Honourable Company: A History of The English East India Company

by John Keay

  Considerably shaken, White and Weltden with their two remaining ships withdrew into the Mergui archipelago, thence to Burma and to Aceh. Neither was in a hurry to report to Madras. Weltden’s failure would eventually win him severe censure and White could only assume that the massacre would be laid at his door. To escape the Company’s clutches he sailed, with Weltden’s connivance, first to Pondicherry and then straight back to England and the welcoming arms of brother George and the Dowgate Adventurers.

  It was thus in complete ignorance of the tragic turn of events at Mergui that in the summer of 1687 Elihu Yale sent another ship, the Pearl, to reinforce the Company’s Siam task force. News of Phaulkon’s machinations with the French was now shedding a disconcerting light on Anglo-Siamese relations. Originally the Greek had tempted Versailles with the prospect of King Narai’s speedy conversion to Catholicism. With a Jesuit confessor ensconced in the royal household the Dutch would need no further reminder of French influence. But when the King showed absolutely no inclination to forsake the Buddhism of his forefathers Phaulkon had cast about for an equally acceptable expedient and had come up with an offer of territory. The French might found their own settlement, an equivalent to Bombay with a French garrison and full sovereignty. He first suggested Singhora, near enough to the Menam to discourage the Dutch but not so near that it would antagonize the native Siamese. Then he changed his mind and suggested Mergui. By now, 1687, a French fleet was on its way out with over 300 troops on board plus the wherewithal to take up residence.

  From an English point of view there was only one thing worse than Mergui being a lair of interlopers and that was the prospect of its becoming a French naval base. With Mergui on one side and Pondicherry on the other, the French would be well placed to control the Bay of Bengal. It was therefore to forestall the French by seizing Mergui for the Company that Yale sent the Pearl to join Weltden. On board were the one-time Agent from Bantam and one of Yale’s senior factors from Madras who were to act as Governor and Port Officer in the new acquisition.

  But Weltden had of course slunk away in disgrace; Phaulkon had interpreted his behaviour as hostile and had formally declared war against the English Company; and in Mergui the Siamese were in full control with a Frenchman already installed in White’s shoes. Unaware of any of these changes the Pearl sailed into port. She was promptly surrounded. Her two very senior factors found themselves compelled to surrender to the Frenchman and were then dragged off in chains to Ayuthia. There they were ‘severely confined and used’. The Menam swarmed with French vessels and as well as Mergui, a French garrison had been quartered in the strategic fortress of Bangkok.

  It was the end so far as the Company was concerned. Once again its hopes of Siamese trade had brought nothing but heartache. ‘Syam,’ declared the directors in 1691, ‘never did nor will bring the Company two pence advantage, but many thousands of pounds loss.’

  In March 1688 the Pearl’s factors were released. Eight months later they were followed out of Bangkok and Mergui by the remnants of the French expedition. Its presence had served only to disgrace the mighty Phaulkon and arouse Siamese nationalism. By the end of 1688 Phaulkon had been executed, King Narai was dead, and Siam had put up the shutters to the outside world. Only the Dutch retained their factory and even its importance rapidly declined. For nearly a century and a half the country would continue to nurse the wounds of its first bruising encounter with Europe. This isolationism was no protection against its Burmese neighbour but it did spare the country the traumas of colonialism.

  iii

  From behind the jaunty walls of Madras’s Fort St George, Elihu Yale greatly regretted the loss of the Siamese trade, so much so that in 1691 he and his Council made an unusually public-spirited offer. They would raise, they said, a subscription towards the cost of sending a small fleet to capture Siamese shipping as compensation for the losses suffered. It seems, however, that the Company never took up this offer. Probably, and rightly, it judged that it was not its own losses but those of Yale and his colleagues that were so bothering Fort St George.

  Private trade as conducted by Company men and interlopers had undermined the Siamese venture. But such freelancing, whether in Company ships or native vessels, could serve as a useful form of reconnaissance. Compared to the Company’s ‘out and back’ operations the risks were high and the investments small. But there was always the chance of new markets being opened or of new commodities being discovered which, if profitable, the Company could itself take over. Madras was particularly well sited for such ventures and, even as Yale and his council rued the loss of Siam, they were already deeply committed to a new and much more exciting field of activity at the mouth of China’s Pearl River.

  No English ship had attempted to trade at Canton since Weddell’s disastrous skirmish there on behalf of Courteen’s Association in 1637. It was to be hoped that the Chinese had forgotten that bloody affray and perhaps it was to guard against any repeat performance that Yale sent as chief factor, or supercargo, his ever-dependable brother Thomas. He was less fortunate in his choice of a vessel. It was now 1689, that disastrous year in which Job Charnock and the entire Bengal establishment had been ignominiously withdrawn to Madras. Their ship, the Defence, after ‘tripping from port to port [Sutanati, Chittagong, Arakan] without effecting anything’, was now swinging at anchor in Madras roads; and she was still under the erratic command of Captain Heath. Failing any orders for her disposal, it was this ship and her ‘hot-headed, wrong-headed, capricious and futile, feather-brained skipper’ that Yale now directed to establish a factory at Canton.

  ‘We are of opinion’, wrote Yale to the directors, that it ‘will be very advantageous to Your Honours if it could be well procured, that port [Canton] much exceeding Amoy in all sorts of China commodities and is a greater and better government’. Amoy represented the Company’s one modest and precarious success from twenty years of sporadic attempts to gain a foothold in China. Following the abortive visit of the Return and the Experiment in 1672-3, the Company’s factors at Bantam had sent further vessels to Taiwan, then as now independent of Peking. For a time its king looked set to make substantial conquests on the mainland, and it was in the wake of these that in 1676 factors first began trading at Amoy on the mainland opposite to Taiwan. Given their ignorance of Chinese commercial practice, the disturbed state of the country and Amoy’s isolation, these factors showed remarkable tenacity and in 1681 were expected to find loadings for no less than four ships.

  But in the following year the political map again changed. Amoy and then Taiwan fell to the Manchus, Bantam passed to the Dutch, and responsibility for further English endeavours passed to Madras. Although the Amoy trade resumed, it remained a disappointment. The place was too far from the manufacturing centres to be a great market for Chinese silks and as yet the English market for Chinese tea was insignificant. Additionally the exorbitant demands made by a host of local officials tried both the purse and the patience of the English. ‘There is no other way to bring them to terms but either to divert trade to Ningpo [in the north] or Canton’, reported a gloomy factor in 1689, ‘or else to forbear some years whereby the want of our ships may reduce them to a juster usage and commerce.’

  Even as he wrote, Captain Heath’s Defence was dropping anchor in sheltered waters at the mouth of the Pearl River. She was fifteen leagues east of Macao amid a scatter of well-wooded islands which included what is now Hong Kong. Previous attempts to trade at Canton had usually been made through the doubtful offices of the Portuguese at Macao; but Thomas Yale opted for the direct approach. With two other factors and an escort of eight he was rowed to the mainland and then conveyed, the factors in sedan chairs, the escort in wheelbarrows (‘much more convenient than our English ones but somewhat more noisy’) to Tungkun and thence by boat to the great city.

  Describing what was probably the largest port at which Company ships had ever called, Alexander Hamilton would find the people of Canton ‘ingenious, industrious, civil, but
too numerous’. He reckoned the population at well over a million and there was ‘no day in the year but shews 5000 sail of trading junks, besides small boats for other services, lying before the city’. The country was ‘as pleasant and profitable as any in the world, the crops abundant’. Chinese meat, however, was to be avoided. It was good, but you needed to know its provenance. Let the Captain explain.

  The abominable sin of sodomy is tolerated here, and all over China, and so is buggery, which they use both with beasts and fowls, in so much that Europeans do not care to eat duck except what they bring up themselves, either from the egg or from small ducklings.

  Thomas Yale and his companions were no doubt equally impressed by the metropolis, but they were not there long enough to ascertain such detail. On the day after their arrival they met the Hoppo, or Chinese customs officer, and were immediately promised the necessary chop, or permit, for bringing the ship upriver. This was most encouraging. But Yale was reckoning without his skipper. Heath, who seems to have been a capable navigator, always became exceedingly restless and apprehensive when in sight of land. Charnock had come to rue this failing; now it was Yale’s turn. For after landing the Canton party, Heath had weighed anchor, taken a long look at the main channel up to Canton and decided against it. He was now somewhere off Macao. Yale and the Hoppo spent five days trying to find him.

  It was ironical that, when at last an English ship had a chance to go up to Canton, she chose not to take it. But the Captain remained adamant; hence Yale was compelled to conduct the always lengthy negotiations over dues and contracts from Macao. Customs duties in China were usually paid by the Chinese merchants. In their stead the visiting trader paid a charge based on the size of his ship. This involved tedious and expensive measurement and could not even begin until orders had been placed for whatever goods the visitors intended to take away with them. With much bluff and more bribery Yale fought his way through the tangle of red tape and by March 1690 the ship was being loaded.

  Meanwhile Captain Heath was waging a battle with the Macao customs over his personal trade and busily refitting for the return voyage. His requirements evidently included a mast, to collect which he took an armed detachment from the ship. The mast was lying ready on the shore but there was something wrong with the Captain’s paperwork. He needed, said the Chinese, some additional clearance. Heath would have none of it and proceeded to roll his mast into the water ‘when began ye fray’. Blows were exchanged as the mast was lashed to the longboat. The men pulled on the oars and the Chinese kept up a steady bombardment of rocks. ‘Fire,’ shouted the Captain in panic. The first shots came from the English and one Chinese was killed outright. The English now rowed for open water, cutting loose the precious mast and abandoning the ship’s doctor who came rushing down the beach with nine other members of the crew. The doctor ‘was miserably cut down in their sight’ and then thrown into a hut where, next day, he was reported to be still lying ‘on ye ground, chained in his gore most miserably with ye stinking dead corpse [of the Chinese casualty] laid by him and none suffered to come near or dress his wounds’.

  Back aboard the Defence Yale was beside himself at this latest outrage. ‘The Captain…having performed what I always feared would be the conclusion of his folly, [had] ruined the public and private trade.’ To ride out the storm of protest and resolve the judicial complications of such an incident would take months; it would also eat into the profits. A factor was sent to ransom the doctor and the other prisoners. He reported that the Chinese would not begin to settle the matter for a sum less than three times that already paid in measurement dues. Yale refused and the ship immediately put to sea. Presumably the mast was recovered but of the factor, the doctor, and the rest no more is heard. ‘We never had good success in any attempt made of that kind without our own express orders’, was the smug comment of the directors. It had been Madras’s affair; the Yales must take the blame. In 1692 Elihu was replaced as Governor of Fort St George but he was still in Madras winding up his multifarious affairs six years later.

  Whether the voyage had been a failure commercially as well as diplomatically is not revealed. Naturally factors tended to magnify the difficulties with which they had to contend; moreover they were unlikely to reveal the profits of their private trade and were often in no position to gauge those of the Company. Presumably the China trade, especially to Amoy, continued to show a return. It certainly attracted ships and when the New Company commenced operations, Canton was high on its list of priorities. Where the Old Company had stirred up such animosity, it was hoped that the New might find a favourable reception.

  Thus in 1699 the New Company’s Macclesfield, a fast sailing ‘galley’ of modest size, sailed from London to Macao in under six months. So keen was the Hoppo to encourage her trade that the measurement dues, modest enough for a ship of this size, were twice reduced and in September 1700 she moored in Canton’s Whampoa harbour. She was probably the first company ship to join the great concourse described by Hamilton although it is significant that she found already there a ship belonging to Abdul Ghafar, the Surat tycoon, and one from Madras.

  As supercargo the Macclesfield carried Robert Douglas, brother-in-law of Thomas Pitt and one of the Old Company’s erstwhile factors in Bengal; he was supported by a Mr Biggs who had been on the Defence. Together they had a fund of experience and a better idea of what to expect than any of their predecessors. The Chinese refusal to allow resident factors meant that the-factory system as developed in Java and India could not apply. The ship itself was the factory and each vessel must have its resident banker-cum-entrepreneur in the shape of the supercargo. Moreover they must be prepared for long delays, prevarication from the mandarins, and collusion from the merchants. On the other hand, the Chinese usually respected any contract once it had been duly signed and they might even honour penalty clauses. It was all a question of knowing the ropes and at last the English were beginning to feel their way.

  Writing to Pitt after the Macclesfield’s return to England, Douglas nevertheless portrayed his sojourn at Canton as fraught with severe difficulties. Having made such good speed on the outward voyage he had been detained by the Chinese for nearly a year, thus ‘missing the monsoon [winds]’ and being obliged to while away six months on an exploratory cruise up the coast. His English goods had been returned to him unsold ‘contrary to all justice after they had kept them five or six months’. And the arrival of ‘a great ship from Manila’ had deprived him of much of the silk he had ordered. ‘Notwithstanding all my complaints to the mandarins and all the endeavours I could use, yet I was necessitate to put up [with] all these injuries and a great many more to get in what was due to us.’ At Chusan, to which place Douglas had removed in a further effort to sell his English cloth, it was the same story, and after such a catalogue of woe one might assume that the venture was a dismal failure. In reality, as he confided at the end of his letter to Pitt, after all charges had been deducted he was confident of doubling the value of his original stock ‘which is more than our Company expected and more than any ship from India or China had done this year’. It was much the most successful venture ever to China, and from the voyage of the Macclesfield dates the regular English trade with Canton which would one day become the most profitable in the East India Company’s portfolio.

  Whereas in India the competition provided by the New Company served merely as an obstruction, in China it stimulated activity. Douglas was the first to sail north past Amoy to Chusan at the mouth of the Yangtse. His object was to reach Ningpo, an important centre for the sale of Nanking silk, and hopefully to find in colder climes a better market for English woollens. Access to Ningpo was refused, but while at Chusan he was joined by Allen Catchpole, another of Job Charnock’s disillusioned Bengal factors who had then joined Thomas Pitt as an interloper but was now rejoicing in the role of the New Company’s Agent – and, of course, Consul-General – for China and the Far East.

  Catchpole remained at Chusan throughout 1701 in which
year five New Company ships called at the port. Unlike Sir Nicholas Waite and the other Consuls-General in India he seems to have been a conscientious administrator. But to all the usual impediments to trade with China was added the complication of how and where he was to base himself. The Chinese were adamant that the Consul-General could not reside on Chinese soil. They were highly suspicious of what they took to be some species of English mandarin and in early 1702 they ordered him back to sea. Thereafter he shuttled between Batavia, Bandjarmasin in Borneo where the New Company had also established itself, and back to Chusan. It was a most unsatisfactory arrangement and on Catchpole’s strong recommendation his employers at last sanctioned the establishment of a fortified settlement on neutral territory. The place which had caught their Agent’s eye was Pulo Condore, an island later infamous as a penal settlement off the coast of south Vietnam. More than 1000 miles from Canton, let alone Chusan, it was nevertheless astride the main sea route up the South China Sea and it was the best that was available. With his council of senior factors, a small garrison and plenty of carpenters, Catchpole went ashore in April 1703.

  The island measured twelve miles by four. It boasted a few villages, some useful timber and a couple of anchorages. Catchpole catalogued every one of its vegetable productions and evidently regarded it as some sort of paradise. But it was really no great improvement on all those other islands – Run, Anjediva, Hijili, Mergui – which seem to have dotted the Company’s history. Perhaps a few square miles bounded by water exercised some special attraction for an insular race. Catchpole, of course, maintained that it had enormous commercial potential. ‘I do faithfully assure your Honours’, he told the New Company’s directors, ‘that I have no fear of vessels in great numbers coming hither with all sorts of goods, so soon as they hear we are settled here and govern as in your Honours other factories.’ Thomas Pitt, now Governor at Madras and no friend of the New Company, fully concurred; he reckoned Pulo Condore ‘the best design that the English have taken in these parts for many years’.