrinkage in the area of operation and therefore presumably of the scale as well. But we cannot yet see a clear decline in commodities, markets or the numbers of merchants in the Indian Ocean world in this period. Notes 1 Records of Fort St. George – Diary and Consultation Books (henceforth RFSG – Diary), 28 September  1675. (All spellings within the quotations are as found in the records.) 2 Ibid. 3 W. Foster (ed.), The English Factories in India (henceforth cited as EFI), Vol. 1, Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 47–48. 4 Ibid., p. 208. 5 Ibid., p. 265. 6 Ibid., p. 264. This is in a letter from William Methwold to Surat. 7 Ibid., p. 265. 8 Radhika Seshan, Trade and Politics on the Coromandel Coast, New Delhi: Primus Books, 2012. 9 EFI, Vol. 3, p. 358. 10 For details, see Jagdish Narayan Sarkar, Life of Mir Jumla, Calcutta: Thacker, Spink & Co., 1951.

Merchants of the Coromandel Coast in the 17th Century  107

11 Letters from Fort St. George of the 1670s do not talk of lead merchants but do talk of ruby merchants. 12 EFI, Vol. 4, p. 229. 13 10 miles south-west of Bapatla. 14 13 miles west of Peddapalli. 15 EFI, Vol. 4, p. 230. 16 Ibid., pp. 230–231. 17 The use of the word sere here is unusual, and so we do not know whether this was some local method of enumerating cloth similar to the ‘corge’, meaning 20 pieces, found further south, or if it has something to do with the ser, which is a unit of weight. If the latter, then the question that has to be asked is why in this area, bales of cotton were given by weight rather than number. This is something for which I do not have an answer. 18 EFI, Vol. 4, p. 231. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 102. 21 EFI, Vol. 4, p. 242. 22 Ibid., Vol. 1, p. 265. 23 Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 282. 24 Mentioned in the Travels of Abbe Carre. 25 Ibid., 18 February 1676. 26 EFI (New Series), Vol. II, p. 146. 27 RFSG – Diary, 29 February 1676. 28 Ibid. 29 RFSG – Diary, 29 February 1676. 30 Ibid., p. 176. 31 For details, see Radhika Seshan, ‘From Chief Merchant to Joint Stock Merchant: A Comparative Study of Kasi Viranna and Pedda Venkatadri, Chief Merchants of Madras’, published in the Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, 2009, pp. 347–353. 32 RFSG – Diary, 28 July 1682. 33 Ibid., September  1682 – the original has no date, but it was received on 11 September 1682. 34 A place that was the scene of one of the major battles of the first Anglo-French War. 35 Ibid., 26 February 1697. 36 EFI, Vol. 2, p. 104. 37 Radhika Seshan, Trade and Politics on the Coromandel Coast, New Delhi: Primus Books, 2012. 38 Records of Fort St. George – Despatches from England, Letter from London to Fort St. George, 8 January 1687.

Bibliography Archival Sources Records of Fort St. George: Diary and Consultation Books, Despatches from and to England, Letters to and from Fort St. George.

Secondary Sources Fawcett, Lady (tr.) and Fawcett, Charles (ed.) (1947, 1990). The Travels of the Abbe Carre in India and the Near East, 1672–1674, London, Hakluyt Society and New Delhi: Asian Educational Services (reprint). Foster, William (ed.) (1906–1927). The English Factories in India, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

108  Radhika Seshan

Sarkar, Jagdish Narayan (1951). Life of Mir Jumla, Calcutta: Thacker, Spink & Co. Seshan, Radhika (2009). ‘From Chief Merchant to Joint Stock Merchant: A Comparative Study of Kasi Viranna and Pedda Venkatadri, Chief Merchants of Madras’, published in the Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, pp. 347–353. Seshan, Radhika (2012) Trade and Politics on the Coromandel Coast, New Delhi: Primus.

7 TRADE OF ADIL SHAHI SULTANATE OF BIJAPUR Textiles, Spices and Horses (1489–1686) Kiran Sampatrao Jadhav

Introduction

The Adil Shahi Sultanate of Bijapur was established in the year ad 1489 and existed for a period of 200 years. After its establishment in the north-west part of the Deccan, it gradually expanded over the other parts of the Deccan. Until 1659, this sultanate had access to the Indian Ocean trade through its ports on the west coast on the Arabian Sea. Till that period, the sultanate was at its height of prosperity. To sustain this prosperity, it was the necessity of the sultanate to maintain its cavalry strength and profitable export–import trade. Various commodities drove the sultanate’s trade. However, textiles, spices and horses were the key items. Horses were the crucial need for cavalry and as they were bred outside India and sold at high price. To buy horses, the sultanate would need to maintain the purchasing power which was earned by the sultanate through its export trade, mainly in its key items like textile and spices. Therefore, the economic and political prosperity was dependent on the favourable condition of the export trade in textile and spices on the one hand and import of horses on the other hand. I Adil Shahi Ports on the West Coast of India

Initially, the Adil Shahi Sultanate had within its territories the ports of the Konkan, namely Dabhol, Rajapur and Vengurla. Goa was also in their possession for some years, but it was conquered by the Portuguese in ad 1510. After the fall of Vijayanagar in ad 1565, the sultanate expanded further towards the south. At this time, Karwar, Honawar and Bhatkal came into their possession which helped to boost their trade and commerce. Chaul, one of the most important ports on the DOI: 10.4324/9781003396666-10

110  Kiran Sampatrao Jadhav

west coast, had in the sixteenth century been divided into two parts, with lower Chaul under Portuguese control and upper Chaul under Bijapur, between 1636 and 1661. All these ports were flourishing until ad 16591 (Verma, 1974: 89–99). Through these ports trade was carried on with Gujarat, Malabar, Middle East, Africa, Ceylon, China, Maldives Island and European countries. The chief inland trade centres in the kingdom were Bijapur and its suburbs, Raibag, Hubli, Athani and so on (Verma, 1974: 89, 92–99). From 1659 to 1664, the sultanate lost the control of its western ports and nearby territories to Shivaji, this affected the Adil Shahi trade as a whole. Ports and the Hinterlands

The activity in the various Adil Shahi ports on the west coast was generated by the economy of the hinterland, varying in depth and in the intensity of its productivity and consumption. An attempt is made here to identify the hinterland or interior area of Adil Shahi ports. The markets and trade routes from the hinterland to the coastal ports can be traced out. It appears that English merchants would frequently visit the hinterland during the seventeenth century, ‘Though the Englishmen traded at Dabhol and Rajapur they also travelled down to various hinterland places in the Bijapur kingdom for the purchase of commodities and for selling English goods-coral, broadcloth, lead etc’ (Foster, (henceforth EFI), Vol. V: 12), as some of the ports like Rajapur had neither goods nor merchants, and everything had to be obtained from markets in the interior of the kingdom (Fawcett, EFI new series, 1936: xix). The English went to the market towns for the purchase of pepper, cotton goods etc. and usually entered into negotiations with a local merchant whom they appointed as their broker. Some brokers were employed in the markets of Bijapur by the English factors; prominent figures among them were the Benidas, Bimaldas and Vitthal Gomati who did business for these factors (EFI, V: 175,292; VI: 237; VII: 252, 327). Mandelslo describes various hinterland places, which were connected to Dabhol, Rajapur and Bombay. He mentions, a city named ‘Asta [which] had a good trade and there was a good market where could be had most of the provisions’. His ‘Qualarapour’ was probably the modern Kaulapur. In that city linen cloth was produced; Tamba was probably the modern Tarribave. It was a large and populous city, and the inhabitants of that city like Hindus and Banjaria lived by commerce and tillage. Raybag and Athani were the two important mart towns in Deccan from where the merchandise was brought to Rajapur and Dabhol, and Rajapur had trade relations with Raybag for a long time in the seventeenth century. The English and the French merchants who had established their factories at Rajapur, Karwar and Bombay had a goods centre at Raybag to purchase pepper and other commodities (Davies, 1662: 73). Karwar was an important trade centre of the English merchants during the seventeenth century. ‘No particular commercially important goods were produced there, but it was a convenient place to bring the merchandise like pepper, betel

Trade of Adil Shahi Sultanate of Bijapur  111

MAP 7.1 

Trade Centres

nuts, and calicoes from the mart town of Hubli’ (Crooke ed., Fryer, 1915, Vol. II: 83). Good kind of muslin called betteellae was produced in the region around Karwar. The English factory at Karwar had commercial relations mainly with the mart town of Hubli for the purchase of calicoes, cotton yarn and pepper. The best sort of pepper was produced in the country of Sonda, and it was known as Karwar pepper in England (Ibid.: 42–43). Some other hinterland places known to

112  Kiran Sampatrao Jadhav

the merchants were Lakshmesvar for calicoes and pepper and Mudhol for calicoes (EFI, X: 239–240). Networks of Trade

Trade network refers to various kinds of trade carried out through the trade routes to a particular distance at local, regional, intra-regional and overseas level. It also deals with trade network of pepper, textiles, horses and so on. Tapan Raychaudhuri divides trade in two categories: intra-local and inter-local. He argues for the following typology of market centres: (1) emporia for long-distance trade, inland, over land or overseas, (2) small-scale bazaars for local consumption, (3) periodic fairs, (4) isolated rural markets, a category not easily distinguishable from small-scale bazaars (Habib and Raychaudhuri, 2008: 325–359). This typology can be used to study the market centres and the networks of trade of the Adil Shahi Sultanate. The routes involved in the trade network of Adil Shahi Sultanate were connected to inland places of important trade centres and markets of Adil Shahi Sultanate. They connect the important ports of the western coast to the hinterland of the sultanate and other regions of the country. ‘The ports were connected through external trade to some international as well as Indian ports which includes; ports of the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf countries, Syria, Ethiopia, Malacca, Sunda Islands, and Malabar, Gujarat, Sind etc’ (Jadhav, 2015: 3). Hence, there was a bilateral trade between the Adil Shahi ports and ports of various regions where these goods were marketed. In this bilateral trade textiles and spices were exported to these ports by merchants of Adil Shahi ports and in return, the merchants imported a variety of products of these regions, which included horses, raw silk, velvet, scarlet and so on. Trade Routes

Trade routes were very important for the prosperity of trade and commerce in any kingdom. The trade routes in the Adil Shahi Sultanate can be seen from three perspectives. First, there were routes which connected the important ports of the sultanate to the inland marketplaces. They were important because of a limited access from Konkan area to Desh or the Plateau through various passes or ghats. Second, the routes were connected to the various administrative units of the sultanate. And within a particular administrative unit we get an internal trade network, which connects the Qasbas (small towns) or Peths to the other Qasbas and with villages around and neighbouring cities. Land Routes

From the Konkan, there were many passes through the ghats across the Sahyadri. They were useful because they connected to the town and areas beyond the Ghatmatha served by it. These routes were mainly used by banjaras with their pack bullocks carrying grain, provisions and other trade goods.

Trade of Adil Shahi Sultanate of Bijapur  113

The French traveller Thévenot noted that in the seventeenth century ‘chintz, a variety of cloth was sent from Masulipatam, finding its way to the Konkan through the Nasik and Thal Pass’.2 A detailed description of the ghats has been given by P.M. Joshi. The Ahupa Ghat was used by Fryer in 1675, when he went from Bombay via Bhivandi (now a suburb of Mumbai) to Junnar. Below Ahupa, near the pilgrimage centre Bhimashankar, was a ghat known by the name of the shrine or as the Ranshil ghat. It was both a pilgrim and a trade route, with merchants using it to get to the inland towns of Ambegaon and Khed. South of Khed was the Bahamani stronghold of Chakan, near Pune, used by Khalaf Hasan Basri, the governor of the Daulatabad fort and the commander of the Bahmani army, for his Konkan operation in 1447–1448. He descended into the Pen-Panvel area of Konkan by the Bhor Ghat, and the remainder of the afaqis, after Khalaf Hasan’s defeat, may have returned to base by the same route or by the Ambar Khind pass from Pali. These two ghats, the Bhor Ghat and the Ambar Khind Ghat, also served the port of Chaul and Janjira–Danda–Rajapuri, south of Chaul. The route from here passed Tala-Ghosala, Roha and Pali, one branch going to the Umbarkhind and Bhor passes, the other crossed the Tamhane Ghat descending into Paud Mawal and went on to Shirur and Aurangabad and another branch to Pune. From Mahad on the Dasgaon creek, which had considerable trade in the sixteenth century, to the Shirwal and Bhor on the plateau, there were at least four routes across the hills, the most used being the Warandha Ghat, which is still in use. Wai, an important town, was served from Mahad by the Par and Radtondi Ghat crossing at Mahabaleshwar. To control this route, Chhatrapati Shivaji built the Pratapgarh fort. The most used and important ghat south of Mahad was the Kumbharli Ghat leading from Dabhol to Patan and Karhar, the latter a great centre of trade from where the goods that came up from the Kumbharli and other ghats were distributed to various places. Van Twist, a Dutch factor visited Bijapur in 1637, travelled by this route from Dabhol to Bijapur. The importance of Bijapur is clear from the fact that milestones along the road, even in modern times, indicate the distance to Bijapur rather than to any other place. From Ratnagiri the Amba Ghat and from Vijaydurg the Phonda Ghat led to Kolhapur and from Rajapur and Kharepatan the Anaskura Ghat led to Panhala and Kolhapur. From Vengurla and Sawantwadi the Amboli Ghat went to Belgam, and the route continued further to the busy mart towns of Athani and Raibagh. From the Goa region, the main passes were the Kel Ghat and the Rama Ghat leading to Belgam on the one side and Khanapur on the other. Two other ghats were the Tinai Ghat and the Dighi Ghat, in that order. Both these led to Supa, Halyal and beyond, on the one side to Belgam, Miraj, Bijapur and on the other to Dharwad– Hubli and so to Vijaynagar. The Portuguese took one of these routes for their journey to Bijapur, Vijaynagar and other places of the plateau. In March  1695, Gamelli Careri seems to have taken the Tinai Ghat route to go from Goa to Aurangazeb’s camp at Galgala on the Krishna. The Arbail Ghat crossed the Sahyadri from Karwar, and from Yellapur at the head of the ghat the route went on to Halyal, Supa and beyond. The Kanara ports of Honawar and Bhatkal had approaches to the Malnad area by way of Gersoppa. The Gersoppa Ghat extends for five miles

114  Kiran Sampatrao Jadhav

and leads to the Mysore area on the one side and to Siddapur, Sirsi and Hubli on the other. Other Vijaynagar ports along this coast up to Mangalore and beyond used this ghat to reach Malnad. Fr. Luis, the envoy of Affonso de Albuquerque to Vijayanagar went from Cochin to Bhatkal and thence via Honawar to Vijayanagar; and about 1520, Domingo Paes also followed this route (Joshi, 1973: 26–28). In the course of the first half of the seventeenth century, the Bijapur kingdom expanded to include some ports on the south-eastern coast as well. This gave the kingdom greater access to both areas of the Indian Ocean trade, that is, both the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal networks. Access to the east coast was in many ways quite easy, and routes passed southwards through present-day Karnataka state and then into Tamil Nadu. It appears that the present-day South Arcot region was a key transit zone. The great advantage of the area covered by the South Arcot district from the Palar to Vellar was the easy accessibility of the region. The westward routes passed through important producing and consuming areas, Salem, Mysore, Kanara and the southern Bijapur districts. A  large quantity of textile must have passed through these routes, as well as imported goods such as spices and luxury consumer goods that entered through Coromandel ports. Land and Sea Routes Utilised by the Foreign Travellers

Considerable information about routes and distances is available from travel accounts. Van Twist, a Dutch factor, travelled from Dabhol to Bijapur in 1637. The route covered the following stages. After leaving Dabhol, he travelled to Bijapur by way of Chiplun, up the Kumbharli Ghat to Karhad via Helwak and then from Karhad to Bijapur by way of Islampur and Miraj (Joshi, 1956: 114). After completion of the mission, he left Bijapur on 20 March 1637 and travelling through Tikota, Raibagh, the Amboly Ghat and Banda arrived at Vengurla on 28 March and then went to Goa. Tavernier, a French gem merchant, made two journeys to Goa. The first was at the end of the year 1641 and the second at the beginning of the year 1648. He has described the route from Surat to Goa and from Goa to Golconda via Bijapur. For the route from Surat to Goa, he says, [T]ravellers can go from Surat to Goa partly by land and partly by sea, but the road is very bad by land, especially from Daman to Rajapur. Most travellers prefer the sea route, and hiring an almadier, which is a kind of row-boat, they go from point to point up to Goa, notwithstanding that the Malbaries, who are the pirates of India, are much to be feared along these coasts. He further adds, ‘the route from Surat to Goa is not counted by coss,3 but by gos,4 which are about equal to four of our common leagues’. He provides detailed information about the distance, From Surat to Daman, 7 gos; from Daman to Bassain, 10 gos; from Bassain to Chaoul, 9 gos; from Chaoul to Daboul, 12 gos; from Daboul to Rejapor,

Trade of Adil Shahi Sultanate of Bijapur  115

10 gos; from Rejapor to Mingrela, 9 gos; from Mingrela [Vengurla] to Goa, 4 gos. This makes in all, from Surat to Goa, 61 gos. (Ball and Crooke: Tavernier, 1996: 146) During his first journey he remained there for seven days. He then returned to Surat by land. From Goa he went to Bicholi, which is upon the mainland; from Bicholi he went to Bijapur, then to Golkonda, Aurangabad and Surat. He describes the journey from Goa to Bijapur, from Goa to Visapur, this is generally accomplished in eight days, 85 coss. Visapur to Golkonda, which I travelled in nine days, 100 coss. From Golkonda to Aurangabad the stages are not so well defined, for sometimes it takes sixteen, sometimes twenty, or even twenty-five days. From Aurangabad to Surat the journey sometimes take twelve days, but sometimes it is not accomplished in less than fifteen or sixteen. (Ibid.) On his second journey to Goa, he left Surat and embarked on a Dutch ship called the Maestricht, which carried him to Vengurla, where he reached on 11 January 1648. Abbé Carré travelled from Surat to Goa during November–December  1672. From Surat, he travelled by sea to Daman, from Daman went to Umbargaon, then to Dahanu, Tarapur, Kelve Mahim, Dantivara, Bassein, Salsette, Bombay, Alibag and Chaul. After Chaul, he decided to travel by land to Goa; from Chaul he went to Ashtami, from Ashtami went to Mangaon, then to Mahad, Khed, Chiplun, Sangameshwar, Rajapur, Kharepatan, Kudal, Banda, Bicholi and Goa (Fawcett and Fawcett: Carré, 1990: 167–207). John Jourdain commented in about 1618 that from Dabhol it took 15 days to reach Golconda and four days to reach Bijapur (Foster: Jourdain, 1905: 199, n.1). II Involvement of the Merchants in Trade

Until the Portuguese gained control over Goa and the Indian Ocean, trade on the western coast of India was carried out by Arab traders to the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, and then the goods were transferred by camels across to Alexandria, from where the Venetian and Genoese merchants distributed them through Europe (Sherwani and Joshi, 1973: 300). The information about the involvement of the merchants during this period comes mainly from factory records, and more details are available about Surat and the Coromandel Coast than about the interior of Bijapur. However, the accounts of the travellers, ambassadors and merchants of these periods provide some information regarding the involvement of the merchants in the trade and commerce of Bijapur.

116  Kiran Sampatrao Jadhav

The Italian traveller Varthema visited Dabhol around 1505. He describes the merchants at Dabhol, ‘there are Moorish [Muslim] merchants here in very great numbers’ (Badger and Jones: Varthema, 1863: 115). In the seventeenth century, the Surat merchant Virji Vorah was an important participant in the pepper trade of the Konkan region. The English records provide some information about his participation in the trade from and to Dabhol in the middle of the seventeenth century (Subrahmanyam, 2004: 244). Asad Beg, the Mughal ambassador in Bijapur, noticed that ‘headmen of the various artisan associations were Hindu’ (Ibid.). Abbé Carré, in his visit to Bijapur in 1673, noticed the presence of foreign merchants in Bijapur. He said that when he reached the city, the caravanseries were so full of foreign merchants that I  was obliged to seek lodging elsewhere. . . . I sent my servants to all the caravanserais in the town to see if they could find any Armenians or Persians. . . . They returned and told me that though they had found several Armenians, the latter had so much merchandise that they do not wish to leave their business and come to a place so distant, as they were lodged with the other foreign merchants, a good league away from where I was at an extremity of the town. (Carré, 270) He mentioned the same about Raybag, ‘Raybag had various nations and oriental merchants on account of its great commerce. The state also derived immense revenues from the trade and some fine estates attached in Raybag’ (Ibid.: 233–234). Sourcing of the Commodities

Getting the commodities from the producers and then supplying them to the market was an important aspect of trade. The movement of goods was made possible by a complex network linking wholesalers with merchants down to the regional and local levels through agents (gumashtas) and commission agents (dalals). The movement of goods was also facilitated by the growth of financial system, which permitted easy transmission of money from one part of the country to another. This was done through the hundis. Barbosa describes the process of bringing goods from the interior markets to Chaul, And of the merchants who come hither for trade . . . those of them who are from the inland country come to this land and seat themselves in the place of assembly with all the goods they have brought with them. This is at a spot a short league inland from Chaul. They bring their goods laden on great droves of trained oxen with pack-saddles, like those of Castille, and over these long sacks thrown across, in which they pack their goods, and behind them go a drover (condutor) who drives twenty or thirty oxen before him. (Dames: Barbosa, 1918: 158–163)

Trade of Adil Shahi Sultanate of Bijapur  117

Mandelso, a seventeenth-century German adventurer, who had visited some places in Adil Shahi kingdom, mentions about the cafila (caravan) trade carried out by thousands of oxen. There is in the kingdom of Cuncam a certain people called Venesars [might be the Banjaras], who bye the Wheat and Rice, which is brought to the market, in cities, once a week, and sell it again in the country of Indosthan, and the other neighbouring provinces, into which they go with caffilas, or carvans, of five or six and sometimes nine hundred or a thousand Beast loaden. (Mandelso: Davies, 1662: 75) There was a well-established pattern of weekly market where merchants could buy spices, textiles and grains to sell elsewhere. Raibag was a trade centre for pepper (Tavernier: 147) and other commodities. As mentioned earlier, the English factors appointed local merchants like Benidas, Bimaldas and Vitthal Gomati as their brokers in the markets of Bijapur. Abbé Carré, a French traveller visited these places. He reached the French factory at Raybag at night on Friday, 6 January 1673. M. Boureau was head of the Company based at Rajapur and he had kept Hindu broker in charge of the factory at Raybag. The broker was also responsible for the dispatch of goods of local manufactures in Bijapur, Golkonda and other places and sale of the European goods that were in great demand. (Carré: 233–234) What comes out clearly in such descriptions is that there were a number of levels of buying and selling, and in this process, the merchants who sourced the commodities may not have been the ones who did the final selling. It should also be pointed out that, in the period under review, merchants were not the only ones involved in trading activities, for a number of ‘political merchants’ are visible in the Deccan. By ‘political merchant’ is meant nobles who were also involved in trade. The involvement of some Adil Shahi nobles in the external trade of the sultanate is observed in the various sources. ‘Khwaja Noor, was the Bijapuri ambassador to Goa during 1620. He is frequently mentioned in Portuguese records as someone who was using his official position to trade from Goa, which was against the Portuguese monopoly of trade’ (Ahmad, 2008: 301). A ship belonging to Ekhlas Khan, Wazir of Muhammad Adil Shah, was captured in the Straits of Hormuz for not carrying a cartaz on 18 July 1644 (Shastry: 45–46; Ahmad: 317). Mir Kamaluddin Mazendarani an astute politician was also involved in such trade. The English records show that he kept his relations with all the companies on a sound footing, rendering services to them but expecting services in return (Subrahmanyam: 316).

118  Kiran Sampatrao Jadhav

Finance and Currency

It seems probable that the cotton industry was financed by the middleman or the Bania who kept in close touch with the market and requirements of the exporters (Burnell: Linschoten, 1885, 2004: 252–253; Grey, Pyrard de Laval, 1887: 177, 249). These middlemen or brokers were financed by foreign traders, and the producers of pepper and the cotton weavers were in their turn financed by the brokers. The English factors found that the calicoes manufactured by the weavers were of short dimensions only and if they wanted large-sized cloth, the only alternative was to finance the weavers with the cost of altering their looms to make the cloth broader (EFI, VII: 89; X: 241; XIII: 109). However, it should also be noted that the English and the Dutch themselves also borrowed money from the Indian merchants to finance their own trade, which gives an indication of the resources that Indian merchants could command. The Adil Shahi Sultanate struck coins in gold, silver and copper. Adil Shahi was the only dynasty of the post Bahmani period to issue coins in all three metals. The coins of Bahmani, Vijaynagar, Mughal, Marathas and so on were also in use. Larin of silver was an important coin of the sultanate (Jadhav: 198–208). Merchants who came to the Adil Shahi region for trade had to get local currency, particularly pagodas for their trade. European traders brought in substantial quantities of bullion, which they had to take to the mint nearest to the port of landing to be coined into the local currency. Alternatively, if they had brought different types of coins, they could take these coins to the sarrafs, the money-changers and exchange them for the coins current in the sultanate (Ibid.). Around 1660, due to the recommendation of Adil Shahi noble, Rustum-i- Zaman, permission was given to the English to establish a mint at Rajapur and to strike silver coins. However, this proposal materialised only 13 years later, and a mint was established not at Rajapur but at Bombay. The coins minted at Bombay were also intended partly for circulation in the Bijapur kingdom (Table 7.1) (EFI: X: 235). TABLE 7.1 Weight Standards of Adil Shahi Coins1

Sr. No.

Metrology

Denomination

Weight

1

Gold

2 3

Silver Copper

Pagoda Half Pagoda Fanam Larin 1½ falus Falus 2/3 falus 1/3 falus 1/6 falus 1/12 falus

3.5 g 1.6 g 0.4 g 4.2–4.9 g 17.3 g 11–12 g 7–8 g 3.5–4.3 g 2g 1g

1

Stan Goron and J.P. Goenka, The Coin of the Indian Sultanates, New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 2001, p. 317.

Trade of Adil Shahi Sultanate of Bijapur  119

III Commodities Traded in the Indian Ocean World

The commodities which drove the sultanates’ trade were rice, sugar, salt, pepper and other spices, diamond, horses, saltpetre, textiles, dyes and so on. As the main focus of this chapter is on textile, spices and horses, an attempt is made here to elaborate the trade activities in these commodities.

Textiles

It is interesting to see the various aspects of this industry. Textiles were of prime importance for Bijapur’s export trade. The sultanate had a flourishing cotton and silk weaving industry. Cotton was produced in the uplands of the Deccan (Laval: 36) and Kanara. It appears that silk required by the weavers was imported from China (Varadrajan, 1985: 14–15). During the Bahmani times, the silk industry in Chaul had become very popular. The silk procured in cocoon stage from China was brought to Chaul, where it was reeled, dyed and woven before being exported to the Middle Eastern markets. Similarly, the techniques for velvet production, though imported from Central Asia, became indigenised in this region (Varadrajan, 1985: 14–15). The state took active interest in the weaving industry, and the weavers were granted exemption from certain taxes (Sherwani and Joshi: 409). On the Konkan coast, Dabhol, Rajapur and Chaul were specialised in calicoes and muslins while Vengurla produced coarse cotton cloth for the home market (Varthema: 149; Moreland, 1994: 56). In the seventeenth century English merchants provided finance to the textile industry, and the middlemen were keen in managing the demand and supply (Linschoten: 252–253; Laval: 177, 249). The English factors provided finance to the weavers including the altering cost of their looms to make the cloth broader (EFI, VII: 89; X: 109). The cotton goods manufactured in the kingdom were carried to Persia, Arabia and Mozambique in East Africa by Muslim and Portuguese traders (Barbosa: 129; Linschoten: 270; Laval: 72, 235). During the first half of the seventeenth century, both Dabhol and Rajapur sent out large quantities of cotton cloths to Persia and Arabia (EFI, I:138; VII: 311; VIII: 34), but the English merchants who carried on this trade considered the cloth as too fine for England. In the Kanara region, cotton cloth was produced at Hubli and Lakshameshwar and was exported by the English from Karwar (EFI, X: 239; XIII: 108–109. After the loss of Chaul, Karwar became the greatest port of Bijapur on the west coast. The finest muslins of western India were exported from here. The weaving country was inland, to the east of Sahyadris, at Hubli (in Dharwar district), and at other centres, where the English East India Company had agents and employed as many as 50,000 weavers.5

120  Kiran Sampatrao Jadhav

Though the main focus of this chapter is on the export trade in textile, it is necessary to consider the import trade in textiles to know which kinds of cloth were not produced in the kingdom and therefore imported. Many kinds of rich clothes were in demand in the kingdom by small minority mostly the nobility. These were velvets, satins, scarlet cloths and damasks. These came mostly from Arabia, though Caesar Frederick notices a certain amount of velvet and scarlet cloths imported at Chaul from Portugal. (Linschoten: 256; Barbosa: 76; EFI, I: 54) Some quantities of woollen cloth were imported into Goa and thence into Bijapur by the Portuguese (Laval: 211). On the occasion of the marriage of Ibrahim Adil Shah II and the sister of Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah, Chand Bibi, (also known as Malika Jahan) in the year 1588, it was reported that ‘the great craftsmen of China prepared the wonderful dresses worn by the bride and groom’.6 Thus, there was a demand for only luxury items as import and it seems that on special occasions, the cloth manufactured in the country was seen as not special enough. Since the reign of Bahmani Sultanates, it became one of the chief concerns of the rulers to establish Peth (local markets) and encourage trade and commerce. For instance ‘Shamji Sivdeu’ was the Subedar of muamala Cheul, who established the Peth in that town. Detailed guidelines were laid down while establishing this Peth, some of which concerning the textile industry are given here: (1) Exemption from payment of Octroi duty to the merchants who buy clothes from Konkan. (2) Exemption from payment in respect of certain taxes, namely (a) Niputrik,7 (b) non-revenue tax (ghair-mahasul), (c) tax on bullocks, (d) Varhad taka.8 (3) In Rustamabad Peth, there were old warehouses since Malik Ambar’s time. The Prabhus and Senvis would build warehouses at the new settlement; they would carry goods from Revdanda, Konkan or over the ghats; charge Octroi at half the rate. Similarly, Khatre and Patve trading community people would make their homes in the Peth. Patve would trade in taffeta cloth, and the Khatris traded in goods (accessories) required by silk weavers of Cheul. They were exempted from Octroi duty. The same Khatri traders would take back silk goods for sale. They were exempted from payment of commission to the Patvas. (4) Similarly, cotton weavers (nadaf) and Chate, cloth merchants are exempted from Octroi. (5) Cloth merchants are exempted Octroi and other taxes for a period of 12 years. (6) All those coming and settling down in the Peth from Cheul, Revdanda, new towns or villages, also from Tal Konkan and Balaghat, though they be indebted to moneylenders (sahukars), they be protected for a period of five years in respect of repayment of the debt (Kulkarni, 2013).

Trade of Adil Shahi Sultanate of Bijapur  121

These guidelines explain the encouragement given to the development of trade and commerce throughout the kingdom. Spices

Adil Shahi trade in the spices was mainly in pepper; however, some quantity of cardamom was also traded. Some aspects of the spice trade, including area of production, important trade centres, merchants or European companies involved in this trade are discussed here. Both pepper and cardamom were produced in the Konkan and Karnatak regions during the period under review. The main areas of production were near Bhatkal and Karwar in present-day Karnataka state and Vengurla and Rajapur in presentday Maharashtra state (Linschoten: 73; Tavernier: 11; EFI, X: 240; XII: 108). The cardamom produced near Vengurla was regarded as being superior, as can be seen from Tavernier’s statement that ‘Vengurla is much renowned on account of its cardamoms. . ., which the Orientals esteem as the best of spices, and as they are cultivated only in this country, are very scare and dear’ (Table 7.2) (Tavernier: 148–149). The sources mention the names of some influential merchants and trade centres in the pepper trade. About the middle of the seventeenth century, Virji Vorah was an important participant in the pepper trade of the Konkan region; he was trading in particular from Dabhol (Subrahmanyam: 244). Diego de Couto, a Portuguese historian, has mentioned an export of pepper from Sangameshwar (south of Dabhol) during the second half of the seventeenth century (Sherwani and Joshi: 21). Rajapur also played a pivotal role in the trade of pepper in the first half of the seventeenth century. It was earlier used as a port for smuggled pepper by Europeans. It was said that the trading community in these ports consisted of ‘renegade Portuguese’, including some who had converted to Islam (Subrahmanyam: 243–244). Both the Dutch and English companies exerted themselves to procure TABLE 7.2 Revenue Collection From the Karnatak

Place

Income

Place

Income

Shrirangpattan ---Saundha Durg Jarimulla Terikhanda Ratangiri Sarhaati Pawagarh Mangpala Jagpala

3,58,51,361 1,02,63,635 7,20,871 11,25,000 93,750 1,72,500 93,757 75,000 1,23,750 15,000 1,92,500

Kotikhada Manori Kalwadi ----Haanhaali Anagondi Lokori Gangagiri Ballari Korikota Sabargarh

75,000 5,640 37,500 93,000 10,29,060 1,73,550 2,25,000 9,91,165 86,250 1,87,500 37,500

122  Kiran Sampatrao Jadhav

pepper at this port and inland marts of this area, immediately north of Goa. The East India Company finally occupied the area of Rajapur after a long period of negotiation (Carré: 233). Tavernier certifies that ‘Raybag was a trade centre for pepper’ (p. 147). Abbé Carré visited the French factory at Raybag on 6 January 1673. He mentions that M. Boureau was head of the Company based at Rajapur and he had kept a Hindu broker in charge of the factory at Raybag. The broker was also responsible for the dispatch of goods of local manufactures in Bijapur, Golkonda and other places and sale of the European goods that were in great demand. Raybag had various national and oriental merchants on account of its great commerce. The state also derived immense revenues from the trade in Raybag. (Carré: 233–234) The Portuguese did try to continue their monopoly of the trade in pepper in the seventeenth century as well, as can be seen from one instance in the year 1636. In that year, the Portuguese seized a ship of the sultan of Bijapur, and when the Sultan objected, as the ship had a cartaz issued to it, stated that the seizure had been because the ship had prohibited items like pepper (Ahmad: 312). The English and the Dutch did try to explore regions outside Bijapur to get supplies of pepper. One such area was Ikkeri, and in the beginning of 1637, Virbhadra Nayak, king of Ikkeri, made an agreement with the English for lead in exchange for pepper at the port of Bhatkal (Nayeem, 1974: 240). In February 1637, the Bijapuri governor of Rajapur promised the English to provide 3,000 candys (khandi)9 of pepper yearly, in addition to buying large quantities of English commodities. Rustum-I Zaman also granted some privileges, accordingly, the English could buy pepper at Hubbli without paying any customs there. Horses

Horse trade was important to the Adil Shahi Sultanate from both the political and economic points of view. There was continuous warfare amongst the Deccani Sultanates and with the other powers of the region, such as with Vijaynagar initially and later with the Mughals, Marathas and Portuguese. As the cavalry was crucial, and cavalry horses had to be imported from Arabia, this was the largest and probably the most expensive item of import. The information about the import of horses and their prices reveal the significance of this commodity in the trade and commerce of Adil Shahi Sultanate. Athanasius Nikitin, the Russian traveller who visited the Deccan in about 1470, describes Dabhol as ‘a very extensive seaport, where many horses are brought from Misr, Arabia, Khorasan, Turkestan, and Neghostan’ (Major, 1857, 1992: 20).

Trade of Adil Shahi Sultanate of Bijapur  123

Barbosa speaks about import of horses at Dabhol in 1510, ‘It has a very good harbour, whither sail many ships of the Moors from diver’s lands, to wit, from Moca, Adem and Ormus (which bring hither many horses)’ (Barbosa: 165; Jourdain: 198). He also describes the horse import in Goa, [F]rom the kingdom of Ormus come every year many ships laden with horses and great number of dealers from the great kingdom of Narsyngua [Vijayanagar] and from Daquem [Deccan] come hither to buy them. They pay for them at the rate of two to three hundreds cruzados a piece, as the case may be, and take them away to sell them to the kings and lords of their lands, and by this means one and all they make great gains, and the King our Lord as well, who receives a duty of forty cruzados [i.e. ten percent on the sell price] on each horse. (Barbosa: 178) By the treaty of 13 December 1571, between Adil Shah and the Portuguese, the latter granted to Adil Shah the privilege of taking 25 foreign horses annually, which were imported at Goa. The viceroy granted six passes in addition to previous passes for the navigation of Bijapur’s ships sailing to Arabia and the Persian Gulf. The Bijapuri ships importing horses from Ormuz were to pay duty to the Portuguese (Nayeem: 226). This treaty was confirmed by the Portuguese king on 22 October 1576 and ‘promised Ali Adil Shah I, the freedom to purchase horses at Ormuz and to land them at Goa, for being transported to Bijapur, paying the usual customs due of 40 pagodas per horse’ (Sherwani and Joshi: 334). The Mughal ambassador Asad Beg was gifted a horse during his visit to Bijapur in 1603–1604, ‘Ibrahim Adil Shah gave Asad Beg one elephant as a gift, along with a rare black Arab horse, called Chini, which he bought in Bijapur for 3,000 huns (equivalent to 9,000 Mughal Rupees); clearly, a very expensive gift’ (Alam and Subrahmanyam: 384). On 18 July 1644, a ship belonging to Ekhlas Khan was captured in the Straits of Hormuz with all his merchandise and personal belongings (Ahmad: 317). Hormuz was famous during that time as the port from which horses were exported; given that Ekhlas Khan was an important nobleman of the Adil Shahi kingdom, this seizure might indicate that he was trying to purchase horses without cartaz or other necessary permission. Tavernier received a horse from Shaista Khan in the year 1653–1654. He describes that, ‘the horse had formerly cost 5,000 ecus [£1,125, at 4s. 6d. the ecu] when young, but it was then more than twenty-eight years old’ (p. 18). Tavernier sold this horse to a Frenchman at Golconda for ₹400 (p. 247). Another source mentions a nobleman named Hindurao in Ali Adil Shah’s10 troop, who had 2,000 horses, at a time when even a small horse could cost ‘up to 300 hons’ (Table 7.3) (Bendre and Parasnis, 1968: 109). The high prices of the horses during the period and 10% custom duty on sale price indicate the importance of horse in the economy and warfare of the Deccan.

124  Kiran Sampatrao Jadhav TABLE 7.3 Information of Salary, Number of Horses and Foot of the Nobles1

Sr. No

Noble

Horse

Foot

Salary per Annum

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Bahlol Khan Shirzah Khan Sunda Raja Sambhaji2 Ekoji Raje3 Sidi Johar Rustam Zaman Sidi Masud

20,000 3,000 3,000 10,000 2,000 2,000 10,000 5,000

1,00,000 10,000 12,000 20,000 8,000 16,000 20,000 10,000

60 Lecgue Pagodas 15 Lecgue Pagodas 30 Lecgue Pagodas 30 Lecgue Pagodas 10 Lecgue Pagodas 28 Lecgue Pagodas 30 Lecgue Pagodas 20 Lecgue Pagodas

John Fryer, A New Account of East-India and Persia, in Eight Letters: Being Nine Years Travels, 1672–1681, London, 1698, Vol. II, pp. 56–57. 2 Brother of Shivaji and eldest son of Shahji and Jijabai. 3 Half-brother of Shivaji and son of Shahji and Tukabai. 1

IV Trade Prosperity and Decline

European trade and their factories on the west coast of India, much of which was under the control of the Adil Shahi rulers in the seventeenth century, was a crucial factor in the trade and commerce of the kingdom. However, it must be remembered that, in common with most other Indian rulers, the Adil Shahs had no navy. The loss of Goa to the Portuguese in 1519 undoubtedly put some limitations on the sultanate’s seaborne trade. The sea was controlled by the Portuguese, whose sovereignty on the sea was undisputed, except by other Europeans. Trade in the Indian Ocean was possible only after purchasing cartazes from Goa. Vexatious conditions were attached to the issue of these permits. The holders were not to import or export certain articles mentioned in the cartazes. To ascertain whether these conditions were being fully observed, the Portuguese claimed and exercised the right of search (Verma: 220). The British and Adil Shahi relations started in 1612. The state and the governors of regions gave the English various concessions. As a result of these, factories were established in a number of ports, which boosted Adil Shahi trade and commerce particularly in spices and the textiles. Around 1620, British ships started calling at Bijapuri ports, and import of British goods and export of Bijapuri merchandise set in. By 1635, the English trade at Dabhol had increased considerably, and Adil Shah granted permission to establish a factory at that port in August 1636 (EFI, V: 282). In 1639, Adil Shah granted permission to trade at Karwar and Rajapur (EFI, VIII: 196). Sir William Courteen established a factory at Karwar in the year 1639, later on Courteen’s Association founded factories at Rajapur and Bhatkal (Nayeem: 248). When the English Captain Blackman founded a base at the port of Kharepatan, the governor of Kharepatan granted him a warrant for free trade (Ibid.: 241). In March 1659, Revington obtained a grant of privileges from Rustum-I Zaman for Rajapur (EFI, X: 253). On 24 July 1659, Agha Murshid, the governor of Karwar, granted to English, ‘a free trade; the customs dues were fixed at 1½ % on imported

Trade of Adil Shahi Sultanate of Bijapur  125

goods; treasure were exempted from duty and were permitted to build a new house, with the permission of Rustum-i Zaman; and other usual privileges’ (Nayeem: 243). When the English succeeded in establishing a mint at Bombay in 1673, coins minted there were in circulation in the Bijapur kingdom. The British were allowed to buy pepper without paying any customs at Hubli and Karwar but needed to pay only at Rajapur (Ibid.: 246). At this time, it appears that Rajapur was envisaged as a large centre of English trade in pepper, calicoes and cotton yarn. According to the agreement of 20 September  1668, the English were allowed to import and export all manner of goods at Karwar by paying 1½% for customs, except for treasures, which were to be free of duty (EFI, XIII: 107). In 1675, the English agent Child got a remission at half the customs duty, usually charged at Raybag, from Bahlol Khan, the commander-in-chief of Bijapur (Fawcett, EFI: 259). Thus, from the very beginning the British adopted a policy of friendship, as a result of which they got sanctions of trade at various places, and ultimately both were successful in their commercial objectives. The first Dutch ambassador Van Twist arrived at Bijapur on 31 December 1636. Ibrahim Adil Shah granted the farman to the Dutch in 1637, to trade in the Adil Shahi dominions and establish a factory at Vengurla. Van Twist sent a permanent ambassador to Bijapur.11 In January 1663, Dutch requests for permission to establish a factory at Karwar was granted by the Bijapur governor of that place (EFI, XI: 238). Except for a few minor incidents, the Bijapur–Dutch relations throughout the period from 1637 to 1686 were friendly. It was useful for trade as well as to counter Portuguese influence. The French came in contact with the Adil Shahi Sultanate very late and were therefore only had a history of relation for 14 years. Abbe Carre reported to that the governor had informed him that the Adil Shahi Sultan had given orders to all the governors of the ports ‘to render assistance, passports, and all manner of help, to every Frenchmen in his kingdom. He added that the king had given a warehouse to French Company, to establish a factory and trade in Rhebach [Raybag]’ (Carré: 223). Thus, for the period of 14 years these relations were useful for their commercial activities. Relations of Adil Shahi Sultanate with the Europeans worked as a stimulating factor for trade and commerce. The Portuguese presence does appear to have been increasingly resented, and English and sources indicate that this resentment was one reason for the Adil Shah rulers to welcome them. The following figures of revenue collection from the ports of the sultanate indicate the importance of trade in the period under review (Table 7.4).

TABLE 7.4 Revenue Collection From the Ports During the Reign of Muhammad Adil

Shah12 Port

Income

Port

Income

Dabhol & Wisavi Chaul Kharepatan Satoli Kheda

7,000 15,000 7,224,000 3,500 5,000

Khalhati Sankar Rajapur (Islambandar) Harchiri Mahmadabad/Sirdhon

7,000 10,000 10,000 5,000 5,000

126  Kiran Sampatrao Jadhav

The total revenue of the Qutub Shahi Sultanate in the year 1685–1686 was quoted as ₹48  million (Arasaratnam, 1986: 96), whereas in the 1650s, the ports mentioned earlier contributed ₹52 million as annual revenue to Bijapur Sultanate. During the reign of Muhammad Adil Shah, Adil Shahi Sultanate included 18 sarkars and 281 parganas. Asafjahi records mention the total revenue of this period as ₹7,84,61,770 and 1.5 Annas (Imaratwale, 2007: 24).13 However, the total revenue collected from Karnatak is quoted as ₹5,25,61,649.14 This shows the economy of Adil Shahi Sultanate was at the peak during middle of the seventeenth century. After the death of Muhammad Adil Shah in 1656, this sultanate started to decline. Chhatrapati Shivaji captured Rajapur and plundered the English factory in 1660. In 1665, when Rajapur once again came into Adil Shahi hands, the governor of Rajapur invited the English to re-establish their factory and trade.15 But shortly

MAP 7.2 

Adil Shahi in About 1656

Trade of Adil Shahi Sultanate of Bijapur  127

MAP 7.3 

Adil Shahi in About 1680

after, they lost it to the Marathas again. By 1672, they lost almost all of the Konkan coast to Chhatrapati Shivaji. This naturally affected the overall trade of the kingdom. During the same period, Aurangzeb also started his campaign to capture the Bijapur kingdom. Politically, it was difficult for comparatively weak sultans after Muhammad Adil Shah to fight against them. Along with this, Aurangzeb’s policy of inducing Adil Shahi nobles to join the Mughal ranks also made considerable impact on the sultanate. He lent ₹20,000 to the governor of Ahmednagar with instructions to bribe into Mughal service as many Adil Shahi. It is quite possible that those nobles who were commercially active during the prosperous period but who were not able to participate in the overseas trade any longer were attracted towards the Mughal service. The absorption of the sultanate into the Mughal empire in 1687 marked the end of all independent trade activities in this area of the Deccan.

128  Kiran Sampatrao Jadhav

Conclusion

This chapter has examined various dimensions of the trade of one Deccani Sultanate in the seventeenth century. The extent of trade and the revenues that both inland and overseas trade generated in this period clearly added to the prosperity of the kingdom. However, the second half of the century saw a considerable shrinkage in trade, and as warfare increased and security for trade declined, the revenues of the kingdom dropped sharply. European presence on the coast initially helped the Adil Shahis, but as they lost the coast to the Marathas, access to this profitable trade was also reduced. The extent to which internal production systems and networks were affected by the wars, particularly with the Mughals and the Marathas, has not been discussed here; but it appears that the combination of political instability, decreased ability of the sultans, warfare and the loss of the coast, all resulted in the economic and political decline of the Adil Shahi Sultanate of Bijapur. Notes 1 Shivaji defeated Adil Shahi noble Afzal Khan in November 1659. 2 Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, Vol. I, Part II, Bombay, 1896, p. 415, n. 4. 3 The coss is equal to one league or about two miles. 4 The gos, or gau, is equal to 8–10 miles in southern India, but in Ceylon, it is only from 31/3 to 4 miles. The word is a vague measure of distance – as far as the lowing of a cow can be heard or as far as a man can walk in an hour. 5 Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, Vol. XV, Part II, Kanara, Bombay, Government Central Press, 1883, pp. 123–125. 6 Fuzuni Astrabadi, Futuhat – i‘Adil Shahi, unpublished English translation by Dr  P.M. Joshi, 4 Vols., available under Dr. P.M. Joshi Collection (5362–5365) in the Library of IIRNS, Anjaneri, Nasik, Vol. IV, pp. 53–54. 7 A person who does not have a son. 8 Tax to be paid on marriage. 9 Candy is khandi in Maharashtra, that is about 500 pounds; John Fryer, A New Account of EastIndia and Persia, in Eight Letters: Being Nine Years Travels, 1672–1681, London, 1698, Vol. II, p. 129. 10 Ali Adil Shah I was on throne in ad 1558–1572. 11 Monumenta Historia India, English translation of Dagh Register in Journal of Bihar Research Society, September 1928, p. 197. 12 W.C. Bendre and N.V. Parasnis (ed. and tr.), Muhammad Ibrahim Zubairi, Basatin al Salatin, Mumbai: Government of Maharashtra Press, 1968, p. 375. 13 Ibid., p. 375; Abdul Gani Imaratwale, History of Bijapur Subha, 1686–1885, New Delhi: Islamic Wonders Bureau, 2000, p. 24. 14 W.C. Bendre and N.V. Parasnis (ed. and tr.), Muhammad Ibrahim Zubairi, Basatin al Salatin, Mumbai: Government of Maharashtra Press, 1968, pp. 375–376. 15 E.F.I., Vol. XII (1665–1667), p. 85 ff.

Bibliography Ahmad, Afzal (2008). Indo Portuguese Diplomacy During the 16th and 17th Centuries (1500– 1663), New Delhi: Low Price Publications. Arasaratnam, Sinnappah (1986). Merchants, Companies and Commerce on the Coromandel Trade, 1650–1740, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Badger, George Percy and Jones, John Winter (tr. and ed.) (1863). Ludovico di Varthema, the Travels of Ludovico di Varthema in Egypt, Syria, Arabia Deserta and Arabia Felix, in Persia, India, and Ethiopia, A.D. 1503 to 1508’, London: Hakluyt Society.

Trade of Adil Shahi Sultanate of Bijapur  129

Ball, V. and Crooke, W. (tr. and ed.) (1996). Jean – Baptiste Tavernier, Travels in India, 2 vols, Indian Edition, Vol. I, New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal. Bendre, W.C. (ed.) and Parasnis, N.V. (tr. into Marathi) (1968). Muhammad Ibrahim Zubairi, Basatin al Salatin, Mumbai: Government of Maharashtra Press. Burnell, Arthur Coke (ed.) (1885, 2004). John Huyghen Van Linschoten, ‘the Voyage of John Huyghen van Linschoten to the East Indies’, Hakluyt Society, Vol. I, London; first reprint, New Delhi: Asian Education Services. Crooke, W. (ed.) (1909–1915). Johns Fryer, A New Account of East India and Persia (1672–81), Vol. II, London: Hakluyt Society. Dames, M. Longworth (ed.) (1918, 1989). Duarte Barbosa, the Book of Duarte Barbosa, Vol. I, London: Hakluyt Society; Reprint, New Delhi: Asian Educational Services. Davies, John (tr.) (1662). The Voyages and Travels of J Albert De Mandelslo, London: Dring and Starkey. Fawcett, Lady (tr.) and Fawcett, Sir Charles (ed.) (1990). The Travels of The Abbe Carré in India and the Near East 1672 to 1674, New Delhi: Asian Educational Services. Fawcett, Sir Charles (1936). English Factories in India (1670–77) I, London: New Series. Foster, William (1905). The Journal of John Jourdain, 1608–1617, Cambridge: Hakluyt Society. Foster, William (1908–1927). English Factories in India, 13 Vols., London: Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, Vol. XV, Part II, Kanara, Bombay: Government Central Press, 1883. Grey, Albert (tr. and ed.) (1887). The Voyage of François Pyrard of Laval to the East Indies, the Maldives, the Moluccas and Brazil, Vol. II, London: Hakluyt Society. Habib, Irfan and Raychaudhuri, Tapan (eds.) (2008). The Cambridge Economic History of India, Vol. I, Cambridge Histories Online, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Imaratwale, Abdul Gani (2007). History of Bijapur Subha, 1686–1885, New Delhi: Islamic Wonders Bureau. Jadhav, Kiran (2015). ‘Trade and Commerce in Adil Shahi Sultanate of Bijapur’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Savitribai Phule Pune University. Joshi, P.M. (1956). ‘Johan Van Twist’s Mission to Bijapur, 1637’, Journal of Indian History, XXXIV. Joshi, P.M. (1973). ‘Fuzuni Astrabadi, Futuhat – i Adil Shahi’, unpublished English translation, 4 Vols., available under Dr. P.M. Joshi Collection (5362–65) in the Library of IIRNS, Anjaneri, Nasik. Kulkarni, G.T. (2013). ‘Agriculture, Trade and Industry in Medieval Konkan (1500–1700 A.D.)’, unpublished, Key Note Address, Medieval Section, Konkan Itihas Parishsd, Madgaon, Goa, 2 & 3 February. Major, R.H. (ed.) (1857, 1992). India in the Fifteenth Century: The Travels of Conti, Abd alRazzak and Nikitin, London: Hakluyt Society and Asian Educational Services Reprint, New Delhi. Moreland, W.H. (1994 repr.). From Akbar to Aurangzeb: A Study in Indian Economic History, New Delhi: Low Price Publications. Nayeem, M.A. (1974). External Relations of the Bijapur Kingdom, 1489–1686, Hyderabad: Bright Publishers. Shastry, B.S. (1987). ‘The Portuguese Commercial Relations with Bijapur’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, pp. 632–640. Sherwani, H.K. and Joshi, P.M. (eds.) (1973). History of Medieval Deccan, 1295–1724, Vol. I, Hyderabad: Government of Andhra Pradesh. Subrahmanyam, Sanjay (2004). The Political Economy of Commerce: Southern India 1500–1650, New Delhi: Cambridge University Press (First South Asian Edition). Varadrajan, Lotika (1985). ‘Konkan Ports and Medieval Trade’, Indica, 22: 9–16. Verma, D.C. (1974). History of Bijapur, New Delhi: Kumar Brothers.

INDEX

Adams, William 13 Adil Shahi Sultanate of Bijapur: commodities, sourcing of 116 – 117; commodities traded in Indian Ocean world 119; conclusion 128; finance and currency 118; horses 122 – 124; land and sea routes utilised by foreign travellers 114 – 115; land routes 112 – 114; merchants in trade, involvement of 115 – 116; networks of trade 112; ports and hinterlands 110 – 112; ports on the west coast of India 109 – 110; spices 121 – 122; textiles 119 – 121; trade prosperity and decline 124 – 127; trade routes 112 Age of Discovery 12 Age of Sail 11 Agra, roads and security between Surat and 77 – 94 Agra–Ajmer–Ahmadabad–Surat routes 88 – 89 Agra–Burhanpur–Surat routes 83 – 88 Ainu 15 aitai shobai system 67 Akbar 81 amalguzar 60 Ambar Khind Ghat 113 Anjin, Miura 13 Asta 110 Ayutthaya 48 banjaras 86 Basri, Khalaf Hasan 113

Beg, Asad 116 Bengal silk 27, 30, 99 betteellae 111 bhatiyaras 80 Bhor Ghat 113 bills of exchange 3 Boxer, C.R. 65 Bramon 100 Buddhist-centric geography 18 Bunka-Bunsei era 15 caravan 90 – 91 caravanserais: in Mughal India 79 – 81; in Mughal period 79 – 81; Mughal policy and construction of 81 – 82; on routes between Agra and Surat, c. 1600 – 1720 82 – 90 Careri, Gamelli 113 Carré, Abbé 115 Cartwright, Ralph 100 Chaka 16 Chaul 109 – 110 Chenggong, Zheng 47 Chetti, Malaya 99 chief of the ward (mir-i muhalla) 63 Chinese silk 27 chintz 113 Christianity: ban was imposed on 24; Japanese government with 24 Christianity 15 Clavell, James 13 coffee cultivation 45 Commer Bampa 101

Index  131

commodities: for Europe, Asian 45; sourcing of 116 – 117; traded in Indian Ocean world 119 copper 28 Coromandel Coast, in seventeenth century 97 – 98; merchants of 98 – 104; networks 104 – 106 Coryat, Thomas 90

Heizo, Suetsugu 62 Heyn, Pieter Pietersz 25 Hideyoshi, Toyotomi 67 highways security 90 – 93 Hormuz 123 horses, for Bijapur’s export trade 122 – 124 hundis 3 Hyōryūki 14

darogha of furza 64 Dejima Island 46 Deloche, J. 83 Diemen, Antonio van 27 dobhashis 65 Dubash Narain 103 Duke, Matthew 98 Dutch commercial power, arrival of 12 Dutch East India Company (VOC) 5; Chinese raw silk 25 – 26; commercial restrictions 26; first factory at Hirado 25; gold trade between Japan and India by 44 – 53; Japan trade by 46 – 48; precious metals from the Netherlands by 49; sericulture at Batavia 28 – 29; triangular trade of 48 – 49; two types of trade 45 – 46 Dutch intra-Asian triangular trade 44

Iberian Catholics 12 Ieyasu, Tokugawa 46 Indonesian Archipelago 45 inter-local trade 112 interpreters 66 intra-Asian trade 46 intra-local trade 112 itowappu system 67

Edo period: castaway accounts 14; population in Nagasaki 56 English East India Companies 24 Europe, Asian commodities for 45 faujdars 92 fawjdar 59 – 60 Finch, William 89 Fort St. George 98 fragrant woods 47 free merchant 105 Frois, Luis 13 Fujita, Kayoko 48 Gangetic crocodiles 18 Genroku Koban 51 Genroku period 67 – 68 Gersoppa Ghat 113 – 114 Ghat, Ahupa 113 Go Tenjiku zu 18 gold trade, between Japan and India 44 – 45; conclusions 53; end of 52; Japanese gold trade 49 – 51; silver in triangular trade 48 – 49; trade by VOC 46 – 48; two types of trade 45 – 46 governor (mutasaddi) of Surat 58 – 62

Janga 100 Japanese Red Seal ships 11 Japanese silver in triangular trade 48 – 49 Javanese sugar 45 jodaka system 67 Jumla, Mir 99 Kaempfer, Engelbert 66 Karwar 110 – 111; pepper 111, 121 Keichō Koban 51 Khan, Ekhlas 123 Khan, I.A. 80 Khan, Muqarrab 61 Koban 49 Kokusho Sōmokuroku 15 kotwal 63, 81 Kumbharli Ghat 113 Kunimedu 103 land routes 112 – 114; and sea routes utilised by foreign travellers 114 – 115 larin of silver 118 Latoen/Latten Copper 32 leade merchants 100 limitation trade system 67 long-distance land trade 77; pre-railway days 79 maestricht 115 magistrate (bugyo) of Nagasaki 58 – 62 mahal 59 Malika Jahan 120 Mandelslo, Von 82, 117 Manucci, Niccolao 80 Mazendarani, Mir Kamaluddin 117 mercantile networks 105

132 Index

merchants: of Coromandel Coast 98 – 104; in trade, involvement of 115 – 116 mir bahri (port-dues) 81 Mir’at-i Ahmadi 60 monopoly 45 Mughal fiscal system 68; rate of customs during 69 Mughal period: caravanserais in 79 – 81; communication and transportation system 77 – 78; trunk land routes 82 mutasaddi 60

Reyersz, Cornelis 25 rice, from Mataram 25 roads and security: between Agra and Surat 77 – 78; caravanserais on routes between Agra and Surat, c. 1600 – 1720 82 – 90; conclusion 93 – 94; on highways 90 – 93; in Mughal India, caravanserais 79 – 81; Mughal policy and construction of caravanserais in seventeenth century 81 – 82 Roe, Thomas 65, 105 Rustamabad Peth 120

Nagasaki: area 56; conclusion 70; final export of Japanese gold 52; foreigners and foreign trade, control of 67 – 69; local officials of 62 – 67; magistrate (bugyo) of 58 – 62; population 56 – 57; Portuguese trade at 24; profitable venture 32; volume of trade 57 – 58 Nala, Pawa 89 Nanboku, Tsuruya 14 – 15 Naqvi, H.K. 78 national seclusion policy 57 Nayakakuhon 16 Nikitin, Athanasius 122 nom de plume 12 Noor, Khwaja 117 Nynapooly (Nayanapalli) 100

Saheb, Begum 86 saltpetre 69 sangria 105 sarkar 59 sarraf 2 – 3, 102, 118 schuyt silver 31 Sekigahara battle 12 Serapa 104 sericulture, at Batavia 28 – 29 shahbandar 63 – 64 Shahi, Mir Muhammad 26 Shahjahan 69 shiho shoho system 67 shiromonogae system 67 Shivaji, Chhatrapati 126 – 127 Shotoku period, new laws of 68 Shuinsen 1 silk 25 Sivdeu, Shamji 120 spices: for Bijapur’s export trade 121 – 122; trade 45 suba 59 Surat, in seventeenth century: area 56; foreigners and foreign trade, control of 67 – 69; governor (mutasaddi) of 58 – 62; local officials of 62 – 67; population 56 – 57; roads and security between Agra and 77 – 94; volume of trade 57 – 58 Sutras 19 sweet gains 26

Okitsugu, Tanuma 52 Paddy Bancksall 102 pancado system 23 – 24, 67 pargana 59 pattamars (couriers) of Cambay 91 pepper trade 121 Persian silk, reconsideration on 32 political merchant 117 Porto Novo 103 ports: and hinterlands 110 – 112; on west coast of India 109 – 110 qil‘adar 60 Qualarapour 110 Raibag 117 Raja, Harji 104 Ranshil ghat 113 raw silk 7, 23, 26, 46, 67, 112 ray skins 47, 48 Raychaudhuri, Tapan 112 Reddi, Guruva 101 Relations of Sea Travels to India 4, 11

tamgha (stamp-tax) 81 Tapti River 83 Taqi, Mohammad 102 taxation trade system 67 Tcheron caste 91 Tenjiku Tokai Monogatari 4, 11, 13 textiles industry, in pre-modern economies 23 – 41; for Bijapur’s export trade 119 – 121; from Coromandel Coast 32; own silk-manufacturing unit 29 – 30;

Index  133

Portuguese arrival 23 – 24; shogun and his advisors 26 thanadars 93 thanas 81 Timanna, Beri 102 time frame 13 Tojinyashiki 62, 67 Tokubei, Tenjiku 4; idea of India 11 – 20 trade and culture in seventeenth century: economic dynamics of 12 – 13; Tenjiku Tokubei idea of India 11 – 20 trade networks 105, 112 trade routes 112 trust networks 105 Twist, Van 114, 125 Udaiyarpalayam 104 Vengurla 121 Vetapalemu 100

Viboge Chitte 104 Viranna, Kasi 102 Voor-Compagniën 45 Vorah, Virji 116 ward elders (machidoshiyori) 62 ward headman (machi otona) 62 West Indian Silver 28 Western Samurai 13 white raw silk 28 white silver 17 Winter, Edward 101 woollen textiles 47 Yashi 17 zakat (taxes) 81 zamindars 77 Zeni coins of Japan 17