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The Mughal Fiscal System in Surat and the English East India Company

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Farhat Hasan
Farhat Hasan
Affiliation:
Aligarh University
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Extract

In this paper an attempt is made to outline the basic structure of taxes on trade and commerce at the Mughal port of Surat during the seventeenth century. This is explored chiefly from documents relating to the English East India Company. By the very nature of the Company being a foreign corporate body, it did not represent a typical ‘peddling’ tax-payer. But the system in so far as the ordinary merchants were concerned, can be restored for us indirectly by considering how far the Company was favoured in taxation matters. We may also reconsider the common view that the English enjoyed ‘invidious trading privileges’ by virtue of the orders of the imperial court, and that it was their privileges that explain their ultimate success in India.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 27 , Issue 4 , October 1993 , pp. 711 - 718
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

1 Khan, Khafi, Murtakhab-ul-Lubab (Calcutta, 1870), II, pp. 87–90.Google Scholar

2 For refrences to haq-i-langar see British Museum (hereafter B. M.) Addl. 24039, ff. 7, 11 and 17; for naul see Bibliothèque Nationale (hereafter B.N.) Supplementary Persan, 482, ff. 36(b), 135(a), 183(a).

3 B. M. Addl. 24039, ff. 7, 11, and 17.

4 Ibid., ff. 6 and 7.

5 Chaudhury, Sushil, Trade and Commercial Organisation in Bengal, 1650–1720 (Calcutta, 1975), pp. 28–32.Google Scholar Also see Hasan, Farhat, ‘Conflict and Cooperation in Anglo-Mughal Trade Relations during the Reign of Aurangazeb’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 10 1991.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Ibid.

7 Foster, W. (ed.), The English Factories in India (hereafter EFI) (London, 1896–1902), 1661–1664, p. 311.Google Scholar

8 Original Correspondence (henceforth O.C.) 1 Jan. 1666, no. 3594.

9 EFI, 1661–1664, pp. 313–14.

10 O.C., 7 Nov. 1671, no. 3594.

11 B. M. Addl. 24039, f. 15.

12 EFI, 1668–1669, p. 35.

13 B. M. Addl. 24039, f. 28.

14 President Rolt at Surat to the Company, 20 April 1680; O.C. 4699.

15 Fawcett, Charles, The English Factories in India (New Series), Oxford, 1954, pp. 255–6; O.C., no. 4705.Google Scholar

16 EFI, 1637–1641, p. xxvii. Also see A. J. Qaisar, ‘Recruitment of Merchants in the Mughal Administration’ (unpublished).

17 EFI, 1637–1641, p. 207.

18 B. N. Suppl. Persan 482, ff. 7(b)–8(a). Another farman with similar contents is to be found on f. 45(a) of the same source.

The translation of the farman is given in M. Jawaid Akhtar's ‘Shahjahan's Farmans to the Dutch’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, Goa Session, 1987, pp. 251–60.

19 EFI, 1642–1646, pp. 149–50.

20 B. N. Suppl. Persan 482, ff. 121(a)–122(a).

21 President Kerridge at Surat to the Company, 6 Feb. 1627 and January 1628; O.C., nos 1250 and 1264.

22 B. N. Suppl. Persan 482, ff. 88(b)–89(b).

23 Ibid., f. 88(a).

24 Fawcett, (ed.), The English Factories, p. 199.Google Scholar

25 This is evident from the dutch petition submitted at the court of Shah Alam in 1712. Cited in Wilson, C. R., The Early Annals of the English in Bengal, being the Bengal Public Consultations for the First Half of the Eighteenth Century (London, 1895; Reprint, Delhi, 1983), vol. II, pt 2, 292.Google Scholar

26 EFI, 1661–1664, pp. 12–13.

27 O.C., 1 January 1666, no. 3594.

28 Khan, Ali Muhammad, Mirat-i Ahmadi (1761), Baroda, 1928, I, p. 193.Google Scholar

29 Ibid., I, pp. 339–40.

30 EFI, 1624–1629, p. 21.

31 B. M. Sloane 409(A), ff. 12–13; B. M. Addl. 24039, ff. 5, 15 and 28.

32 Mirat-i Ahmadi, I, pp. 258–60. From the same source we are informed that in 1667 Aurangazeb exempted this tax for all Muslim merchants. This order, it seems, was never quite implemented and was formally withdrawn in 1681 (ibid., I, pp. 265, 298–9).

33 B. M. Sloane 409(A), ff. 12–13; B. M. Addl. 24039, f. 2(b).

34 Ibid., f. 2.

35 B. N. Suppl. Persan ff. 24(a)–24(b).

36 B. M. Addl. 24039, f. 5.

37 EFI, 1646–1650, p. 71.

38 Ibid., p. 58.

39 For Akbar's order abolishing this buty see B. N. Suppl. Persan 482, ff. 69(a)–69(b), The duty is also mentioned in Mirat-i Ahmadi as an ‘illegal cess’ (Mirat-i Ahmadi, I, p. 172).