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Through the Backdoor: An Overview of the English East India Company’s Rise and Fall in Safavid Iran, 1616–40

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Daniel Razzari
Daniel Razzari*
Affiliation:
University of California, Riverside
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Abstract

In 1616, the English East India Company expanded its trade into Safavid Iran. The chief merchants in India hoped to acquire a significant share of the Iranian silk trade. After several difficult years in India, the English traders in Surat felt pressure to establish a solid foundation in Iran where they could redirect Iranian silk through Iran’s southern ports and onto Company ships for Europe. Despite Robert Sherley’s promise of wealth and a prosperous market for English cloth, many in the English camp, predominantly Sir Thomas Roe, objected to the silk trade on grounds that it was generally a risky venture. But several leading merchants dismissed Roe’s concerns and pursued the trade without his approval. After early indications that the venture had potential for success, the English silk trade quickly began to falter and finally ceased to exist by 1640. Although its demise was once described as the Company’s failure to produce a substantial quantity of purchasing power—eastern goods, precious metals, and English commodities—this paper explores an alternative explanation that suggests the Company’s failure in Iran was not exclusively the consequence of poor economics.

Keywords

English East India CompanyHormuzBroadclothEnglish TradeEnglish FactorsSilk TradeSir Thomas RoeRobert Sherley
Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 52 , Issue 3-4: Special Section: Commercial, Confessional, and Military Encounters in Ottoman-Iranian Borderlands in the Early Modern Period , July 2019 , pp. 485 - 511
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 2019

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Footnotes

*

Research for this paper was conducted at the British Library in London and the British National Archives at Kew.

I am grateful to Fariba Zarinebaf for her early comments on this paper, and to those anonymous reviewers of Iranian Studies who provided invaluable feedback. Thanks, too, to Thomas Cogswell and Jonathan Eacott for their valuable commentary on the lengthy work of which this essay is a product.

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