Commercial Relations Between India and England 1601-1757 Book

Text extracted from opening pages of book: Commercial Relations between India and England ( 1601 to 1757) BY BAL KRISHNA, M. A., PH. D., Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society, London ; the Royal Economic Society, London ; Professor of Economics, an d Principal, R ajar am College, Kolhapur, India WITH A MAP LONDON GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS, LTD. BROADWAY HOUSE, 68-74 CARTER LANE, E. C. 1924 Printed in Great Britain by Son, Ltd. } Plymouth PREFACE THE want of a comprehensive and systematic history of the rise and progress of the most extensive branch of commerce ever known in the annals of mankind and reared up with a marvellous ta* jt and tenacity by $ body of London merchants is to be deeply regretted. The romantic creation of an Empire greater than that of ancient Kome, the extraordinary magni tude of the Indo-British trade, the wonderful ramifications of British capital in India, the complete monopoly of the carrying and shipping trades of the major part of the Orient, the political domination of the British in the two continents of Asia and Africa all demand a serious study of the begin nings of the English relations with the East. The phenomenal growth and gigantic dimensions of the Anglo - Oriental trade in the nineteenth century have led people to forget the long and bitter struggles made by the East India Company to build it up. The slow arid sluggish course of the trickling rill of this trade which has swelled to a mighty stream in the present age, does not deserve oblivion. The real volume and character of the East India Company's trade and navigation which have so long remained hidden from the public view, will form the theme of this work. In the greater part of it I have had no predecessor. The pub lished works of Abb6 Raynal, Anderson, Bruce, Charles D'Avenant, Mill, Milburn, Moreau, Macpherson and Wisset, supply only fragmentary evidence for the century and a half dealt with iii this book. There is a large number of tracts of controversial character written by the apologists and op ponents of the Company in the years 1615-25 and 1670-1710, when questions like the monopoly of the Indian trade by the vi PREFACE Company, the export of bullion and the effects of Indian imports on English manufactures, formed the storm centres of partisan controversy. The writers of the second period were so much occupied with the bullion and protection con troversies in the abstract that there is almost nothing in their works on the export and import trade between India and England, and whatever little there is, has been very much marred by their exaggerations and understatements which are only too natural in a polemic literature. The period of fifty-five years from 1625 to 1679 is more or less a blank in all these works, and even before and after this dark period the reader looks in vain for any continuous narration of the extent and character of the commercial dealings of the English before their acquisition of political power in Bengal. The work opens with a detailed description of the com mercial, industrial and economic conditions of India at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and afterwards traces the changes wrought in them by the Anglo-Indian relation during the century and a half following. Then an attempt has been made to construct a consecutive history of the Indo-British trade in all its essential aspects. The structure has been built by collecting data bit by bit from the published and manuscript records at the India Office, the British Museum, the Public Record Office, and the Board of Customs Library.-For the detailed survey of the volume, character and mechanism of this trade, it has been necessary for the first time to 1. Fill up the blank from 1625 to 1680 regarding exports, imports and shipping, as far as it was possible to do from the existing records. 2. Compile the annual returns of English exports, separately both in money and merchandise, from 1654 to 1707, from the Letter Books of the Court of DirectorsRead More