Foothold in West and South

Captain Hawkins arrived in the court of Jahangir in April 1609 itself. But the mission to establish a factory at Surat didn’t succeed due to opposition from the Portuguese, and Hawkins left Agra in November 1611. In 1611, the English had started trading at Masulipatnam on the south-eastern coast of India and later established a factory there in 1616. It was in 1612 that Captain Thomas Best defeated the Portuguese in the sea off Surat; an impressed Jahangir granted permission to the English in early 1613 to establish a factory at Surat under Thomas Aldworth. In 1615, Sir Thomas Roe came as an accredited ambassador of James I to the court of Jahangir, staying on there till February 1619. Though he was unsuccessful in concluding a commercial treaty with the Mughal emperor, he was able to secure a number of privileges, including permission to set up factories at Agra, Ahmedabad and Broach.

The English company did not have a smooth progress. It had to contend with the Portuguese and the Dutch in the beginning. But the changing situation helped them and turned things in their favour. Bombay had been gifted to King Charles II by the King of Portugal as dowry when Charles married the Portuguese princess Catherine in 1662. Bombay was given over to the East India Company on an annual payment of ten pounds only in 1668. Later Bombay was made the headquarters by shifting the seat of the Western Presidency from Surat to Bombay in 1687. So there was tacit peace between the English and the Portuguese now. There was also an Anglo-Dutch compromise as mentioned earlier by which the Dutch agreed not to interfere with the English company’s trade in India. Thus the English were rid of two arch-rivals in India.

The English company’s position was improved by the ‘Golden Farman’ issued to them by the Sultan of Golconda in 1632. On a payment of 500 pagodas a year, they earned the privilege of trading freely in the ports of Golconda. A member of the Masulipatnam council, the British merchant Francis Day in 1639 received from the ruler of Chandragiri permission to build a fortified factory at Madras which later became the Fort St. George and replaced Masulipatnam as the headquarters of the English settlements in south India. Thereafter, the English extended their trading activities to the east and started factories at Hariharpur in the Mahanadi delta and at Balasore (in Odisha) in 1633.