The East India Company: The World's Most Powerful Corporation (The Story of Indian Business) by Tirthankar Roy Read Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Tirthankar Roy
to Bijapur, Burhanpur, Mandu and Ujjain. A few miles away from Ujjain, the party came into a resplendent procession of Emperor Akbar. Early the following year, the group reached Agra. Although the party appeared to have been well received at the court, it is not known if any of these men actually met the emperor to deliver the letter of the Queen to him. The group now divided.Fitch was to travel to Bengal. Newberry was to go to England over the land route, and return with a ship to Bengal and meet Fitch there. Newberry did set out on the journey, but was not heard of again. Leedes took up service with the Mughal court and never returned to England. The others continued on to ‘Bengala’, the legendary land that supplied so many finely woven cloths to the markets of west and east Asia.
Fitch went from Agra to Benares, the Bengal port of Saptagram, and navigated through the treacherous waters of the Sundarbans to reach Bakla. Since he does not mention either overland journey or changing ship, it would be safe to assume that the town and kingdom of Bakla were located somewhere on the lower Meghna river, or one of its tributaries, possibly the Tentulia. The
Ain-i-Akbari
of Abul Fazl, the Mughal court officer and chronicler, mentioned some years after Fitch visited the place that the town was destroyed by a giant tidal wave from the sea, taking two hundred thousand lives with it. Bakla reappeared as a Mughal zamindari (estate run by a tax-collecting landlord or zamindar), but on a different and safer location. From old Bakla, Fitch travelled to Sripur and Sonargaon, two midsize kingdoms of the lower Bengal delta, and to Pegu in Burma. Throughout the journey, he carefully noted the tradable goods to be found, from the pepper of Cochin, cloves ofthe Moluccas, diamonds of Golconda, rubies of Pegu, to the ‘great store of Cotton cloth [from Bengal], and much Rice, wherewith they serve all India, Ceilon, Pegu, Malacca, Sumatra, and many other places.’ From Pegu, Fitch sailed for England, where he reached on 29 April 1591.
Master Ralph Fitch, one of the minor members of the party, became the most famous among them when the records of the travel appeared in print. Some of the geographical details in the book drew upon the accounts of a Venetian merchant Cesare Fedirici. But this was the first travelogue of India by an Englishman. Fitch became a hero. Ten years after the fleet returned, Shakespeare wrote in
Macbeth
, ‘Her husband’s to Aleppo gone, master o’ the Tyger’, making reference to a voyage that evoked immense popular interest in his time. The expedition had not achieved anything to serve trade directly. But it sowed the seeds for the idea that a trade treaty between two kingdoms, Mughal India and Tudor England, could be possible. This objective would be better served some decades later by means of an organized body of merchants, a united Company.
James Lancaster
Three weeks before Fitch’s return, London merchants had sponsored the first of three voyages undertaken byone of the most famous merchants and mariners of the time, James Lancaster. The ill-fated expedition saw one of the two main ships go down under a giant wave off the Cape, and the other struck by lightning. The surviving ship did reach the Malacca Straits, thanks to the help received from a Gujarati sailor whom the ship picked up at Zanzibar. The only real success of the expedition occurred in Penang, where it waylaid a Portuguese ship loaded with silk and spice. When returning from Penang, Lancaster’s crew had a curious encounter with a sailor who had been left for dead upon the uninhabited St. Helena, and survived a Robinson Crusoe existence for more than a year. Shortly after being picked up he died, allegedly of excessive joy at having met Englishmen. Before he died, he made a most opportune gift of forty goats to the badly provisioned ship. Lancaster then went to the West Indies, lost his ship off the coast of Brazil, and eventually returned
Fitch went from Agra to Benares, the Bengal port of Saptagram, and navigated through the treacherous waters of the Sundarbans to reach Bakla. Since he does not mention either overland journey or changing ship, it would be safe to assume that the town and kingdom of Bakla were located somewhere on the lower Meghna river, or one of its tributaries, possibly the Tentulia. The
Ain-i-Akbari
of Abul Fazl, the Mughal court officer and chronicler, mentioned some years after Fitch visited the place that the town was destroyed by a giant tidal wave from the sea, taking two hundred thousand lives with it. Bakla reappeared as a Mughal zamindari (estate run by a tax-collecting landlord or zamindar), but on a different and safer location. From old Bakla, Fitch travelled to Sripur and Sonargaon, two midsize kingdoms of the lower Bengal delta, and to Pegu in Burma. Throughout the journey, he carefully noted the tradable goods to be found, from the pepper of Cochin, cloves ofthe Moluccas, diamonds of Golconda, rubies of Pegu, to the ‘great store of Cotton cloth [from Bengal], and much Rice, wherewith they serve all India, Ceilon, Pegu, Malacca, Sumatra, and many other places.’ From Pegu, Fitch sailed for England, where he reached on 29 April 1591.
Master Ralph Fitch, one of the minor members of the party, became the most famous among them when the records of the travel appeared in print. Some of the geographical details in the book drew upon the accounts of a Venetian merchant Cesare Fedirici. But this was the first travelogue of India by an Englishman. Fitch became a hero. Ten years after the fleet returned, Shakespeare wrote in
Macbeth
, ‘Her husband’s to Aleppo gone, master o’ the Tyger’, making reference to a voyage that evoked immense popular interest in his time. The expedition had not achieved anything to serve trade directly. But it sowed the seeds for the idea that a trade treaty between two kingdoms, Mughal India and Tudor England, could be possible. This objective would be better served some decades later by means of an organized body of merchants, a united Company.
James Lancaster
Three weeks before Fitch’s return, London merchants had sponsored the first of three voyages undertaken byone of the most famous merchants and mariners of the time, James Lancaster. The ill-fated expedition saw one of the two main ships go down under a giant wave off the Cape, and the other struck by lightning. The surviving ship did reach the Malacca Straits, thanks to the help received from a Gujarati sailor whom the ship picked up at Zanzibar. The only real success of the expedition occurred in Penang, where it waylaid a Portuguese ship loaded with silk and spice. When returning from Penang, Lancaster’s crew had a curious encounter with a sailor who had been left for dead upon the uninhabited St. Helena, and survived a Robinson Crusoe existence for more than a year. Shortly after being picked up he died, allegedly of excessive joy at having met Englishmen. Before he died, he made a most opportune gift of forty goats to the badly provisioned ship. Lancaster then went to the West Indies, lost his ship off the coast of Brazil, and eventually returned
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