English Private Trade: Indian Ocean Exchanges and Global Networks
Timothy Davies - University of Warwick
English private trade in early modern Asia has received a great deal of scholarly attention.
Much is known about this branch of European commerce, particularly the intra-Asian
‘country trade’, thanks to the important work of Holden Furber, Ian Bruce Watson, P.J.
Marshall. They detailed the extent, scope and operation of English Company servants’
private trade networks from the late seventeenth through to the end of the eighteenth
century, stressing the significance of this for the Indian Ocean economy and for the
transition to dominion.1 The growth and success of private trade has frequently been seen
as a significant factor in supporting the Company’s move from trade to colonial control by
extending the reach of English influence into new areas and market. Private trade has
remained a popular subject for new research on the East India Company and Eurasian
trade more generally, and the field has been enriched it the last decade or so by a number
of important studies by Søren Mentz, Emily Erikson & Peter Bearman, and Om Prakash.2
My recently completed PhD thesis, British Private Trade Networks in the Arabian Seas,
1680-1760 (University of Warwick, 2012), feeds into both this more traditional work on
private trade, whilst it also takes cues from newer work. The study is concerned with
addressing the relationship between regional, Indian Ocean contexts, and the transnational
networks of private trade. Existing work has not adequately explored this relationship
between the local and the global in the realm of private trade, either concerned rigidly with
a bounded Indian Ocean world, or placing undue emphasis on metropolitan connections
for the success of private trade.
In the most recent in-depth study of private trade, Søren Mentz focused resolutely
on connections between the City of London and Company men and free merchants
resident in India. Capital exchange and the diamond trade formed connections that
provided an important foundation for intra-Asian trade operating out of Madras. Mentz
importantly asserts, therefore, that private trade should be seen as a sophisticated,
independent, and global network that relied on European capital just as much as Indiabased financing.3 Newer work on private trade has tended to emphasise that this was a
system that flourished between 1680 and 1760, linking disparate regional markets in the
Indian Ocean together, connecting them with currents of global trade.4
Holden Furber, Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient, 1600-1800 (Minneapolis; London, 1976); P.J. Marshall, East
Indian Fortunes: The British in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1976); Ian Bruce Watson, Foundation for
Empire: English Private Trade in India 1659-1760 (New Delhi, 1980).
2 Søren Mentz, The English Gentleman Merchant at Work; Madras and the City of London, 1660-1740 (Copenhagen,
2005); Emily Erikson and Peter Bearman, ‘Malfeasance and the Foundations for Global Trade: The Structure of
English Trade in the East Indies, 1601-1833’, American Journal of Sociology, 112/1 (2006), pp. 195-230; Om Prakash,
English Private Trade in the Western Indian Ocean, 1720-1740’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the
Orient, 50/2-3 (2007), pp. 215-234.
3 Mentz, English Gentleman Merchant.
4 Erikson and Bearman, ‘Malfeasance’, pp. 201-202.
1
Focusing on the western Indian Ocean region reveals a rather different picture of
the character and impact of private trade however. This was an area where commerce was
fundamentally determined by an unstable political climate in India, Persia and the Yemen;
yet Indian mercantile networks continued to dominate trade throughout the eighteenth
century.5 Indian financing remained critical for supporting the business of the most
successful English merchants too. Political problems and commercial competition greatly
affected the development and operation of the private trade of Company servants, as well
as that of their employers. Conditions in other segments of the Indian Ocean world were
much more favourable in terms of supporting the growth of Company servants’ private
trade.6 For a more complete and nuanced understanding of English private trade in this
period, it is important to establish precisely how merchants worked within and dealt with
these differing regional dynamics right across maritime Asia.
The study also addressed the historiographical bias towards the eastern Indian
seaboard, and especially on the Coromandel Coast and Bay of Bengal. Despite longstanding interest in private trade, few studies have focused on the networks that operated
in the Arabian Seas, including the Malabar Coast, Persian Gulf and the Red Sea.7 No work
has looked at this commerce in detail for the period prior to 1740.8
Making use of a wide range of primary materials is critical for a full understanding
of the complexities of private trade networks. The source base for my thesis was naturally
rooted in the India Office Records Collections in the British Library; there is much still to be
learnt about private trade from ‘official’ Company documents. Private papers are also
critical for any detailed exploration of private trade, and my research has relied on several
important, but under-utilised, collections of private papers in the India Office collections
and, in particular, in the Chancery Masters’ exhibits in the National Archives.9 There are
See Lakshmi Subramanian, ‘Power and the Weave: Weavers, Merchants and Rulers in Eighteenth Century
Surat’ in Rudrangshu Mukherjee and Subramanian, Politics and Trade in the Indian Ocean World: Essays in Honour
of Ashin Das Gupta (Delhi; Oxford, 1998) and Ghulam Nadri’s more recent studies of Gujarat, Eighteenth-Century
Gujarat: The Dynamics of its Political Economy (Leiden, 2009), and Idem., ‘The Trading World of Indian Ocean
Merchants in Pre-Colonial Gujarat, 1600-1750’, in Om Prakash (ed.), The Trading World of the Indian Ocean, 15001800 (New Delhi, 2012), pp. 255-284. For an older perspective see Ashin das Gupta, ‘Gujarati Merchants and the
Red Sea Trade’ in Blair B. Kling and M.N. Pearson (eds), The Age of Partnership: Europeans in Asia Before Dominion
(Honolulu, 1979), pp. 123-158.
6 Mentz, ‘European Private Trade in the Indian Ocean, 1500-1800’ in Prakash, Trading World, pp. 503-504.
7 Om Prakash, European Commercial Enterprise in Pre-Colonial India (Cambridge, 1998), p. 252. For a detailed and
recent historiographical overview of private trade, see Om Prakash, ‘The Trading World of the Indian Ocean:
Some Defining Features’, in Prakash (ed.), Trading World, p. 24.
8 There are some important exceptions to this: Lakshmi Subramanian (Indigenous Capital and Imperial Expansion:
Bombay, Surat and the West Coast (Delhi, 1996)) and Pamela Nightingale (Trade and Empire in Western India, 17841806 (Cambridge, 1970)) have both discussed private trade in this region for the later eighteenth century,
particularly in terms of its connection to imperialism. Om Prakash has more recently attempted to address this
historiographical gap, and his article ‘Private Trade in the Western Indian Ocean’ (JESHO) is the only piece
focused directly on English trade in the region.
9 National Archives, Kew: C 105/4 Best v. Gammon - Correspondence and Accounts, Bombay; C 103/158 Boone
v. Hill - Accounts and Correspondence, Bombay and Mocha; C 103/158 Boone v Nightingale - Accounts (one in
Portuguese), invoices, bonds, India; C 104/248 Waterson v. Atkyns - Papers relating to William Mildmay’s
mercantile activities in India and the administration of his estate after his death; C 110/145 Adams v Boone:
Accounts and Correspondence Relating to East India Trade; C 106/411 Gayer v Gayer: Letter book of William
5
also useful but often overlooked materials on East Indian trade – both private and official –
to be found in regional record offices in the south of England.10
I intend to expand on this work in two important directions. One key concern of my
research is to further investigate the actual practices and mechanisms of private trade,
particularly in the realm of information exchange. Just how did merchants network with
each other and how did gather the information necessary to cultivate their private trade
portfolios? The most successful private traders relied not just on maritime ventures, but on
a plethora of diverse and inter-linked activities. All eighteenth century traders were wellconnected individuals too; they depended on widespread and broad-based correspondence
networks, and the way in which letters communicated commercial information, reinforcing
trusting commercial relationships in the process. How private traders collected and collated
the information they needed from individuals within their network, and how letters
formed the architecture of these critical interactions, has not yet been attended to in enough
detail. In many ways, private trade looks much like Atlantic trade: our knowledge and
understanding of East Indian trade would, I think, be enriched by connecting Atlantic trade
and merchant networks in the western hemisphere, with those in Asia.
A second new area of research will focus on the issue of malfeasance and its
relationship to private trade. Existing approaches to this have mostly been related to a
discussion of the ‘principal-agent problem’ faced by the Company. This rarely adequately
captures the complexities of the relationships between private trade and official directives
however. In the eighteenth century Company, inter-personal relationships cut across, and
often took primacy over, corporate hierarchies, particularly as merchants stationed in Asia
retained important ties to influential Company figures at home. Moreover, privateregarding activity was frequently aided and abetted by the Directors themselves despite
official admonitions.11 Existing work on private trade has tended to neglect these fluid
distinctions between ‘principal’ and ‘agent’, and the boundaries between corporate
directives and the reality of servant conduct, in the context of the Company.
Gayer (nephew of Sir John Gayer), journal of ships and other papers relating to India trade: India and England.
The Robert Cowan papers, that have been well-used by Kirti Chaudhuri and Om Prakash, remain a key set of
private trade materials due to their extent and detail. The papers are on microfilm in the IOR in the British
Library, with the originals in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Belfast. BL, IOR, Mss Eur Neg 1160611636: 1719-1741 - Correspondence and account books of Sir Robert Cowan, free merchant at Bombay 1719,
Chief of the Factory at Goa 1720, Chief at Mocha 1724, Governor of Bombay 1729-34.
10 Shropshire Archives, Shrewsbury: 894/432-463: Hanmer Family Papers: Letters and affairs of Capt. James
Hanmer; Somerset Heritage Centre, Taunton: DD/TB/30/14/1-52 and DD/TB/41/81-9, Papers relating to East
India Company trade; Berkshire Record Office, Reading: D/ESv/M/F7-F10: Papers related to the private trade of
John Stevens, 1744-1765.
11 One of Bombay governor Robert Cowan’s letters to a Company friend in Bengal argued that, ‘Altho the
Honble Company hav frequently signified to their several Presidencys in India that they respect their servants
and all acting by Authority under them … who shall conform themselves to the orders & rules of the sundry
settlements or factorys they frequent … tis apparent they have at several times shown very little regard to such
orders even at Surat the principal mart of All India the Company have been advised of this and yet have not
thought proper to give any direct orders to prevent it’. Robert Cowan Papers, Reel 11607, D 654/B1/1D, Robert
Cowan to Martin French, 25 October 1729.