Chapter Ten
British Private Trade Networks and Metropolitan Connections in the Eighteenth Century
Timothy Davies
Introduction
The private trade of British free merchants and East India Company (EIC) servants in the
early modern Indian Ocean world has received a great deal of scholarly attention. Important
work on intra-Asian private trade—known as the ‘country trade’—by Ian Bruce Watson,
Holden Furber and Peter Marshall in particular, emphasised the extent to which this branch
of European commercial enterprise played an important role in transforming the nature of
the Indian Ocean economy and supporting the EIC’s move from ‘trade to dominion’ from
the middle of the Eighteenth Century. Furber estimated that by the Eighteenth Century,
British merchants formed the largest single group of Europeans engaged in private trade in
Asia.
1
Here, the term ‘private trade’ refers to the commerce conducted by merchants on their
own account, independent of their Company business. Watson usefully defined this as a
portmanteau term ‘delimiting all the trade with the East Indies, and within the East Indies,
not conducted for the Company’s benefit’. ‘Private trade’ is a term that covers several
different commercial systems and channels of trade, incorporating the activities of ‘free
merchants’ and ‘interlopers’ as well as Company employees.2 Despite this important body of
scholarship, and the continuing interest in private trade amongst economic and imperial
historians, we still know relatively little about how this element of British commerce in the
East Indies dovetailed with Eurasian private trade, how private trade goods moved between
the East and Europe, and how this trade was coordinated by individual merchants ‘on the
ground.’
1
Like most early modern merchants, the servants of the English East India Company
based in the East Indies lay at the heart of complex and geographically wide-ranging
commercial networks. Their private business ventures were intimately connected to the
local political and economic settings in which they worked, while they were also embedded
in global circuits of trade and transcontinental circulations of capital, goods and
information.3 Although concerned primarily with intra-Asian commerce, historians of this
trade have discussed the significance of British merchants’ connections with the metropole,
focusing particularly on financial ties, and the remittance of private fortunes home to
Britain. Over four decades ago, Furber emphasised the significance of EIC servants’ links to
London, particularly for the remittance of private fortunes in the later Eighteenth Century.4
Historians writing later also underscored the importance of networks of family members,
friends and other associates in the capital. They were hugely important for British private
trade in the East Indies, particularly as a source of start-up capital, and financial assistance
more generally.5 Indeed, a metropolitan-centred approach has now come to the forefront
of the field. In a recent in-depth study of this branch of European commerce, Søren Mentz
argued that ties between India and London were of primary importance for the success of
private trade. Mentz describes how, from the late Seventeenth Century, English merchants
in Madras cultivated networks of commissioners who were able to readily access home
markets. These merchants in London, who received goods or bills of exchange from
Company servants, in turn dispatched capital to India. This capital was hugely significant for
funding private ventures in the Indian Ocean. The system was a reciprocal one; Company
servants looked after the economic interests of City merchants in Asia, and received much
needed capital in return.6 More than ever before, European intra-Asian private trade is now
considered not just as a bounded endeavour that took place within the trading world of the
Indian Ocean, but as a complex global system that linked Company employees, the servants
of other European companies, Indian merchants, and financiers in the City of London.7
There is still much to be learnt about British private trade, especially about its role in
the trade of goods to Europe. This chapter aims to shed new light on private trade. It makes
two principal arguments. First, it argues that the current emphasis on the importance of
metropolitan connections in private trade has obscured the degree to which British
merchants’ more local, intra-Asian networks were imbricated with their European
connections. The chapter emphasises the connections, rather than the separation, between
metropolitan and more local connections in private trade networks. We need to be aware
that British merchants based in the East Indies during the Eighteenth Century depended on
connections with the metropole for numerous different services. They were vital not only
for securing the necessary capital to trade in Asian waters and further afield, but also
essential for receiving valuable information about different markets, and for maintaining a
trustworthy reputation in commercial circles. In turn, these European connections relied
upon and were intertwined with intra-Asian networks of information, finance and goods.
Whilst the new metropolitan-centred approach pioneered by Mentz has breathed new life
into the field, it has also tended to artificially separate out the metropolitan dimension of
private trade from the more quotidian intra-Asian commercial activities of British merchants
in the East Indies. In addition, it has concentrated particularly heavily on financial ties,
rather than the more intricate connections that undergirded private Eurasian trade.
Second, the chapter argues that, in order to fully understand the complexity of
private networks, it is vital to closely examine particular ventures and to pay special
attention
to
merchants’
correspondence.
The
foregoing
discussion
pinpoints
correspondence and merchants’ letters—which circulated between Company servants,
metropolitan agents, and, crucially, commanders of East Indiamen—as the vital architecture
that upheld private trade networks. Looking at this form of long-distance communication
reveals important information about just how this form of commerce operated. The chapter
explores one private trade venture from the 1750s in detail, in order to emphasise the place
of the social, or ‘inter-personal’, connections—formed between merchants, their relatives
and correspondents—that upheld the private trade in ‘goods from the East’. Such a focus is
important in light of recent work on Eurasian private trade that has glossed over social ties
in favour of concentrating on financial and rigidly ‘economic’ forms of connection. There
thus remains a need to engage directly with social networks in Eurasian private trade, to
highlight the types of personal associations that were necessary for the success of global
business in the Eighteenth Century.
Private Trade and Metropolitan Connections
Throughout a career in the EIC in India, on-going connections to home were vital for British
merchants to develop new private trading opportunities. Using home-provided capital and
commercial information conveyed from Britain, Company merchants used their European
correspondents to organise private ventures in Asian waters, and then to send home goods
or remit profits. Capital sent from London—often as part of ships’ captains’ and other
mariners’ privilege trade—could be extremely important for the private trade of Company
servants in India. Silver was frequently sent out to the west coast; Bombay governors
Charles Boone and Robert Cowan regularly received large consignments.8 Money from
London was an important source of capital for Boone’s involvement in the country trade,
which included several voyages to China, and took in numerous other Indian Ocean
destinations. He had ‘got a very good Estate’ and ‘acquir’d a handsome Fortune’ thanks to
his time in the East Indies by the time he left his post at Bombay.9 A vast range of other
goods were sent out to India as part of private trade cargoes too—coral for the purchase of
diamonds was a particularly prominent item that appeared in the Company’s list of requests
from private individuals to convey goods to the East.10
Private ventures directed from London also took place, involving commodities on the
East India Company’s list of permitted articles, those goods that were allowed to be
conveyed to Europe as part of private cargoes. While Company servants were not forbidden
to engage in port-to-port trade in Asian waters as part of their covenants, trade between
the East Indies and London was, in theory, reserved strictly for the Company. However, from
the beginning of the ‘de-regulation’ of private trade in the Seventeenth Century, the
Company provided a list of certain commodities that were not officially part of the
Company’s concerns, but could legally form part of both outward- and homeward-bound
private trade cargoes.11 As Wretts-Smith suggested, Directors realised that some private
trade must be countenanced in order to keep it above ground and subject to control. It was
better to allow private imports on the Company’s ships, they believed, than to drive the
traders into the arms of interlopers.12 Watson similarly argued that the Company’s
acquiescence to private trade removed some of the necessity to smuggle goods in Company
ships.13 A wide range and high volume of these ‘unprohibited’ and ‘permission’ goods were
carried on Company ships back to Britain on private accounts.14 All such goods had to be
properly registered in the ships’ manifests and brought directly to the Company’s private
trade warehouse on arrival in London. Despite the Company’s ‘monopoly’, it was eminently
possible for private merchants working within this framework to form significant and
lucrative commercial connections between Britain and India via this trade.
What was imported into Europe via private trade comprised a much more diverse
set of commodities than those imported by the Company. The EIC allowed an extremely
varied range of goods to be traded privately to England. A list of permitted articles from the
1730s included agate, ambergris, ammoniacum, arrack, asafoetida, benjamin, bezoar
stones, cabinets, cambogium, camphor, canes, cardamoms, cassia fistula, cassia lignea,
China fans and pictures, China root, chinaware, civet, leather goods, cornelian rings, cubebs,
diamonds, pearls and precious stones, ebony wood, galangal, Goa stones, gold, Japan ware,
lacs of ‘all sorts’, lacquerware, lapis lazuli, long pepper, musk, myrrh, olibanum, opoponax,
ostrich feathers, rattans, rhubarb, rice, sago, various spices, tea, tortoiseshell, tutenaque
and worm seeds. The types of goods on this list had changed little from the first lists of
permitted articles published in the 1670s: spices, drugs, and other ‘luxury’ items.15 Later in
the Eighteenth Century, more specific and highly detailed regulations were created for
different types of commodities and for different types of ships. Some of the guidelines
governing private trade had become extremely intricate by the 1770s.16
As Huw Bowen has importantly pointed out, captains, supercargoes and other
mariners acted as the critical intermediaries between retailers and commissioners in
London and Company servants in India.17 The mariners of Company ships were permitted a
certain amount of tonnage to use for their private trade. The general amount allowed,
codified in the 1770s, ranged from around thirty tons for the Captain to a single ton for
carpenters, gunners, boatswains and first mates.18 These privileges offered by the Company,
particularly to ships’ commanders, meant captains often acted as entrepreneurs and
ensured there was always a vigorous private trade between Britain and Asia.19 Moreover,
the activities of commanders were ‘instrumental in the creation of extensive networks of
private enterprise that served to link producers, merchants and consumers across the EIC’s
trading empire, thereby facilitating important flows of information, commodities and
finance between Britain and Asia’.20 Company servants looking to freight cargo to Europe
therefore depended on close relationships with these commanders and other ships’ officers
in order to make use of their privilege space to convey goods homeward, and on their
communication networks to keep in contact with associates and correspondents at home. In
turn, mariners relied upon the human capital, information networks, and personal
connections of Company servants stationed in the East Indies and familiar with the rhythms
of the country trade.
The exchange of letters was at the heart of this and other private trade interactions,
because of their importance for conveying information, and for mediating ties of trust.
Letters have been linked with commerce in every civilisation, and economic survival often
depended on regular written communication.21 Scholars have increasingly highlighted the
importance of information flows for early modern and eighteenth-century trade. The rapid
commercial expansion worldwide and the birth of a transnational economy in the
Eighteenth Century gave rise to new forms of information exchange. Information flows
across vast distances became more important than ever and it was correspondence, carried
via ships at sea and caravans on land, which linked together disparate markets and oiled the
wheels of global commerce. Commercial knowledge itself was a commodity of sorts, and
travelled and circulated just as trade goods or finance did. The transmission of information
about prices, commodities and markets was vital to all merchants and traders.22 As Gagan
Sood, among others, has argued, understanding how information flows is essential for
understanding how complex commercial ventures were mediated in the early modern
world.23
Charles Waters and his Network
The case of Bombay merchant Charles Waters provides us with an important window onto
the workings of a private venture involving the trade of Asian goods—in this case, various
different ‘drugs’—to Britain. The case of Waters is a vividly illustrative example of this
branch of European commerce in the East Indies, and is worth exploring in detail. It also
draws attention to the importance of letters and the flow of information within a Eurasian
private trade network. Waters was a Bombay Company servant who was charged by a
London-based wholesaler with procuring a number of Asian goods to be shipped back to
Britain during the 1750s. In addition to his private commerce in India, he acted as an agent
for the London drug merchants, Messrs Gammon & Chaloner. A transnational procurement
network formed between these men, directed by the druggists in London, and using Waters
and his associates to acquire a number of Asian goods that were then conveyed using the
privilege trade of Captain Thomas Best.24 The letters between the members of the network
illuminate key details of the machinations of private trade between Britain and western
India. The diversity of goods dealt with is particularly evident here, whilst the venture also
highlights the complex and multifaceted correspondence networks that allowed private
trade to operate. The partnership between Gammon & Chaloner, Waters and Best was
based on long-standing commercial associations, sophisticated information exchange, and
familial networks—each of which was an important part of the underlying structure of many
Anglo-Indian private trade ventures.
Situated in Laurence Pountney Lane in the City of London, adjacent to present-day
Cannon Street, the premises of druggists Gammon & Chaloner lay close to the location of
East India House in Leadenhall Street.25 Their association with the produce of the Indian
Ocean world began when the druggists contacted Captain Best eager to acquire a number of
goods from India following his voyage in the ship the Prince Henry in 1754.26 Amongst the
range of goods permitted to be conveyed in private trade, drugs and medicinal commodities
were particularly significant. Along with tea, piece goods, indigo and a range of smaller
luxuries, drugs were one of the main sets of goods imported from Asia in private and
privilege trade.27 The Company’s regulations stipulated with regard to drugs that ‘Any
quantity may be imported paying the Custom, and to the Company 7 per cent. on the face
value’.28 Many articles that the Company permitted to be privately traded were classed as
drugs, and many of these could be relatively easily procured in the western Indian Ocean
region. These were often sold in London in the Company’s sales alongside pepper, calicos
and other East Indies commodities.29 Looking at Waters’ venture therefore reveals much
about the operation of private trade venture and how the private trade in Asian
commodities could be organised and carried out.
Gammon & Chaloner provided Best with an extensive list of articles available in the
markets of the Indian Ocean, with orders to apply to Charles Waters at Bombay for
assistance in purchasing those goods listed which could be readily bought in the town.
Waters was recommended to Gammon & Chaloner by his father Thomas. Thomas Waters
was a friend of Gammon & Chaloner, an EIC director and former Company employee at
Bombay and Mocha, who corresponded regularly with both the druggists and his son on
matters relating to the venture.30 Whilst nominally acting as representatives of the EIC,
many directors engaged in their own private trade. They were often former East Indies
servants, and worked with their friends and relatives in the East on private trade ventures,
whilst lobbying for and supporting the interests of their Asian correspondents at East India
House. The range of items requested by the druggists was extensive and included cubebs
(allspice), ‘worm seeds’, sandalwood, goat bezoars, turmeric, various kinds of lac, myrrh,
camphor, cardamom seeds, gum Arabic, opoponax, sago and cassia lignea (cinnamon bark).
These were all highly sought after trade goods in eighteenth-century India and all permitted
private trade commodities.31 The provenance of such goods was extremely diverse, but
Bombay’s regular connections not just to the Indian hinterland but to the Malabar Coast,
the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, facilitated their acquisition.32
Even based in such an important trading centre, the task for Waters and Best was to
profitably purchase this array of goods for the London market in a regional commercial
milieu beset with wildly fluctuating prices and unpredictable supply patterns. Waters wrote
to his father emphasising that ‘In respect to my other purchases you must be sensible that
Markets are always fluctuating and Goods seldom or ever at one of the same price of this
Market more particularly so especially in Drugs … It is impossible for me to Govern the
Market and I flatter myself all that can or ought reasonably to be expected is to purchase as
Cheap as others and not give more than Market price under which it is impossible for me to
buy’.33 Beyond the general difficulties prevalent in eighteenth-century long-distance
commerce, the particular market in which Waters was operating in was intensely volatile. In
this period, the Arabian Sea region was beset by political problems which constantly
disrupted markets and made maritime trade difficult for Asian and European merchants
alike. From an English perspective, both the Company’s own communications and the
private correspondence of its servants regularly voiced concerns about the state of trade
across this region.34
It was in Waters’ personal interest, as well as the interests of the partnership, to
keep a close eye on the most opportune time and place to purchase, taking into account
prevailing market conditions. Gaining access to accurate particulars about different types of
commodities was therefore particularly important.35 Such a context also necessitated
commercial astuteness on the part of the agent, and the assistance of friends, colleagues
and associates. Waters relied upon a widespread network of India-based contacts for
accessing the items he had been instructed to buy. Company merchants naturally relied on
Indian merchants and agents to procure Asian goods.36 Yet, connections to other European
and English merchants could be critical in procuring goods for private trade. In either case,
the system of procuring goods relied on close networks of information. Waters successfully
used a small collection of correspondents in various port towns, forged through mutual
associations with the EIC, to service his role as agent. For example, for the procurement of
‘Cassia Lignia’, Waters remitted three thousand rupees to the EIC chief at the Anjengo
factory on the Malabar Coast, Mr. Scott, to procure some to be ready for the next trading
season. Similarly, , Waters wrote to Robert Holford at Surat to invest two thousand rupees
in ‘Goat Bezoars’, and requested he ‘send a proper person inland where it is to be had
reasonable’. In fact, Waters stressed to his commissioners that the time he was taking to
procure goods was due to the lengthy but necessary process of having multiple agents in
place. They were needed in order to gather together the diverse set of commodities
required.37
Even with this network, the commercial information available to Best and Waters
was imperfect and often inadequate. Misinformation about the variety, provenance, quality
and price of many commodities abounded. Goods were far from standardised, and there
was little information on many of them. For example, regarding opoponax, Waters admitted
that he was ‘unacquainted with its true value’ due to the general scarcity of the medicinal
herb at Bombay at the time he purchased the commodity. Because there had been no
amount of the good to buy or sell for some time, the agent complained that ‘Even the
Merchants of whom I have made the strictest enquiry can give me no Insight or even tell me
its Country name’. Furthermore, Waters stated that ‘Capt. Best likewise does not know its
value in England’.38 Informational asymmetries like these were common in eighteenthcentury mercantile trade, and had the potential to cause significant problems for agents
entrusted with the considerable responsibility of purchasing a whole order on time and as
cheaply as possible.39
The amount of responsibility an agent was entrusted to take on was also bound up
with issues of reputation management. Merchants lay at the heart of complex networks of
mutually dependent associates, whose cooperation and communication ensured the
maintenance of trade. These relationships were held together by trust, and depended upon
merchants’ ability to uphold a creditworthy reputation.40 A merchant engaged in
eighteenth-century trade was nothing without a good reputation, as this determined how
likely it was that other traders would trust him. Merchants therefore worked hard to
cultivate and portray an image of honesty and conscientiousness amongst their associates
and potential commercial partners.41 Waters’ role as agent relied not on maintaining robust
communication channels—not only to transfer commercial information, but also to cultivate
a good reputation. This was important for ensuring potential for continued business
dealings with Gammon and Chaloner, and also for ensuring that Walters’ image as a good
agent was upheld in order that he might form further subsequent associations. The place of
Waters’ father was undoubtedly important here. Charles’ own letters were also imbued
with the language of reputation-management, and his letters served as sites within which
he could stress—through rhetorical devices and by recounting his progress in trade—his
reliable husbandry, honest business dealings and trustworthy character.
For these reasons, ongoing communication with London was imperative for Waters
to receive the valuable commercial information he required. He insisted that he had the
most up-to-date and reliable details of the usual sale price in London of the goods he was
charged to buy, in order to make more informed decisions about the purchase of items. As
he wrote in one letter, a ‘General Price Current of Druggs in England’ or ‘what they will fetch
in England free of Duties […] will be of infinite service and Advantage to me in my
Purchases’.42 Waters was subsequently provided by his commissioners with a current price
list, and received regularly updated advice about purchasing, remittances and finance, as
well as details of ships to be sent out to Bombay. The correspondence between Waters, his
father Thomas, and the druggists—channelled through the East India Company’s mail
packet round the Cape of Good Hope or overland via Bussorah, Aleppo and across the
Mediterranean—mediated the reciprocal transfer of commercial information that was vital
for their business.
This venture seems to have been successful, despite various problems in sourcing
and finding information about several goods. On Best’s return journey in October 1755,
46,000 rupees worth of goods were shipped with Best to London, amounting to over £5000.
The requested amount of opoponax was obtained, and Waters claimed that it was an
‘Extremely good’ sort.43 Waters emphasised his belief there would be a ‘very handsome
Profit accruing’, perhaps as much as twenty per cent ‘clear of all charges’.44 The merchant's
conduct seemed to satisfy his commissioners. Correspondence between the druggists and
Waters continued for some time after Best’s original return voyage, as the agent continued
to fulfil subsequent orders and to respond to Gammon & Chaloner’s request to provide
news of other opportunities to further invest in East Indian trade.45 The case of Waters and
his connections effectively demonstrates how Eurasian private trade networks could be
forged, and highlights some salient features of private trade relationships: namely the
centrality of the circulation of correspondence, the importance of a reliable flow of
information, reciprocity, and the place of (often kinship-based) ties with the heart of East
India House. London wholesalers and ships’ officers relied on their Indian connections for
obtaining Asian commodities. At the same time, Company servants acting as agents
depended on connections with relatives and associates in Britain for capital, the conveyance
of goods, the further development of private trading portfolios, and the propagation of their
image as a trustworthy trader among senior merchants and the Company’s hierarchy at
home.
Concluding Remarks
British East India Company servants in eighteenth-century Asia worked within multiple,
overlapping spheres of economic interaction. Like all merchants in the early modern period,
they were men ‘between worlds’, whose correspondence and trade networks formed
complex structures that extended across countries and continents, and involved multiple
different kinds of ventures.46 While private trade on a day-to-day basis operated largely
within the Indian Ocean world, connections to the metropole were also critical for the
support of Company servants' commerce and how it functioned. East Indian merchants
therefore worked within two domains: a ‘local’ domain comprising their trading post and its
immediate connections, and a second ‘international’ world of maritime commerce.47
Commanders and officers of East Indiamen were vital for linking merchants’ European and
Asian concerns. Whether acting as a source of finance, as a source of new trading
opportunities, or, importantly, as part of an ongoing mechanism to enhance the reputations
of merchants with the Court of Directors, the links formed by Company men to
correspondents back in Britain played a crucial role in the management of their private
business. Much existing work in this area has focused either solely on the Asian context of
private trade, or given undue weight to the place of metropolitan connections. This chapter,
by contrast, has sought to emphasise the interconnectedness of these two spheres. They
were not separate, but intertwined--successful intra-Asian trade needed the support of
metropolitan connections, and private trade to Europe was reliant upon Asian-based
networks of knowledge and local procurement systems. The case of Charles and Thomas
Waters, Gammon & Chaloner, and Thomas Best, effectively demonstrates how the
operation of private trade depended on these connections.
This chapter has also emphasised the importance of social networks in private trade,
and in connecting Europe and Asia. While capital and the various financial services provided
by British merchants’ associates in Europe were significant both for kick-starting private
trade and for its continued operation, throughout their careers they also relied on robust
and complex flows of information between Britain and the East Indies that enabled effective
trade in often unstable markets. This exchange of letters formed the architecture of private
trade. These documents were important cargo themselves, and were instruments that
mediated relationships of trust and sociability—crucial elements of any commercial
relationship in this period. Exploring the complexities of British private trade in Asia by
emphasising the place of correspondence serves to draw renewed attention to, often
neglected, social connections that were a fundamental part of this commerce. Examining
closely the activities of Company servants like Waters demonstrates the importance of
intricate, correspondence-based interpersonal ties for private trade. It is crucial to
recognise, as Alison Games has in a different context, that the webs of personal relations
were important in shaping business connections in East Indian private trade in this period.48
To fully understand the private trade of goods from the East, therefore, it is imperative to
look not just at financial ties and commodity flows, as much existing work has done. Textual
and social instruments of commerce, and the modes of language used within them,
underpinned the flow of commodities in eighteenth-century Eurasian trade, uniting intraAsian commercial networks, and the currents of global trade.
1
Holden Furber, Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient, 1600-1800 (Minneapolis; London: University of
Minnesota Press, 1976), pp. 272-75.
2
See Ian Bruce Watson, Foundation for Empire: English Private Trade in India 1659-1760 (New Delhi:
Vikas, 1980), p. 61.
3
H.V. Bowen, ‘Britain in the Indian Ocean Region and Beyond: Contours, Connections and the
Creation of a Global Maritime Empire’, in H.V. Bowen, Elizabeth Mancke and John G. Reid (eds),
Britain’s Oceanic Empire: Atlantic and Indian Ocean Worlds, c.1550-1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2012), pp. 45-65 (p. 46).
4
See, in particular, Holden Furber, John Company at Work: A Study of European Expansion in India in
the Late Eighteenth Century (New York: Octagon, 1970 [1948]).
5
Watson, Foundation for Empire, p. 95.
6
Søren Mentz, The English Gentleman Merchant at Work: Madras and the City of London, 16601740 (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2005), p. 73.
7
Miles Ogborn, Indian Ink: Script and the Making of the English East India Company (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2007), p. 71.
8
See, for example: British Library (hereafter BL), India Office Records (hereafter IOR), E/1/11, ff. 10102v, E/1/24, ff. 59-60v and E/1/23, ff. 77-78v.
9
London Journal, 26 November 1720 – 3 December 1720; Issue LXXI; London Evening Post, 16
October 1735 – 18 October 1735, Issue 1235.
10
BL, IOR, E/1/14, ff. 336-37v and E/1/23, ff. 127-28v.
11
Records of Fort St. George: Despatches from England, (Volume 48, Madras, 1931), pp. 57-58;
Charles Cartwright, An Abstract of the Orders and Regulations of the Honourable Court of Directors
of the East India Company (London, 1788), p. lxiv.
12
Mildred Wretts-Smith, ‘The Business of the East India Company 1680-1681’, Indian Economic and
Social History Review, 1, No. 2 (1964), pp. 91-121, p. 115.
13
Ian Bruce Watson, ‘Indian Merchants and English Private Interests: 1659-1760’, in Ashin Das Gupta
and M.N. Pearson (eds) India and the Indian Ocean, 1500-1800 (Delhi; Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1999), pp. 301-16, pp. 302-03.
14
Wretts-Smith, ‘Business of the EIC’, p. 111.
15
See BL, Manuscripts, Cup.645.b.11, ‘At a Court of Committees for the East-India Company, Holden
the Sixteenth Day of August, 1671’; and X1185 (Document a), ‘At a General Court of Adventurers in
the General JOYNT-STOCK to the East Indies, Holden the Fourteenth of November, 1694’.
16
Records of Fort St. George: Despatches from England, Vol. 48 (Madras, 1931), pp. 57-58;
Cartwright, Abstract, p. lxiv.
17
H.V. Bowen, ‘Privilege and Profit: Commanders of East Indiamen as Private Traders, Entrepreneurs
and Smugglers, 1760-1813’, International Journal of Maritime History, 19 (2007), pp. 43-88.
18
Cartwright, Abstract, p. lxiii.
19
Bowen, ‘Privilege and Profit’, p. 48.
20
Bowen, ‘Privilege and Profit’, p. 49.
21
Susan Whyman, The Pen and the People: English Letter-Writers, 1660-1800 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press), p. 115.
22
S.D. Smith and T.R. Wheeley, ‘“Requisities of a Considerable Trade”: The Letters of Robert
Plumsted, Atlantic Merchant, 1752-58’, English Historical Review, 124 (2009), pp. 545-570, p. 547.
23
Gagan Sood, ‘The Informational Fabric of Eighteenth-Century India and the Middle East: Couriers,
Intermediaries and Postal Communication’, Modern Asian Studies, 43 (2009), pp. 10851116, p. 1085. See also Claude Markovits, The Global World of Indian Merchants, 1750-1947: Traders
of Sind from Bukhara to Panama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 25 and Natasha
Glaisyer, ‘Networking: Trade and Exchange in the Eighteenth Century British Empire’, Historical
Journal 47 (2004), pp. 451-76, p. 465.
24
The National Archives, Kew, Chancery Masters Exhibits, C 105/4: ‘Best v Gammon:
Correspondence and Accounts: Bombay’ (hereafter Best v Gammon).
25
Gammon & Chaloner are listed in The universal pocket companion: The third edition, corrected and
enlarged (London, 1767), p. 132.
26
BL, IOR, L/MAR/B/325, Ledger and Pay Book of the Prince Henry.
27
Bowen, ‘Privilege and Profit’, p. 77.
28
Cartwright, Abstract, p. lxx.
29
See BL, IOR, H/10-13, 1704-1707.
30
Holden Furber, Bombay Presidency in the Mid-Eighteenth Century (London: Heras Institute; Asia
Publishing House, 1965), p. 38; BL, IOR, Z/E/4/34/W91.
31
A short history of drugs, &c. likewise china and lacquered ware the produce of the East-Indies
(London, 1779), pp. 7-34, p. 50; ‘List of private trade drugs to be sold by the East India Company in
the Ensuing March sale, London: Cappadose & Levy, Carroway’s Coffee House, 1785’, 17th-18th
Century Burney Collection Newspapers (Gale Cengage Database), date accessed 20 May 2013. Gale
Document Number Z2001703148.
32
See for example ‘Opoponax, n.’, Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford University Press, September
2008), online edn, date accessed 20 September 2010, and ‘Camphor, n.’, Oxford English Dictionary
(2nd edn, Oxford, 1989), online edn, date accessed 20 September 2010.
33
Best v Gammon, Charles Waters to Thomas Waters, 3 December 1756.
34
Holden Furber, ‘The growth of British Power in India, 1708-1748’, in Rosane Rocher (ed.), Private
Fortunes and Company Profits in the India Trade in the 18th Century, (Aldershot: Variorum, 1997), p.
10.
35
Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘Introduction’, in Sanjay Subrahmanyam (ed.), Merchant Networks in the
Early Modern World (Aldershot: Variorum, 1996), p. xvi.
36
Maxine Berg, ‘Cargoes: The Trade in Luxuries from Asia to Europe’, in David Cannadine (ed.),
Empire, the Sea and Global History: Britain’s Maritime World, c. 1763-1840 (Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2007), pp. 60-71, p. 63.
37
Best v Gammon, Charles Waters to Gammon & Chaloner, 18 October 1754, 30 November 1754
and 20 February 1755.
38
Best v Gammon, Charles Waters to Gammon & Chaloner, 3 December 1756.
39
Peter Mathias, ‘Risk, Credit and Kinship in Early Modern Enterprise’, in John J. McCusker and
Kenneth Morgan (eds), The Early Modern Atlantic Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2000), pp. 15-35, p. 21; and Pierre Gervais, ‘Neither Imperial nor Atlantic: A Merchant Perspective on
International Trade in the Eighteenth Century’, History of European Ideas, 34 (2008), pp. 465-73, pp.
466-67.
40
See Adrian Jarvis and Robert Lee, ‘Trade, Migration and Urban Networks, c.1640-1940: An
Introduction’, in Adrian Jarvis and Robert Lee (eds), Trade, Migration and Urban Networks in Port
Cities, c.1640-1940 (St. John’s, 2008), pp. 1-14; Bhaswati Bhattacharya, Gita Dharampal-Frick and Jos
Gommans, ‘Spatial and Temporal Continuities of Merchant Networks in South Asia and the Indian
Ocean (1500-2000)’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 50 (2007), pp. 91-105;
Perry Gauci, The Politics of Trade: The Overseas Merchant in State and Society, 1660-1720 (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2001).
41
Scholars of the Atlantic World have paid close attention to the relationship between trust,
reputation and the operation of merchant networks. See Nuala Zahedieh, ‘Credit, Risk and
Reputation in Late Seventeenth-Century Colonial Trade’, in Olaf U. Janzen (ed.), Merchant
Organization and Maritime Trade in the North Atlantic, 1660-1815 (St Johns, Newfoundland:
International Maritime History Association, 1998), pp. 53-74; Toby L. Ditz, ‘Secret Selves, Credible
Personas: The Problematics of Trust and Public Display in the Writing of Eighteenth-Century
Philadelphia Merchants’ in Robert Blair St. George (ed.), Possible Pasts: Becoming Colonial in Early
America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), pp. 219-242; Mathias, ‘Risk, Credit and Kinship’.
42
Best v Gammon, Charles Waters to Gammon & Chaloner, 20 February 1755.
43
Best v Gammon, Charles Waters to Thomas Waters, 3 December 1756.
44
Best v Gammon, Charles Waters to Thomas Waters, 12 December 1756.
45
Best v Gammon, Charles Waters to Gammon & Chaloner, 14 January 1757.
46
Jeremy Adelman and Stephen Aron, Trading Cultures: The Worlds of Western Merchants: Essays
on Authority, Objectivity and Evidence (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001), p. 5; Alison Games, The Web of
Empire: English Cosmopolitans in an Age of Expansion, 1560-1660 (Oxford; New York: Oxford
University Press, 2008), p. 89.
47
Games, The Web of Empire, p. 89.
48
Games, The Web of Empire, p. 91.