The Coins of the British in India
A Catalogue by Paul Stevens
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Throughout the sixteenth century the English
sought to emulate both the Portuguese with their monopoly of trade with the
east and the Spanish with their monopoly of the gold and silver of South America. Initially
they chose not to challenge directly these monopolies by force, but to find a
new way to achieve a similar endpoint. Thus the century saw an extensive
search for the North West Passage to the Indies and the
‘discovery’ of Labrador and the colonisation of Virginia. The sixteenth
century also saw the beginnings of the formation of companies holding
monopolies of trade between England and certain
other markets, and it was a company of this type, formed on 31st December 1600, that was
granted a charter for the exclusive right to trade with the East Indies. The first two
voyages did not go to India but to the
islands of the East Indies, but the third
expedition in 1607, was sent to explore the opportunities for trade in the Arabian Sea and
specifically to call, inter alia,
at Surat in Gujerat on
the west coast of India. One of the
ships of the small fleet of this third voyage, commanded by a captain
Hawkins, eventually reached Surat on 28th August 1608.
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However, they were not the first
Englishmen to visit India. This achievement
is attributed to a certain Mr. Stevens, who had joined a party of Portuguese to
visit the famous Jesuit establishment in Goa during the
1570s. Hawkins, though, considered himself far more than a mere visitor, and
styled himself ‘the King of England’s Embassador’ and in this capacity he found
himself faced with tremendous odds in trying to establish a factory at Surat. Not the least of these difficulties came from
the Portuguese, who rightly recognised the danger to their monopoly, and twice
tried to assassinate him before he finally determined to travel overland to the
Moghul court at Agra and gain
permission from the Emperor himself. However, although Hawkins managed to
ingratiate himself with the Emperor Jahangir, his ambition to establish a trading
post at Surat was eventually
thwarted by a combination of the Portuguese Jesuits and Mukarrab Khan, the
official in charge of the ports of Gujerat.
The English continued to try to establish
themselves in Surat but until 1635
the Portuguese continued to challenge these attempts both by undermining the
English representations to the local Indian Powers, and by directly engaging
the English ships in pitched battle. Initially the English could only base
themselves near to Surat at a place named
Swalley Hole but the twelfth voyage, commanded by Thomas Best, arrived at Surat in 1612 and
finally succeeded in obtaining the necessary permission to establish a factory,
possibly because the Moghuls were beginning to realise the English were
seriously capable of challenging the Portuguese naval power. In 1635 the
Portuguese and the English signed, in Goa, a treaty that
gave the English access to Portuguese trading posts all around the Arabian Sea, including the
posts along the west coast of India. One of the
islands controlled by the Portuguese was Bombay, and this island
was ceded to Charles II as part of the dowry for his marriage to the Portuguese
princess, Catherine of Braganza in 1661. Charles then leased Bombay to the East
India Company in 1668
Meanwhile, on the east or Coromandel
coast, two Dutchmen with experience of trading in the East had arrived in
London in 1609 and offered to lead a voyage to this coast and to explore trade
between there and Siam and Bantam. Floris and Antheuniss, the two Dutchmen, sailed
from England in January 1611
and by August they had arrived on the east coast of India at the ports of
Masulipatam and Petapoli in Golconda. Whilst the
local trade with Siam did not live up
to expectations in the longer term, Masulipatam became established as a factory
of the EIC on and off for many years. In the 1630s the headquarters of the
English was moved from Masulipatam to Armagon and then back again, as the
English tried to deal with the various vicissitudes facing them such as famine,
the animosity of the Dutch, and local wars between Golconda and its
neighbours. In 1639, the English agent at Armagon, Francis Day, sailed down the
coast visiting the Portuguese fort of San Thome and then on to a small fishing
village called Madraspatam. Here he negotiated with the local naik, the right to build a fort on a
piece of land measuring about one square mile, and whence he determined to
remove the Armagon agency. Quite why he chose this spot is a matter of
speculation, but it is of interest to record that the main reason for the
establishment of the great city of Madras upon its present site, may well have
been its proximity to San Thome, wherein is reputed to have lived Francis Day’s
mistress!
Further up the east coast, in the Bay of Bengal, Antheuniss had
made contact with Bengal in the 1620s but it was not until
the 1640s and 1650s that serious trade began. Factories were established in
various places including Hoogli, Patna and Dakka, and
by 1681 the area was afforded the status of a separate Presidency. However, Calcutta was not then the
major factory. This did not happen until after the farcical affair of the
attempted invasion of Mughal India (with a standing
army of perhaps 100,000 men) by a British army of 308 men. After various
skirmishes, and the effective annihilation of the British infantry, the arrival
of a British fleet allowed a truce agreeable to both sides to be reached. Part
of the agreement allowed Job Charnock, the leader of the British forces, to
select a site for a factory and he eventually chose a place near a village
called Kalighat, later modified to Kalikata and then Calcutta [1].