English East India Company:
On 31 December 1600, Queen Elizabeth granted a charter to ‘the Governor and Company of Merchants of London trading into the East Indies’ conferring monopoly of eastern trade for fifteen years. From 1608, the English made attempts to establish factories in India. Captain William Hawkins came to Surrat but failed to obtain permission from Jahangir to erect a factory at Surat owing to Portuguese opposition. However, a permanent factory was established at Surat in 1613 under an imperial Farman. Surat was considered to be ‘the only key to open all the rich and the best trade of the Indes’. Surat remained the headquarters of the company in the East till its place was superseded by Bombay in 1687.
In 1615, Sir Thomas Roe came to Jahangir’s Court as an ambassador of James I. During his stay of about three years in India, Roe succeeded in securing important privileges for the Company. By 1619 there were English factories at Broach, Agra, and Ahmedabad.
On the south-eastern coast, the English established a factory at Masulipatam in 1611. In 1639, Francis Day obtained the lease of Madras from a local Raja and built a fortified factory known as Fort St. George or Madras. Madras soon became the headquarters of the Company’s settlement on the Coromandel Coast.
In the north-east, English factories were started at Hariharpur and Balasore in 1633. A new settlement at Hooghly established in 1650 proved to be prosperous. Factories were established at Patna, Kasimbazar, Malda, Rajmahal, and at Dacca. In 1651, the Company secured from Shuja, the subahdar of Bengal, the privilege of trading in return for a fixed annual payment of Rs. 3,000, in lieu of all duties. Several other orders issued in 1656, 1672, and 1680 granted the Company exemption from the payment of duties and other privileges. In 1690, Job Charnock established a factory at Sutanati. Thus was laid ‘the foundation of the future capital of British India’. In 1698, the Company acquired Sutanati, Govindapur, and Kalikata at an annual rent of Rs. 290. In 1700 Bengal was constituted into a separate Presidency- the Presidency of Fort William in honour of King William III of England.
The most important event on the West Coast was the establishment of the Company’s factory in Bombay. In 1661, the Portuguese gave Bombay, as part of the dowry of their princess, Catherine of Braganza, on her marriage with Charles II. But Charles II failed to realize the importance of Bombay and granted it to the East India Company in 1668 for the trifling sum of ten pounds a year. In the course of time, Bombay became more prosperous than Surat. In 1687, it became the chief English settlement on the West Coast.
The prosperity of the Company excited the jealousy of its enemies in England. In 1698 was formed a rival body entitled ‘The English Company Trading to the East Indies’. The new Company sent Sir William Norris as an ambassador to the Court of Aurangzeb to secure trading privileges for itself. But the mission proved to be a failure. In 1707, the two companies were united under the title “The United Company of Merchants of England trading to the East Indies’.
Thus ‘during the time of the Great Mughals, the British territory in India was of negligible area, comprising only a few square miles in the island of Bombay, Madras city and three or four other localities…. Half a century after the death of Aurangzeb, when rich Bengal was acquired, nothing, not even the Act of Parliament, could stop the masters of the sea and the Gangetic Valley from becoming the rulers of India’.
The history of the East India Company from 1702 to the middle of the century was one of prosperity. Its imports and exports increased considerably. The dividend paid by the Company rose rapidly from 5 percent in 1708-09 to 10 percent in 1711-12. From 1757, the English East Indi Company increased their exports and imports. The gains of England through her commercial connections with India were significant. ‘The East India Compnay have essentially contributed to the present greatness of the Compnay’ (England).
The comparative strength of the English and the French companies was not equal. The English Company had three well-established seats of power in India, including Bombay, which possessed a dockyard and an excellent harbor. The French had Pondicherry, an exposed port on the Coromandel Coast, Chandernagore in Bengal, and a distant base at Mauritius. Mastery of the sea gave the English an advantage that no French success on land could balance. British naval superiority had become an assured fact at the close of the Seven Years’ War. Though both companies were prosperous, the French volume of trade was much less. The English Company was under the fostering care of one independent mercantile corporation whose fortune was intimately connected with trade and commerce. The French Company was essentially a state enterprise, the latter being less keen on developing trade and commerce in India. Another factor was the marked superiority of English generalship.
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