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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 April 2024
Abstract
This chapter reveals the battle between the East India Company's directors in London and its servants abroad over the distribution of trading wealth as evidenced in Company records and correspondence. While the Company's factors and mariners used their knowledge of and presence within local economies to skim the cream of the trade for themselves, their London masters devised new ways to extend their authority across the vast distances in an effort to maximize their own profits. When Company masters increased policing, servants responded by developing a culture of solidarity to combat and ultimately stymie their masters’ efforts, deploying a wide variety of methods for delaying or obfuscating the transmission of critical trading information and evidence of independent trading abroad.
Keywords: East India Company, early modern trade, early modern merchant factors, early modern sailors
The merchants at the head of the East India Company in London defended their monopoly and their governance of the corporation by means of specialized knowledge, both theoretical and practical. They argued that their superior understanding of the flows of goods and currency, born of years of experience in trade, positioned them to manage this important and lucrative trade in a way that no one else could. They also referenced their unparalleled access to current information on the prices and desirability of particular trade goods in various south Asian entrepôts as an advantage that no competitor could hope to overcome. This information was gathered by the Company's servants during their regular voyages east and at the factories the Company had quickly established in Indonesia and India, and then transmitted back to Company masters in London through a combination of written and oral reports.
Keeping monopoly control over this information was a critical part of retaining the Company's monopoly over the trade as a whole. Should details regarding particular products and ports leak out to other individuals, it might enable them successfully to interlope on the Company's trading privileges in the east. Unfortunately, retaining control over the circulation of this information proved to be challenging, primarily because there were numerous people in a position to know and share these privileged trading details.
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