topics: |  history | british-raj | 18th-c |

Excerpts

“It is strange, very strange,” reflected the author, statesman, and East India Company employee Thomas Babington Macaulay in 1833, “that a joint stock society of traders ... which, judging a priori from its constitution, we should have said was as little fitted for imperial functions as the Merchant Tailors’ Company or the New River Company, should be intrusted with the sovereignty of a larger population, the disposal of a larger clear revenue, the command of a larger army, than are under the direct management of the Executive Government of the United Kingdom.”

For many then and since, the English East India Company’s victory over the nawab of Bengal at the Battle of Plassey in 1757 and its assumption eight years later of the Mughal office of diwan (revenue collector and administrator) in eastern India had transformed a commercial body into something novel, unnatural, and, in Adam Smith’s words, a “strange absurdity”: that is, a Company-State and a merchant-empire.

John Surman's embassy to Farrukhsiyar 1715-1717

[The Company] appointed John Surman of their Patna factory to head an embassy
to [the new emperor Farrukhsiyar's] court. He was to be accompanied by
Edward Stephenson, John Pratt (who ultimately did not join), Hugh Barker as
secretary, the surgeon William Hamilton, and Kwaja Sarhad, an extremely
successful Armenian merchant at Calcutta who had been involved in obtaining
and delivering the recent instruments as well as the original zamindari
grants (Sarhad was also the nephew of Kwaja Kalantar, who had been
instrumental in first negotiating with Josiah Child and Jean Chardin for
Armenian settlement in Company territories in the late 1680s).  Two hundred
thousand rupees’ worth of presents were sent from Calcutta under the guard
of three hundred soldiers.  ... Surman had to rent additional warehouses in
Patna to store them. [...]

When the group finally departed from Patna in May 1715, they did so
in a self-consciously “publick manner.” Surman and his council rode in silver
palanquins, trailed by one hundred sixty wagons carrying the presents and
other stores, fifteen camels, ten carts, twenty-two oxen pulling large
guns. They were accompanied by six company soldiers, a trumpeter, smiths,
carpenters, spadesmen, twelve hundred porters, all preceded by two Union
flags and an official armed escort from the Mughal Court. The embassy even
had with it a clockmaker, whose sole job was to tend to the vast number of
clocks it had brought as presents. The Surman embassy also traveled with
a sense of its place in history.

In anticipation of its departure, Madras had sent Bengal copies of grants
dating back to the 1640s and “a full account of our Ancient priviledges,
when granted and how confirm’d,” including John Child’s efforts “to have a
Generall Phirmaund from the Mogull.” Calcutta made Surman a similar list of
grants from former emperors and nawabs in Bengal.  Bombay’s instructions
for the embassy meanwhile recalled familiar issues, most notably insisting
a farman would be unacceptable if it did not prohibit Britons without
Company license from residing within Mughal territories.  Surman also
evidently had with him an account of William Norris’s failed embassy to
Aurangzeb on behalf of the new Company fifteen years earlier, as well as a
description of a more successful Dutch venture in 1711. 

On July 5, the embassy entered the town behind a vanguard of drums and
trumpets, “flinging” rupee coins into the crowd, in order to “aggrandiz[e] our
first appearance.”  Surman and Surhad met with Farrukhsiyar two days later, as
well as his “Prime Ministers,” including the wazir. 

Surman’s embassy offered its gifts. Ever eager, they even contemplated
renaming Calcutta as Farrukhbandar and the three towns together as a pargana
to be known as Farrukhabad (the present Farrukhabad in Utt ar Pradesh had
been founded that same year), a proposal tactfully “Laid Aside” when it
occurred to them that using the emperor’s name as well as the suffix bandar
(port) could serve as grounds for stationing Mughal officials in Calcutta or
levying taxes on it. 

Citing as precedence the Company’s farman from Aurangzeb and other
instruments dating back to the early seventeenth century, Surman presented a
formal petition requesting nineteen particulars to be covered in the new
farman.  These included trading concessions, such as free passage and customs
for Company goods in Mughal dominions, and greater security of goods landed
and traveling through the country. Yet, Surman also pressed on a number of
long-standing issues concerning the Company’s political establishment:
immunity from the farmaish, faujdari, and zamindari demands of other local
officials over Calcutta or British subjects; a confirmation of the right to
mint rupees at Madras; full and permanent control over the Company’s
factories at Patna and Surat; an unambiguous and perpetual sett lement of the
zamindari over the towns in the environs of Calcutta, Sutanuti, and
Govindpur; the rights to Divi Island near Madras; and a positive order for
the protection of Fort St. David from the “Severall Jemidars &ca round that
place [that] are troubling & molesting us.” He also demanded the return of
the five towns Da’ud Khan had granted to Thomas Pitt for Madras, which Da’ud
and the diwan of Arcot (and later nawab), Sa’adatullah Khan, had recently
attempted take back.

During the inevitable delays and further petitions that followed, Surman
amended his request with six more demands, including rights to coin at Bombay
and the standing rights to “punish . . . According to law” any Mughal
subjects who might commit a crime within the Company’s jurisdiction in
Bengal. 

A year and a half later, the embassy had still not accomplished its goal. In
1717 Surman had almost given up, and was poised to leave Shahjahanabad
without his farman . As the story goes, the Company’s fortunes were reversed
by what the London directors called “a very lucky accident”: the surgeon
William Hamilton had “miraculously” cured the emperor of what was only
ambiguously referred to as a “malignant distemper,” and which has over the
years been assumed to be everything from a tumor to a venereal disease. 
True or not, the story fit a pattern, as it resonated with the equally
potentially apocryphal account of the Company surgeon Gabriel Boughton, whose
treatment of Jahanara, the favorite daughter of Shah Jahan, had been long
credited for securing the Company its first grants for a factory in Bengal in
the 1640s. 

It also did not hurt matters that the embassy continued to spend a remarkable
sum in tribute and presents, while Bombay renewed its threats to stop its
trade from Surat and cease its Arabian convoys. 

Whatever the cause, Farrukhsiyar finally consented to grant the farman. The
directors in London, who had become extremely agitated with the time and
expense of the embassy — while at Delhi, Surman and his council were
disbursing per month more than Calcutta spent on its garrison, including
periodic charges for new pillowcases for their palanquins, nautch dancers,
and a serious stockpile of pickles — now “applaud[ed] the obtaining so many
Phirmaunds & Particular favours never granted before by the Mogull to any
Nation.” They expressed their gratitude to Surman personally in the form of a
£5,000 bonus. 

There was revelry at Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay, including feasting,
drinking, gun salutes, bonfires, and parades.

[for more details, see:
C. R. Wilson, The Early Annals of the the English in Bengal , vol. 2, pt. 2,
The Surman Embassy (Asiatic Society, 1911; repr. 1963) ].

Glossary

ARRACK liquor or spirit, commonly distilled from coconut palm sap,
	rice, or sugarcane
BANDAR port
BANIAN western Indian Hindu merchant
BHANDARI western Indian Hindu maritime martial caste
BICHARA local deliberative assemblies and law courts, usually Malay
BUCKSHAW dried bummalo fish; as a verb, the practice of fertilizing
	crops, particularly coconut trees, with fermented or rotten
	buckshaw
CARTAZES Portuguese shipping passes
CHOP seal or stamp, often used to mark official documents or passes
DASTAK permit or pass, usually Mughal
DIWAN provincial revenue farmer and administrator, usually Mughal
FANAM Southern Indian currency, gold or silver coin equivalent to
	about 3 d.
FARMAN lit., “command”; imperial grant, patent, charter
FAUJDAR lit., “army-holder”; head of tributary military or police
FORCE, usually Mughal
GROAB small ship or galley
HAVALDAR lit., “offi ce/charge-holder”; head of military or fort
	jurisdiction, usually Maratha
HUSB-UL-HUKM imperial order or instruction
JAGIR assignment of revenue
KAUL grant or order, usually southern India
KOLI laborer
MUTASADDI a Mughal port head or governor of a port town
MUCKADAM among other usages, a ship’s pilot
NAYAK Southern Indian ruler, often of a tributary state under
	Vijayanagara empire
NAWAB a Mughal provincial governor or viceroy
OLA lit., “palm leaf ”; Tamil grant or order
ORANG-KAYA Malay noble or merchant oligarchy
PAGODA Southern Indian currency, gold or silver coin equivalent to
	about 9 shillings; also, a Hindu temple
PALANQUIN a litter or sedan chair, often consisting of a covered box
	carried on poles
PANCHAYAT local caste or village council
PARWANA order, grant, or pass
PESKASH offering, tribute, or gift , most often to a government
	offi cial
PHRAKALANG in Burma and Siam, chief minister or foreign minister
QILIDAR lit., “fort-holder”; commander of a fort or castle
RUPEE Mughal currency, silver coin; exchange varied between
	2s 3d and 2s 6d
SANAD grant or deed
SARAF money-changer
SHAHBANDAR lit., “ruler of the port”; chief port and customs offi cial
TANKA assignment of revenue
TOPASS slang for a mestizo Indo-Portuguese soldier
VAKIL agent or representative (now, lit., “lawyer”)
VOC Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, or United (Dutch) East India Company
WAZIR minister, often chief minister, to a Muslim king or emperor
XERAPHIN western Indian currency; equivalent to between 1s 6d
	and 1s 8d
ZAMINDAR lit., “land-holder”; regional Mughal revenue farmer with
	administrative, juridical, and police responsibilities

Contents

Preface vii
Introduction: “A State in the Disguise of a Merchant” 3

Part One: Foundations

1 “Planting & Peopling Your Colony”: Building a Company-State 19
2 “A Sort of Republic for the Management of Trade”:
	The Jurisdiction of a Company-State 41
3 “A Politie of Civill and Military Power”: Diplomacy, War,
	and Expansion 61
4 “Politicall Science and Martiall Prudence”: Political Th ought
	and Political Economy 83
5 “The Most Sure and Profitable Sort of Merchandice”: Protestantism
	and Piety 100

Part Two: Transformations

6 “Great Warrs Leave Behind them Long Tales”: Crisis
	and Response in Asia after 1688 121
7 “Auspicio Regis et Senatus Angliae” : Crisis and Response in
	Britain after 1688 142
8 “The Day of Small Things”: Civic Governance in the New Century 164
9 “A Sword in One Hand & Money in the Other”: Old Patterns,
	New Rivals 185
Conclusion: “A Great and Famous Superstructure” 207