The Indian Saltpeter Trade, the Military Revolution, and the Rise of Britain as a Global Superpower
2009; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 71; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1111/j.1540-6563.2009.00244.x
ISSN1540-6563
Autores Tópico(s)Colonial History and Postcolonial Studies
ResumoClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes1. This article presents research conducted in 1995–1997, funded in part by the History Department of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The original version of this article first was presented at the Conference on Indian Military History at Wolfson College, Cambridge University, in Britain, in the summer of 1997, under my former name, James W. Hoover. Due to the subsequent publication of considerably more research, that article has been substantially revised, although the essential thesis has remained unaltered.2. For the changing tonnage of Indiamen, see Kenneth McPherson, The Indian Ocean: A History of People and the Sea (New Delhi: Oxford UP, 1993), 201. During the period 1700–1710, some 461 European voyages to and from the Indian Ocean were completed. Due to the expansion of East India fleets, this means that some 5,000 voyages may have been made during the eighteenth century alone. For an estimate of shipping in the seventeenth century, see R. J. Barendse, The Arabian Seas: The Indian Ocean World of the Seventeenth Century (Armonk, NY: Sharpe, 2002), 200. Barendse suggests that at the end of the seventeenth century, Europe was receiving between fourteen and eighteen ships from India annually, but these did not include the pirate vessels and “interlopers” plying the Indian Ocean at that time. For details regarding East India Company shipping, especially during the eighteenth century, see Jean Sutton, Lords of the East: The East India Company and Its Ships (London: Conway Maritime Press, 1981). Throughout this article, contemporary weights will be given in their modern metric equivalent, in particular tons; in order to avoid confusion, “ton” will be reserved for measuring a ship's cargo‐carrying area, following the Early Modern usage.3. Cyril Northcote Parkinson, Trade in the Eastern Seas, 1793–1813 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1937), 279.4. R. Balasubramaniam, “Saltpetre Manufacture and Marketing in Medieval India,” Indian Journal of History of Science 4, 2005, 663–72.5. Barendse, Arabian Seas, 7–8, 141–42.6. See the introduction to Brenda J. Buchanan, ed., Gunpowder, Explosives and the State: A Technological History (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005).7. Kumkum Chatterjee, “Trade and Darbar Politics in the Bengal Subah, 1733–1757,” Modern Asian Studies 2, 1992, 233–73; Narayan Prasad Singh, The East India Company's Monopoly Industries in Bihar: With Particular Reference to Saltpetre and Opium, 1773–1833 (Muzaffarpur: Sarvodaya Vangmaya, 1980); Jagdish Narayan Sarkar, “The Organization of the Saltpetre Industry of India in the Seventeenth Century,”Indian Historical Quarterly (December 1938); and, by the same author,8. See for example, Christopher A. Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion, 1770–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Tapan Raychaudhuri, Jan Company in Coromandel, 1605–1690: A Study in the Interrelations of European Commerce and Traditional Economies ('s‐Gravenhage: M. Nijhoff, 1962).9. Jata Shankar Jha, “Early European Trading Companies in Bihar,” Comprehensive History of Bihar, vol. 3, ed. Ananta Lal Thakur (Patna: Kashi Prasad Jayaswal Research Institute, Government of Bihar, 1976), 1–71.10. For two very recent works that come close to appreciating the full significance of the saltpeter trade, see Stephen R. Brown, A Most Damnable Invention: Dynamite, Nitrates, and the Making of the Modern World (New York: T. Dunne Books, 2005), 25–50, and Brenda J. Buchanan, “Saltpetre: A Commodity of Empire,” in Gunpowder, ed. Buchanan, 67–90.11. Robert Heron, Elements of Chemistry: Comprehending all of the Most Important Facts and Principles in the Works of Fourcroy and Chaptal (London: T. N. Longman and O. Rees, 1800), 524–25. For a good description of saltpeter making in India, see George Watt, The Commercial Products of India (London: John Murray, 1908), 972–75.12. For an overview of ancient and medieval uses of saltpeter, especially in Asia, see Arun Kumar Biswas, “Epic of Saltpeter to Gunpowder,” Indian Journal of History of Science 4, 2005, 539–71.13. For the use of gunpowder in the African slave trade, see R. A. Kea, “Firearms and Warfare on the Gold and Slave Coasts from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries,” The Journal of African History 2, 1971, 185–213.14. Paul Forchheimer, “The Etymology of Saltpeter,” Modern Language Notes 2, 1952, 103–6.15. The enormous productivity of the Bihar saltpeter mahals, as they were called, can be attributed to the relatively high density of population and livestock that had existed in the area since the time of the Buddha. The abundance of plant life that sprang up with the rains and decayed during the hot weather each year and the unvarying warm weather contributed to conditions in which decaying organic materials were converted readily and naturally into nitrates.16. Wang Ling, “On the Invention and Use of Gunpowder and Firearms in China,” Isis 3–4, 1947, 160–78.17. In 1609, the Dutch Republic had sent warships into the Baltic to procure consignments of approximately 50 tons of saltpeter from Danzig (Gdansk), where Dutch diplomats arranged the exportation. Many private traders in Amsterdam also were engaged in the Danzig saltpeter trade; thus, even before the VOC began to explore the Indian nitrate market, Holland already possessed a body of merchants well‐informed about the product, with distribution networks extending throughout Europe. See Instituut voor Nederlandse Geschiedenis (hereafter ING), Resolutiën Staten‐Generaal, 22 June 1609, 2. Cited at http://www.inghist.nl/retroboeken/statengeneraal/. See further Violet Barbour, Capitalism in Amsterdam in the 17th Century (Ann Arbor, MI: U. of Michigan P., 1950), 171. As the political conditions in the Baltic region worsened, the VOC was asked to procure saltpeter from India. By 1628, large regular shipments were reported as arriving from India “and elsewhere,” but initially most of this was used to build up the reserves of the Dutch Republic. ING, Resolutiën Staten‐Generaal, 27 June 1628, 5. Cited at http://www.inghist.nl/Onderzoek/Projecten/BesluitenStaten‐generaal1626‐1651/silva/sg/resoluties/1628/06/27/resoluties/05.18. Iqtidar Alam Khan, “Early Use of Cannon and Musket in India: A.D. 1442–1526,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 2, 1981, 146–64.19. Iqtidar Alam Khan, “Origin and Development of Gunpowder Technology in India, A.D. 1250–1500,” Indian Historical Review 1, 1977, 20–29.20. Vengalil A. Janaki, The Commerce of Cambay from the Earliest Period to the Nineteenth Century (Baroda: Department of Geography, Maharaja Sayajirao University, 1980), 36.21. For a comprehensive analysis of cargoes shipped to Europe by the Portuguese during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, see Niels Steensgard, Carracks, Caravels and Companies: The Structural Crisis in the European‐Asian Trade in the Seventeenth Century (Kopenhaven: Studentlitteratur, 1972), 166–68.22. Alexander Kyd Nairne, History of the Konkan (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1894), 62.23. Henry A. Young, The East India Company's Arsenals and Manufactories (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1937), 62–63.24. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Portuguese Empire in Asia, 1500–1700 (London: Longman, 1993), 165.25. Anthony R. Disney, Twilight of the Pepper Empire: Portuguese Trade in Southwest India in the Early Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1978), 5, 28, 102; George Davison Winius and Marcus P. M. Vink, The Merchant‐Warrior Pacified: The VOC (the Dutch East India Company) and the Changing Political Economy in India (Delhi: Oxford UP, 1991), 24.26. Vice‐rei Dom Miguel de Noronha, Conde de Linhares, a el‐rei Filipe III, 7 Novembro 1630, Assentos do Conselho do Estado, vol. 1 (Goa: Historical Archives of Goa, 1953), 516–17.27. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Political Economy of Commerce: Southern India, 1500–1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002), 128.28. Barendse, Arabian Seas, 201, 317.29. Ibid., 58–59, 141–42, 161.30. Subrahmanyam, Political Economy, 30, 55, 306; Nationaal Archief, the Hague, Overgekomen Brieven en Papieren, VOC 1109, fl. 302; 1113, fls. 324v‐5; 1119, fls. 1124–25.31. Ibid., 59.32. Om Prakash, The Dutch East India Company and the Economy of Bengal, 1630–1720 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1985), 35–36.33. Barendse, Arabian Seas, 317.34. The idea of the “gunpowder empire” is derived from Soviet historians' attempts to understand the Safavid Empire in a Marxist framework in the 1930s. For the first use of the term to explain the Mughals, see Marshal G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, III: Gunpowder Empires and Modern Times (Chicago, IL: U. of Chicago P., 1974). According to Hodgson, the Mughals, Safavids, Ottomans, and Habsburgs all represented “gunpowder empires,” which he defined as states that monopolized firepower in an effort to demilitarize local elites. Such a formulation cannot be applied to Mughal India, where elites remained well armed and capable of defying the state.35. Stephen Frederic Dale, The Garden of the Eight Paradises: Babur and the Culture of Empire in Central Asia, Afghanistan, and India (1483–1530) (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 327; Christon I. Archer et al., World History of Warfare (Lincoln, NE: U. of Nebraska P., 2008), 184.36. Jauhar, Tazkiratu‐l Waki‘at, trans. Major Stewart, in The History of India, As Told by Its Own Historians: The Muhammadan Period, vol. 4, ed. Sir H. M. Eliot and John Dowson (London: Trubner Co., 1867–1877), 136–49. In an effort to maintain his “monopoly” on firearms expertise, Rumi Khan routinely severed the hands of every enemy gunner captured by his troops. Humayun ordered him to desist after he cut off the hands of 300 men after the fall of Chunar.37. Abbas Khan Sarwani, Tarikh‐i Sher Shahi, trans. E. C. Bayley, in History of India, vol. 4, ed. Eliot and Dowson, 301–433.38. Abu‐l Fazl [Abu al‐Fazal], The Akbarnama, vol. 2, trans. H. Beveridge (Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1897–1939), 58–74, 615–19. In this quote, nimak should be transliterated as namak (salt).39. John F. Richards, The Mughal Empire (New Delhi: Cambridge UP, 1993), 57.40. Jos J. L. Gomans, Mughal Warfare: Indian Frontiers and Highroads to Empire, 1500–1700 (London: Routledge, 2002), 75.41. Abu‐l Fazl [Abu al‐Fazal], The A'in‐i Akbari, 3 vols, trans. H. Blochmann (Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1873), A'ins 35–37, dealing with the arsenal, artillery, and matchlocks.42. Stephen Bull, “Pearls from the Dungheape: English Saltpetre Production, 1590–1640,” Journal of the Ordnance Society 2, 1990, 5–10.43. Facing a chronic shortage of saltpeter, the English crown had instituted forced saltpeter collections by authorized agents in 1588. The House of Commons opposed these measures, as did most magistrates.44. William H. Hart, A Short Account of the Early Manufacture of Gunpowder in England (London: W. H. Elkins, 1855), 9–11; Josiah Child, A Discourse about Trade (London: A. Sowle, 1690). At this time, other Englishmen also were seeking saltpeter abroad (see Philippe De cossé‐brissac, “Robert Blake and the Barbary Company, 1636–1641,” African Affairs 190, 1949, 25–37).45. Peter Van Wiechen, Vademecum van de Oost‐en West‐Indische Compagnie (Utrecht: Antiquariaat Gert Jan Bestebreurtje, 2002), 283.46. Batavia Dagh‐Register, in Dagh‐register gehouden int Casteel Batavia vant passerende daer ter plaetse als oven geheel Nederlandts‐India, 30 vols [hereafter Batavia Dagh‐Register] ('s‐Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1887–1931), 1624–1629, 33 (8–11 March 1624). This was a ship of 700 tons, with saltpeter occupying approximately 25 percent of the available cargo space.47. Batavia Dagh‐Register, 1631–1634, 351 (12 July 1634). The source uses as its measure of weight the maund or man, which varied from one region of India to another. Here and elsewhere in this article, in determining the metric equivalent of the maund, I have attempted to discern which type of maund was used in the original source; however, this is not always clear, especially since the East India companies did not always use standardized weights or measures. The maund used by the VOC and French equaled approximately 27.18-kg, while that we will encounter later, used by the nuniyas around Patna, ranged from 31.71 to 38.5-kg. The English “factory maund” weighed 43.94-kg. The modern Indian standard for the maund is 37.3-kg. For England's domestic saltpeter production, see John U. Nef, “A Comparison of Industrial Growth in France and England from 1540 to 1640, III,” The Journal of Political Economy 5, 1936, 643–66.Production of artificial saltpeter in England reached 285.3 tons and remained at that level from 1589 until 1636. The Commissioners of the Navy informed the Company of London Merchants about the Dutch saltpeter trade from India in 1624, and in 1630, the EIC Directors asked the factors in India to send home at least 25 tons per ship (see K. N. Chaudhuri, The English East India Company: The Study of an Early Joint‐Stock Company, 1600–1640[London: Frank Cass & Co., 1965], 188).48. British Library, Oriental and India Office Library Collections (BL/OIOC), Abstract, Thomas Kerridge to the Company, 10 April 1621, Factory Records Misc., 1: 108; BL/OIOC, Thomas Mills and John Milward at Pulicat to Masulipatam Factory, 24 September 1622, Factory Records, Masulipatam, 9: 8; BL/OIOC, Francis Futter at Masulipatam to President Rastell at Surat, 29 April 1623, Factory Records, Surat, 102: 449; BL/OIOC, President Brockedon and Council at Batavia to the Company, 14 December 1623, Original Correspondence, No. 1130.49. William Foster, ed., The English Factories in India, 1624–1629 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909), xxxiv–xxxv.50. BL/OIOC, Thomas Kerridge and Council at Surat to the Company, 4 January 1628, Original Correspondence, No. 1264.51. Although new to the Europeans, the saltpeter works near Ahmadabad had been worked for a long time. A saltpeter‐producing area around Jhalabarha is mentioned by Abu al‐Fazal (see Abu‐l Fazl [Abu al‐Fazal], Akbarnama, vol. 2, 252).52. BL/OIOC, Nathaniel Mountney, etc., at Ahmadabad to President and Council, Surat, 28 March 1628, Factory Records, Surat, 102: 577; BL/OIOC, Nathaniel Mountney at Ahmadabad to President and Council, Surat, 6 January 1628, Factory Records, Surat, 102: 490; BL/OIOC, William Fremlen and John Spiller, Thatta, to President and Council, Surat, 18 December 1635, Old Correspondence, No. 1549; BL/OIOC, Surat Council to the Company, 4 January 1639, Original Correspondence, No. 1656; BL/OIOC, President Wylde and the Surat Council to the Company, 27 April 1629, Original Correspondence, No. 1292.53. BL/OIOC, Robert Hughes, Patna, to President‐in‐Council, Surat, 6 August 1620, Factory Records, Patna, 1: 4.54. Khondkar M. Karim, The Provinces of Bihar and Bengal under Shah Jahan (Dacca: Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, 1974), 41–70, 174–75.55. Batavia Dagh‐Register, 1637, 105 (14 March 1637). Also see Pieter Van Dam, Beschrijvinge van de Oostindische Compagnie, vol. 2.2, 2–3. Cited at http://www.inghist.nl/retroboeken/vandam/#4:14.56. Prakash, Dutch East India Company, 112–13.57. BL/OIOC, Court of Directors to Hughli Factory, received 6 January and 15 February 1680, Factory Records, Hughli, 8:20.58. For example, see Fort Saint George Diary and Consultations, 1672–1678 (Madras: Government Press, 1910), 10–11 (Consultations 10 September and 5 October 1672).59. Amal Kumar Das, Bidyut Kumar Roy Chaudhury, and Mani Kumar Raha, Handbook on Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes of West Bengal, Bulletin of the Cultural Research Institute, Special Series, no. 8 (Calcutta: Tribal Welfare Department, 1966), 19–20.60. A. Olearius, The voyages and travells of the ambassadors sent by Frederick, Duke of Holstein, to the Great Duke of Muscovy and the King of Persia . . . Whereto are added the Travels of John Albert de Mandelslo (a gentleman belonging to the embassy) from Persia into the East‐Indies, trans. John Davies (London: John Starkey and Thomas Basset, 1669), 66–67. For a brief account of Mandelslo's travels in India, see Donald F. Lach and Edwin J. Van Kley, Asia in the Making of Europe, vol. 3 (Chicago: U. of Chicago P., 1998), 667. Mandelslo stayed at the English factory in Surat during the rains and traveled inland toward Agra in October and November, the main saltpeter‐production season in northwestern India.61. George A. Grierson, Bihar Peasant Life, Being a Discursive Catalogue of the Surroundings of the People of that Province (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1885), 76–77. This renders an especially enlightening document, a petition sent by a group of nuniyas to British officials in 1814, which tells us much about the industry from the workers' point of view.62. Many sources refer to the use of copper boilers, but in Bengal, all copper had to be imported from Japan, and consequently such high‐quality equipment was beyond the reach of most nuniyas.63. Prakash, Dutch, 59. In both Persian and Hindustani, shora is the word most commonly used for saltpeter. For a contemporary description of the saltpeter‐production process in seventeenth century Bihar, see National Archief, The Hague, 1.04.02, No. 1454, Bengalen, ff. 746–81 (Adriaen van Ommen and Pieter Vrolijkhardt, Patna, 30 June 1688); Wouter Schouten, Oost‐Indische Reys‐Beschrijving, vol. 3 (Amsterdam: van Meurs and van Someren, 1677), 119; J. Stevenson, “On the Manufacture of Saltpeter as Practiced by the Natives of Tirhut,” Journal and Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 2 (1833): 23–27.For the use of shora in Indian Persian, see Francis Gladwin, The Persian Moonshee, 3d ed., vol. 2 (Calcutta: Chronicle Press, 1800), 135. A detailed account of the saltpeter mahals may be found in R. Montgomery Martin, The History, Antiquities, Topography, and Statistics of Eastern India, vol. 2 (London: W.H. Allen, 1838), 280; also see Sarkar, “The Organization,” 31–48.64. E. M. Jacobs, Merchant in Asia: The Trade of the Dutch East India Company during the Eighteenth Century (Leiden: CNWS Publications, 2006), 123.65. For an excellent discussion of the role of dadani merchants, or brokers, in Indian trade, see M. N. Pearson, “Brokers in Western Indian Port Cities: Their Role in Servicing Foreign Merchants,” Modern Asian Studies 3, 1988, 455–72.66. Chatterjee, “Trade.” One flaw in Chatterjee's argument, however, is her characterization of the Patna saltpeter trade as a “boom” commerce dependent on European traders. To be sure, the major merchant houses relied upon the East India trade for their great fortunes, but as we have seen, Patna already was a major saltpeter market geared toward meeting a significant level of domestic demand. Also see Kumkum Chatterjee, Merchants, Politics and Society in Early Modern India: 1730–1820 (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 26–27.67. Charles Fawcett, The English Factories in India: The Eastern Coast and Bay of Bengal, New Series, 1678–1684, vol. 4 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), 235. One thousand rupees was a considerable sum, roughly equal to about £100 in seventeenth‐ and eighteenth‐century English currency, or about five times the annual wage of a Dutch artisan (such as a VOC sailmaker) at the time.68. Prakash, Dutch, 108–10.69. Najaf Haider, “Precious Metal Flows and Currency Circulation in the Mughal Empire,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 39.3 (1996): 298–364.During the period 1657–1661, the European companies imported 1.51 metric tons of silver into Bengal annually, but during the period 1668–1672, the annual imports rose to 13.95 metric tons. Since prices remained stable across both periods, the increase is attributed entirely to an expanding volume of trade.70. Prakash, Dutch, 152. Also see Jacobs, Merchant, 124.71. Prakash, Dutch, 59–60; K. N. Chaudhuri, The Trading World of Asia and the East India Company, 1660–1760 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 337–38; N. N. Raye, The Annals of the Early English Settlement in Bihar (Calcutta: Kama Book Depot, 1927), 29–98.72. Jacobs, Merchant in Asia, 124. Frequently, for one reason or another, the VOC failed to export that much saltpeter.73. Levon Khachikian, “The Journal of the Merchant Hovhannes Joughayetsi,” Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 8.3 (1966): 153–86.74. Mesrovb Jacob Seth, Armenians in India, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day: A Work of Original Research (Calcutta: Mesrovb Jacob Seth, 1937), 284.75. Graham Harris, Treasure and Intrigue: The Legacy of Captain Kidd (Toronto: Dundirn Press, 2002), 133–34. The vessel was declared a “French” prize because a French sailor happened to be aboard.76. Daniel Defoe, The Life, Adventures, and Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1903), 233.77. Sinnappah Arasaratnam, Maritime India in the Seventeenth Century (New Delhi: Oxford UP, 1994), 169. There certainly was some demand for saltpeter in Asian markets outside India. In the 1750s, the VOC usually sold about 260,000 guilders' worth of nitrates to Asian merchants. See Ryūto Shimada, The Intra‐Asian Trade in Japanese Copper by the Dutch East India Company during the Eighteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 118. It seems more likely to me that instead of “collapsing,” this trade was taken over by the VOC and by European country traders.78. Jacobs, Merchant in Asia, 126.79. Prakash, Dutch, 185–86, 200, 220.80. Jacobs, Merchant in Asia, 124, 126. The committees charged with provisioning the Dutch military purchased saltpeter from the VOC on contract and did not have to buy nitrates at auction.81. Confusion regarding the merging of the two companies, after their long and bitter rivalry, is perhaps understandable, but the diplomatic resolution of this “misunderstanding” took longer than necessary.82. C. R. Wilson, The Early Annals of the English in Bengal: The Bengal Public Consultations for the First Half of the Eighteenth Century, vol. 2.2 (Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1911), 238, 245–46.83. Thomas Bowrey, A Geographical Account of Countries Round the Bay of Bengal, 1669–1679, ed. Richard Carnac Temple (Cambridge: Hakluyt Society, 1905), 225.84. Raye, English Settlement in Bihar, 98–108. For an alternative view of the use of European troops to guard saltpeter barges, see Chatterjee, “Trade and Darbar Politics,” 233–73. Chatterjee's suggestion that European soldiers wantonly attacked toll officials and others has to be viewed in the context of their being frequently fired upon from the shore, often by provincial officials.85. Wilson, English in Bengal 2.1, lix.86. Ibid., 2.1, lxi–lxiii.87. A year‐by‐year table of East India Company saltpeter exports from Bengal, from 1698 to 1760, may be found in Bal Krishna, Commercial Relations between India and England, 1601–1757 (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1924), 307–8.88. Marc Vigié, Dupleix (Paris: Fayard, 1993), 114–27.89. Holden Furber, Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient, 1600–1800 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1976), 257. Ironically, the period of VOC prominence in the saltpeter trade coincided with a gradual reduction in Dutch shipping after 1740, which has been explained as symptomatic of a general contraction of the VOC's trade (see Jacobs, Merchant in Asia, 124).90. Sushil Chaudhuri, “Merchants, Companies and Rulers in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 31, 1988, 90–103; Kalikinkar K. Datta, The Dutch in Bengal and Bihar, 1740–1825 A.D. (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1968), 6.91. Chatterjee, “Trade,” 233–73. For a short overview of Khwajah Wajid's antecedents and career, see Andrew Godley, “Migration of Entrepreneurs,” in The Oxford Handbook of Entrepreneurship, ed. Mark Casson et al. (London: Oxford University Press, 2006), 601–10.92. BL/OIOC, Governor‐in‐Council of Fort William to Court of Directors, East India Company, 3 September 1753, Bengal Letters to Court, 17: 247–307, par. 19–24.93. Robert Clive to William Watts, 19 May 1757, quoted in Bengal in 1756–1757: A Selection of Public and Private Papers Dealing with the Affairs of the British in Bengal during the Reign of Siraj‐uddaula, vol. 2, ed. Samuel C. Hill (London: John Murray, 1905), 388–89; also see M. Jean Law, “Memoire sur quelques affaires et l'Empire Mogol, et particulièrement sur celle de Bengal depuis l'année 1756 jusqu'à la fin de Janvier 1761,” British Library, Add. MSS., No. 20914.94. C.U. Aitchison, Collection of Treaties, Engagements, and Sanads Relating to India (Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing, 1892), vol. 1, 19.95. For the impact of British military expansion on the VOC at this time, see Jacobs, Merchant in Asia, 121. The defeat of the Dutch expedition at Bedara coincided, more or less, with the English occupation of Surat. The two events together, combined with the ascendancy of the East India Company on the Coromandel Coast and the earlier defeat of the VOC by the Raja of Travancore, led to a drastic reduction in Dutch operations on the Indian mainland.96. J. C. Sinha, Economic Annals of Bengal (London: Macmillan, 1927), 110.97. Raye, English Settlement, 217–23.98. Seid‐Gholam‐Hossein‐Khan [Sayyid Ghulam Hussain Khan], Seir Mutaqherin, 3 vols (Calcutta: n.p., 1783), chap. 11.99. Johan Splinter Stavornius, Voyages to the East‐Indies; by the Late John Splinter Stavorinus, Esq., Rear‐Admiral in the Service of the States‐General, 3 vols., vol. 1 (London: G.G. and J. Robinson, 1798), 479, 526–27. The value of the Dutch gold imports was between £350,000 and £450,000. Annually, the EIC permitted the VOC to purchase 1,600 tons of saltpeter at cost and additional nitrates at auction on the open market, if so desired. This sort of secure trade was attractive to the VOC, which could not compete with English private traders in the silk and opium trades during the corrupt circumstances of the 1760s. Indeed, VOC trade in Bengal declined from 4 to 1.5 million guilders between 1757 and 1770, but, on the positive side, the English private traders laundered their profits in the Dutch settlements, eventually enabling the VOC to curtail costly gold and silver imports (see Jacobs, Merchant in Asia, 139).100. Larry Neal, “The Dutch and English East India Companies Compared: Evidence from the Stock and Foreign Exchange Markets,” in The Political Economy of Merchant Empires: State Power and World Trade, 1350–1750, ed. James D. Tracy (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997), 208.101. Imperial Record Department, Calendar of Persian Correspondence, vol. 8, 1788–1789 (Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing, 1911), Nos. 661, 829, 1564 (correspondence between the Governor‐General‐in‐Council at Fort William and Nawab Mubarak‐ud‐Daulah). The allotment for the Raja of Banaras, interestingly, was comparable to the normal peacetime saltpeter requirements of all of the American colonies at roughly the same time. Indubitably, much of the Raja's saltpeter allowance was used for making fireworks.102. Awadh, however, managed to maintain a minor trade in cloth and saltpeter with Central India, which paid for such imports with iron ore. The primary markets of this trade were Banaras and Mirzapur (see Bayly, Rulers, 159).103. Tamil Nadu State Archives (TNSA), Madras Board of Revenue Proceedings, 255A: 5453–68 (Proceedings of 12 June 1800).104. For more detail regarding these losses, see Sinha, Economic Annals, 176; H. T. Colebrooke, Remarks on the Husbandry and Internal Commerce of Bengal (London: Blacks & Parry, 1804), 113.105. These losses refer only to the sale of the Company's saltpeter shipments. Exactly how much the Company was earning selling saltpeter to the Dutch, French, and Danes is at the same time unclear. The salt monopoly, closely connected with the saltpeter monopoly, rapidly became an extremely lucrative source of revenue for the Company.106. Edmund Burke, The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke: India, Madras and Bengal, 1774–1785, ed. P. J. Marshall et al. (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1981), 304–06. For another contemporary account of the convoluted, often contradictory economics and politics of Britain's share of the saltpeter trade, see Colebrooke, Internal Commerce, 184–89.107. By 1805, annual sales of saltpeter to China had risen to 287,144 rupees, and following the Napoleonic Wars, China's demand for saltpeter crested at 294.3 tons (1824–1825); in 1832–1833, the Canton nitrate market collapsed, however, with trade being disrupted further by the subsequent Opium Wars (see House of Commons, Report from the Select Committee on Trade with China, 1840, 202–3).108. For example, see The Asiatic Register: Or, A View of the History of Hindustan, and of the Politics, Commerce, and Literature of Asia, for the Year 1799, vol. 2 (London: J. Debrett, 1800), 106–7. For a reference to saltpeter production in “all villages” of Awadh, see Bayly, Rulers, 56.109. P. J. Marshall, “Economic and Political Expansion: The Case of Awadh,” Modern Asian Studies 9.4 (1975): 465–82.110. For a detailed study of the gunpowder supply system in Britain, see Jenny West, The Supply of Gunpowder to the Ordnance Office in the Mid‐Eighteenth Century (London: University of London, 1986), and Jenny West, Gunpowder, Government and War in the Mid‐Eighteenth Century (London: Royal Historical Society, 1991). These works contain lists of British gunpowder mills and their owners, which should be compared with the lists of members of the Court of Directors during the same period. The overlap among these sets of lists is astonishing.111. Michael Roberts, The Military Revolution, 1560–1660 (Belfast: Queen's College, 1954); Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). For discussions of all aspects of the Military Revolution concept, see Clifford J. Rogers, ed., The Military Revolution Debate: Readings on the Transformation of Early Modern Europe (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Pre
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