The failure of the cloth trade to Surat and the internationalisation of English mercantilist thought, 1614-1621

Pettigrew, William A. (2016) The failure of the cloth trade to Surat and the internationalisation of English mercantilist thought, 1614-1621. In: The East India Company, 1600-1857 : Essays on Anglo-Indian Connection. Taylor and Francis, pp. 21-43. ISBN 9781138679436

Abstract

This chapter investigates how political and commercial developments in India in the 1670s and 1680s were disseminated within the East India Company's (EIC's) Court of Committees in London and how the exchanges resulted in new commercial strategies for the company. It describes the influence of the Indian political context on the development of trade in India between the different Indian principalities and the European - in this case, English - trading companies in the latter part of the seventeenth century. It demonstrates how political developments in India, the cooperation with Indian merchants and differing interpretations of the same influenced changes to the existing commercial policy of the EIC in London. The use of force in the trading relations between European companies and Asian merchants and principalities was an important question already from the foundation of the English EIC.