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International Trade in Bengal Silk and The Comparative Role of Asians and Europeans, circa. 1700–1757

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Sushil Chaudhury
Sushil Chaudhury
Affiliation:
University of Calcutta
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Extract

It is almost common knowledge by now, thanks to the penetrating research by several scholars in the field, that Bengal silk was an important commodity in international trade in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. But the general assumption so far has been that it was the Europeans rather than the Asians who played the major role in the export of raw silk from Bengal.As a corollary to thi and taking into consideration the dominant position of the European Companies in Bengal textile trade, historians have maintained even in recent studies that around the mid-eighteenth century, European trade was the most important factor in Bengal's commercial economy. 1 There is no denying the fact that the Companies were the most dominant factor in Bengal's seaborne trade but that does not necessarily imply that they were far ahead of Asians in Bengal's export trade as a whole. For the above does not take into account Bengal's export trade by overland routes which had always been extremely significant. It is generally assumed that with the fall of the great empires–Mughal, Safavid and Ottoman–and the consequent decline of ports like Surat, the overland trade was doomed. The reason for this sort of assumption, it seems, was mainly the lack of data regarding India's overland trade compared to the abundance of quantitative material in the Company archives on European exports from Bengal. It is also possible that the fascination of the sea and preoccupation with the European market, as also the nature of the surviving evidence, have obscured the significance of the traditional and continuing trade through the overland route from India. Moreland thought that India's overland trade in the seventeenth century was of small importance and that the important development took place at sea.2

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , May 1995 , pp. 373 - 386
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

1 Chaudhuri, K. N., The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company (Cambridge, 1978), p. 24;Google ScholarMarshall, P. J., Bengal — The British Bridgehead (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 64–7;Google ScholarBayly, C. A., Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 49–50.Google Scholar

2 Moreland, W. H., India at the Death of Akbar (London, 1920), p. 218;Google ScholarFrom Akbar to Aurangzeb, (London, 1923), p. 58.Google Scholar

3 C & B. Abstr., Vol. 3, para. 36, 26 December. 1733.Google Scholar

4 Fact. Records, Kasimbazar, Vol. 6, f. 337, 23 January. 1744.Google Scholar

5 Chaudhuri, K. N., Trading World of Asia, p. 354.Google Scholar

6 BPC, Range 1, Vol. 6, f. 172, 21 February. 1726.Google Scholar

7 B. M. Addl. Mss., 34, 123, f. 42; Wilson, C. R., Early Annals of the English in Bengal, vol. I (Calcutta, 1895), p. 376.Google Scholar

8 Fact. Records, Kasimbazar, Vol. 12, Consult. 27 January. 1756.Google Scholar

9 Ibid. K. N. Chaudhuri's contention that the ‘products bought by the Gujaratis did not directly compete with those shipped to Europe’ is hardly tenable.

10 Fact. Records, Kasimbazar, Vol. 12, Consult. 27 January. 1756.Google Scholar

11 BPC, Vol. 8, ff. 381–81VO, 22 March 1731.Google Scholar

12 BPC, Vol. 15, f. 33VO, 15 January. 1742.Google Scholar

13 Fact. Records, Kasimbazar, Vol. 6, Consult. 12 March 1744.Google Scholar

14 Glamann, Kristof, Dutch-Asiatic Trade, 1620–1740 (Copenhagen and the Hague, 1958). P. 131.Google Scholar

15 Floretta yarn or mochta silk was not included in the computation as it was not really regarded as raw silk, was of a much inferior variety and cheaper quality than the varieties like tanny, adapangia, Gujarat, tanna banna etc. Even in the sale of the different chambers in Holland, this was not advertised as raw silk like tanny, cabessa etc. but as floretta yarn (cf., Notice of auction, 16 Sept. 1755, Resolutions of Heeren XVII, VOC, 7380). Prakash, Om, The Dutch East India Company and the Economy of Bengal (Princeton, 1985), pp. 202, 218, too, dealt with raw silk and floretta yarn separately. But even if we include floretta yarn in our computation, it hardly alters the picture because in the early 1740s the average annual export of floretta yarn was only 84 mds while in the early 1750s it was 184 mds (computed from Dutch records) on an average in a year.Google Scholar

16 Prakash, , The Dutch East India Company, p. 218.Google Scholar

17 The Dutch export of Bengal raw silk to Japan, which was an important branch of trade of the VOC in the second half of the 17th century (see, Om Prakash, p. 126) was only 6154 Dutch lbs on an average in the quinquennial period 1740–45 while in the 5-year periods from 1730 to 1735, and 1750 to 1755, it was nil. I have collected and computed all this from the Bengal export invoices in the Dutch records in Algemeen Rijksarchief, Den Haag.

18 Among other European Companies, only the French were of some importance. The Ostend Company had to abandon its trade in 1744 while the Danish Company was permitted to establish its factory only in 1755. Though the French private trade increased remarkably in the early 1750s, the volume of their corporate trade seems to have been much smaller than that of the English or Dutch. Even assuming, as did Marshall, P. J. (Bengal, p. 66), that the value of the French Company's trade was about half of that of the English or Dutch trade, the French export of raw silk would have been around 500 mds at the most. And raw silk does not seem to have been a staple commodity in the European private trade to Western India, Red Sea or Persian Gulf area (c.f, VOC 2304, f. 211, HB, 20 Nov. 1734). Hence it could be reasonably assumed that the export of raw silk by other Europeans (i.e. excluding the English and Dutch Companies) could not have been more than 1000 mds at the maximum on an average in a year in the early 1750s.Google Scholar

19 BPC, Range 1, Vol. 44, Annex to Consult. 19 June 1769. This is more or less corroborated by other English and indigenous sources. See, for example, Mss. Eur. D. 283, f. 21, IOLR; Verelst's letter to the Court of Directors, 5 April 1769, Fort William—India House Correspondence (henceforth FWIHC), vol. V. ed. Sinha, N. K. (New Delhi, 1959), pp. 18–19.Google Scholar For the indigenous account, see, Sinha, N. K., The Economic History of Bengal, Vol. 1 (Calcutta, 1965), 3rd edn, p. 112.Google Scholar

20 ‘Memorie’ of Dutch Director, Taillefert, VOC, 2849, (K. A. 2741) 27 October. 1755, f. 245V0; BPC, Range I, Vol. II i, ff. 288V0.–289, 28 Aug. 1736; FWIHC, vol. V, pp. 16–18.Google Scholar

21 I do not think that for my present thesis it is absolutely essential to show where the silk was exported to. Contrary to an opinion expressed in private conversation by a distinguished historian of the period that my thesis ‘stands or falls on this very question’ of identifying the destination of the raw silk exported from Bengal, I maintain, as some experts in the field do, that so long as I know the volume and value of raw silk exported by the Asian merchants, it is more than sufficient for my present thesis. However, I agree that it is worth investigating the destination of the raw silk exports from Bengal so that we can have a comprehensive idea of the silk trade as a whole.

22 Proceedings of the Board of Trade, 13 March 1791, quoted in Sinha, N. K., Economic History of Bengal, vol. I, pp. 111–12.Google Scholar

23 Taillefert's, ‘Memorie’, HR, 246, f. 141, 17 November. 1763.Google Scholar

24 H. Verelst to the Court of Directors, 2 April 1769, BPC, Range 1, Vol. 44, f. 324, para. 6.Google Scholar

25 Bolts, William, Considerations on Indian Affairs (London, 1772), p. 200.Google Scholar

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27 Chaudhury, S., ‘Continuity or change in the Eighteenth Century? Price Trends in Bengal, circa, 1720–57’, Calcutta Historical Journal, vol. XV, nos 1–2, 07 1990 – June 1991, p. 22; ‘The Asian Merchants and Companies’, paper presented at Maison des Sciences de L'Homme.Google Scholar

28 Gupta, Brijen K., Sirajuddaullah and the East India Company, 1755–57 (Leiden, 1962), p. 32;Google ScholarMarshall, P. J., Bengal, pp. 65, 67;Google ScholarBayly, C. A., Indian Society, pp. 49–50Google Scholar

29 Naff, Thomas and Owen, Roger (eds), Studies in Eighteenth Century Islamic History (Southern Illinois University Press, 1977), pp. 4–5Google Scholar quoted in Gupta, Ashin Das, ‘India and the Indian Ocean in the Eighteenth Century’, in Gupta, Ashin Das and Pearson, M. N. (eds), India and the Indian Ocean (Calcutta, 1987), p. 33.Google Scholar