The East India Company: The World's Most Powerful Corporation (The Story of Indian Business) by Tirthankar Roy Page B
Authors: Tirthankar Roy
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merchants and mariners chose not to spend many years in India, Charnock had adopted India as his home. Later biographers had difficulty piecing together his early life in London, which suggests that he had few ties with London and few reasons to return to England for. Surely he was not entirely exceptional in having lived the greater part of his life in India. There were other Englishmen who did too. But Charnock met a particular need. The political conditions of Bengal demanded a man who saw himself as a local rather than as the agent of a foreign firm. Charnock was such a man. It was his roots in Bengal that led him to ignore decrees issued by London and Madras.
A new world
The three new ports broke away from the Indian commercial mainstream in that they came up in new territories, away from the old ports that belonged to the Indian rulers. On the Coromandel, the new town came up in Madras rather than Masulipatnam, on the western coast in Bombay instead of Surat, and in Bengal the fortwas erected in Calcutta rather than Hooghly or Kasimbazar, where the English already had a presence. This physical distance from the regimes in India was to prove far-reaching when the regimes became unstable in the eighteenth century.
The three towns also revealed a growing weakness within the Company. By the close of the seventeenth century, Bombay, Madras and Calcutta had a trading station and a fort each. The last one to come up was the Fort William in Calcutta. In every case, the construction of a fort was in defiance of orders from London. The directors based in the City did not comprehend India like the local administrators, who had a more practical understanding of the ground realities. The road for agents to become principals, if it had been open in 1600, was effectively blocked in 1690. There was, therefore, an unbridgeable mental distance between these two sets of people. The distrust arose not only from poor information about India in London, but also from a lack of appreciation of the local imperatives that decided the actions of the agents. Unable to control or reform the situation, the Company alternately praised and persecuted the most able of its factors abroad.
In the prevailing political atmosphere in England, the forts sometimes became symbols of royal power. Having forced a reluctant employer to grant them these havensof safety, the local agents often sided with the Crown. The new settlements became, in spirit, colonies of the king more than trading outposts. The Company did not try too hard to correct that impression. The heads of the establishments had been called agents before; after the restoration of monarchy, they were called presidents. In these newly acquired territories, the heads were also the governors. His Majesty’s flag, the Union Jack, flew over buildings in these cities.
The town administration was recast in the London pattern, with a mayor and aldermen, of whom some were the Company’s servants and the others Indian residents. These were the justices of peace, and wore ceremonial regalia on formal occasions. Silver gilt maces were carried before the mayor on these events. These justices presided over what became known as the mayor’s court. The courts settled commercial disputes with reference to English common law. Indian merchants resorted to these courts and the laws, and not only out of necessity. In fact, writes the historian Kanakalatha Mukund in a recent book, ‘the cosmopolitan character of traders who came to Madras and the emerging multi-racial society of the town … found the English court a great convenience.’
In 1687, the whole royalist paraphernalia caused a meeting to take place between the top brass of Londonand the king. A description of the meeting was later communicated to the governor of Madras Elihu Yale. In this meeting the king enquired if orders regarding administration of Madras ought not to come from him directly. To this question, the governor of the Company readily
A new world
The three new ports broke away from the Indian commercial mainstream in that they came up in new territories, away from the old ports that belonged to the Indian rulers. On the Coromandel, the new town came up in Madras rather than Masulipatnam, on the western coast in Bombay instead of Surat, and in Bengal the fortwas erected in Calcutta rather than Hooghly or Kasimbazar, where the English already had a presence. This physical distance from the regimes in India was to prove far-reaching when the regimes became unstable in the eighteenth century.
The three towns also revealed a growing weakness within the Company. By the close of the seventeenth century, Bombay, Madras and Calcutta had a trading station and a fort each. The last one to come up was the Fort William in Calcutta. In every case, the construction of a fort was in defiance of orders from London. The directors based in the City did not comprehend India like the local administrators, who had a more practical understanding of the ground realities. The road for agents to become principals, if it had been open in 1600, was effectively blocked in 1690. There was, therefore, an unbridgeable mental distance between these two sets of people. The distrust arose not only from poor information about India in London, but also from a lack of appreciation of the local imperatives that decided the actions of the agents. Unable to control or reform the situation, the Company alternately praised and persecuted the most able of its factors abroad.
In the prevailing political atmosphere in England, the forts sometimes became symbols of royal power. Having forced a reluctant employer to grant them these havensof safety, the local agents often sided with the Crown. The new settlements became, in spirit, colonies of the king more than trading outposts. The Company did not try too hard to correct that impression. The heads of the establishments had been called agents before; after the restoration of monarchy, they were called presidents. In these newly acquired territories, the heads were also the governors. His Majesty’s flag, the Union Jack, flew over buildings in these cities.
The town administration was recast in the London pattern, with a mayor and aldermen, of whom some were the Company’s servants and the others Indian residents. These were the justices of peace, and wore ceremonial regalia on formal occasions. Silver gilt maces were carried before the mayor on these events. These justices presided over what became known as the mayor’s court. The courts settled commercial disputes with reference to English common law. Indian merchants resorted to these courts and the laws, and not only out of necessity. In fact, writes the historian Kanakalatha Mukund in a recent book, ‘the cosmopolitan character of traders who came to Madras and the emerging multi-racial society of the town … found the English court a great convenience.’
In 1687, the whole royalist paraphernalia caused a meeting to take place between the top brass of Londonand the king. A description of the meeting was later communicated to the governor of Madras Elihu Yale. In this meeting the king enquired if orders regarding administration of Madras ought not to come from him directly. To this question, the governor of the Company readily
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