Armenians in India

ARMENIAN EUROPEAN RELATIONSHIP IN INDIA, 1500-1800: NO ARMENIAN FOUNDATION FOR EUROPEAN EMPIRE?
BY
BHASWATI BHATTACHARYA*
Abstract Historical evidence points to the existence of Armenians in India in small numbers at least since the sixteenth century. Beginning with the Portuguese in that century, Europeans entered the spheres of Euro-Asian and intra-Asian trade in an increasing volume. Armenian contact with India received a boost following the settlement of a large number of Armenians in New Julfa that coincided with the coming of the European companies in India. The arrival of the Europeans opened up various possibilities for the Armenians. Consequently, Armenian trade, based to a great extent on various forms of community-based network and partnership, was not exclusive in nature. In their social life too Armenians formed part of the pluralistic Christian community in India. Les donnes historiques suggrent lexistence en Inde dun petit nombre dArmniens depuis le XVI e sicle. A partir de larrive des Portugais cette poque, les Europens ont dvelopp les changes avec lAsie et en ont pntr de plus en plus le commerce intrieur. Les contacts des Armniens avec lInde ont connu une rapide expansion la suite de ltablissement dun nombre important dentre eux New Julfa, dans la mouvance de larrive des compagnies europennes qui leur offraient des possibilits varies. De ce fait, le commerce armnien, largement fond sur diverses formes de rseaux et de partenariats internes leur communaut, ntait pas de nature exclusive . Dans leur vie sociale, aussi, les Armniens taient partie prenante de la communaut chrtienne indienne, pluraliste. Keywords: Armenian commercial network, Asian trade, Armenian-European relationship, Armenians in India, commerce in India in the 17th and 18th centuries
* Bhaswati Bhattacharya, International Institute of Asian Studies, Leiden, Netherlands, [email protected] Research for this paper was carried out with a grant from the Indian Council of Historical Research in New Delhi. I would like to thank Gautam Bhadra for the encouragement and advice I received in connection with the research. I have beneted from conversations with Basudeb Chattopadhyay, Bhaskar Chakraborti, and Suranjan Das. Fr. Boghos Levon Zekiyan has been a source of inspiration. The paper was presented in a different form to the International Institute of Asian Studies Workshop on Country Trade and Empire in the Arabian Seas, 17th-18th century, Leiden, 9-10 October 2003. Shushanik Khachikian, Ina Baghdiantz-Mccabe and Sebouh Aslanian have helped in solving many puzzles. I would like to thank them Rene Barendse and Ren Bekius and the two anonymous experts of this journal for their comments on the paper.
Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2005 Also available online www.brill.nl JESHO 48,2
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The lively description of Oriental commerce and the prot accruing from it has enriched the genre of travel literature perhaps since the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea. In the aftermath of the discovery of the direct sea-route to the Indian Ocean, trafc in the region increased from the sixteenth century onwards. An increasing wealth of information on the port-to-port trade in Asia ooded in, inviting more and more adventurers seeking the blessings of Mammon in the wild waters of the East. Though it is not possible to pinpoint exactly when Armenians, specialised in the overland trade between Eurasia and Europe, entered the circuit of intra-Asian trade,1 European documents from the sixteenth century onwards mention the Armenians as actively participating inin addition to the Europe tradevarious branches of inter-Asian trade, better known as country trade. By the seventeenth century, Armenians were well established in all important centres of trade in Europe and Asia. As merchants buying and selling in the same markets and trading in the same commodities, Europeans in the capacity of the East India Companies and private merchants were their competitors. The contempt often expressed in European travel accounts against Armenian merchants as an ubiquitous evil reects the underlying concern of rivals in the same trade.2 Yet, as part of the pluralistic society of merchants (among people of other professions) that characterised the Asian market towns and ports in the early modern period, they shared the same lot. When the Portuguese arrived in the East in the sixteenth century, the other factor they shared with the Armenians was faith: Christianity. All this makes it interesting to see how Armenians and Europeans interacted with each other in Asian waters. In her recent study on the role of the Armenian merchants of Julfa in Persia and India, Baghdiantz Mccabe has suggested that in Persia, where a large number of Armenians were to be found outside of Armenia, Armenians did not co-operate with the Europeans. She does admit, that Armenians in India operating in individual capacity co-operated with the English in the eighteenth century, but adds that
Mesrovb Seth noted that already in the early part of the Christian era the Armenians had a settlement in Benares. Armenians in India: From the Earliest Times to the Present Day, London, 1897, 22. A recent work maintains that Armenians were engaged in maritime trade with India since the beginning of the sixteenth century. See V. Baibourtian, International Trade and the Armenian Merchants in the Seventeenth Century (Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 2004): 198. 2 See e.g. Tavernier, wherever the Armenians see that money is to be made they have no scruple about supplying materials for the purposes of idolatry. . . ., Taverniers Travels in India, Tr. from French by V. Ball, 2 vols. London, 1889, vol. 1, 261; cf. a people in themselves despicable. . . . [the Armenians] are likewise educated in all the servilities of Asia, and understanding how to accommodate themselves to indignities, which the genius of a free nation will hardly submit to. . . . J. Hanway, An Historical account of the British Trade over the Caspian Sea, 4 vols. (London: 1753), vol. 2: 31.
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until the English gained political power after the conquest of Bengal, Armenian associations were with Indian merchants and nawabs.3 This essay will try to trace the relationship between Armenians and Europeans in India from the sixteenth century till the late eighteenth century. Armenians were already present in India in the sixteenth century as traders, and it is not entirely impossible that a few religious personalities travelled over land to India. The arrival of the Europeans opened up new possibilities for the Armenians in India. With their unique position as one of the few Asian communities able to link up the European and Asian worlds of trade through a community based network that promoted both trade and intelligence, Armenians used these possibilities to maximize their prot. ORGANIZING THE TRADE Before delving into the actual relationship, an attempt will be made rst to briey compare the conditions under which Armenians and Europeans operated in India. Baghdiantz Mccabe has maintained that the Armenian merchants of New Julfa were member-participants in a company of merchants that ran along the pattern represented by the European East India Companies. The richest merchants of Julfa were the directors of this company. They invested capital at home and ruled the commercial affairs of fellow Armenians abroad by taking responsibility for their unpaid debts, and by pronouncing judgement in litigations.4 Since most of the Armenian merchants in Indiaat least for the greater part of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as we shall see belowwere either representatives or partners, or both, of Armenian merchants based in Persia, it would be interesting to see if the organization of trade by Armenians in the former country reected the same in the latter. There is a plethora of literature on the East India Companies, representing a form of trading organisation with certain characteristics quite unique in the seventeenth century. Niels Steensgaard in particular contrasted the company presence in the seventeenth century as a productive enterprise with the Portuguese enterprise in the sixteenth century, which he termed as violent and redistributive.5 It is not my intention here to go into the details of how the East India
3 Ina Baghdiantz Mccabe, Shahs silk for Europes silver: the Eurasian Trade of the Julfa Armenians in Safavid Iran and India, 1530-1750 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999), 344-45. 4 Ibid., ch. VIII, esp. 244-245. 5 Niels Steensgaard, The Dutch East India Company as an institutional innovation, in Dutch Capitalism and World Capitalism, ed. M. Aymard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 235-57; also his Asian Trade Revolution in the Seventeenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), passim.
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Companies were organized or how they functioned. I shall only point to the major characteristics of the company trade and those of the Armenian trade. Historians have written at length on the dual nature of the Companies; they enjoyed certain semi-sovereign rights abroad and a national monopoly at home delegated to them as a corporation by the government.6 The charter granted by Queen Elizabeth secured for the English East India Company exclusive privileges of trade with the countries beyond the Cape of Good Hope and the Straits of Magellan for fteen years.7 It has been suggested that the Companies were the rst forms of the multi-national corporations we see today. Though a large part of the Companys capital came from the investment made by merchants who were directly engaged in selling the commodities at home or re-exporting to other countries, a number of private citizens also delegated to the Company the right to dispose of parts of their property.8 The bulk of the working capital of the English East India Company for example, consisted of capital borrowed in London on short-term through the issue of quarterly and half-yearly bonds at xed rates of interest. As a joint stock company trading with both equity and debenture type capital, the Companies represented a category of business organization in which management of capital was partially separated from its ownership. With their elaborate procedure of government reected in the bureaucratic apparatus including the courts of law, the Companies were like a state within the state.9 By the beginning of the eighteenth century, whether it was Batavia, Madras or Calcutta, the semi-sovereign character of the European settlements yielding some revenue was clear. The privileges obtained from local sovereigns gave their trade a special status unknown to Asian merchants. The other feature that distinguished European trade from the existing pattern of trade in the Indian Ocean was the attempt to monopolize trade in certain commodities and over several routes. Although royal monopolies were not previously unknown, the way the Portuguese claimed their monopoly on pepper and the Dutch on spices, was new. An attempt was made to enforce this monopoly by the use of force. So, political power went side by side with armed
6 Niels Steensgaard, The Companies as a specic institution in the history of European expansion in Companies and Trade: Essays on Overseas Trading Companies during the Ancien Rgime, ed. L. Bluss and F. S. Gaastra (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 1981): 245264. According to Steensgaard the companies, with their new form of organization, revolutionized the trade in Asia. See his Asian Trade Revolution. 7 K. N. Chaudhuri, The English East India Company: the study of an early Joint-Stock Company, 1600-1640, London, (London: Cass, 1965): 28. In the case of the Dutch Verenigde Oost Indische Compagnie (henceforth V.O.C.) this monopoly was for 21 years. 8 Niels Steensgaard, The Companies as a specic institution. . . ., 247. 9 K. N. Chaudhuri, The English East India Company . . . ch. 2.
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force. All of the independent territorial bases the Europeans possessed in Asia were fortied. Though the Mughal historian Kha Khan praised the Portuguese for leaving shipping in the Indian Ocean at peace (provided the latter bought the pass or cartaz), it was precisely that nation that started using force systematically against Asian shipping. This legacy was continued by the East India Companies. Not only were the Companies able to extract special privileges from the sovereigns, the privileges were backed up by the threat of the use of force. Competitive trading in the markets of Europe combined with a fortied territorial presence in Asia provided the East India Companies with a sense of purpose and institutional cohesion.10 It should be remembered that armed trade was, after all, one of the main reasons for dispute between Siraj-uddaula, the nawab of Bengal and the English in the middle of the eighteenth century. In his letters to the Armenian merchant Khoja Wajid, the nawab mentioned that the Armenians, also foreigners in Bengal, had not built any fort and traded under the protection of the Mughal government. Why should the Europeansthe English in particularinsist on fortications?11 So far, the best analysis of the organization and structure of Armenian trade is to be found in the works of Shushanik Khachikian, who, in her study on the Julfa Armenians in Russia, shows that Armenians did not have European type companies.12 In addition, Edmund Herzig has made an important contribution toward the understanding of the commercial organisation of the Armenian merchants of New Julfa in his thesis and articles.13 Baghdiantz Mccabe herself offers an excellent account of the career of Marcara. Rene Bekiuss research on the textile trade of the Armenians touches upon their trade in Persia.14 Neither
K. N. Chaudhuri, The Engish East India Company in the 17th and 18th centuries: a pre-modern Multi-national Organization in Bluss, L. and F. S. Gaastra ed. Companies and Trade, 29-46. 11 Bengal in 1756-57. A selection of public and private papers dealing with the affairs of the British in Bengal during the reign of Siraj-uddaula ed. With notes and an historical introd. By S. C. Hill, 3 vols. (London: John Murray, 1905) vol. 1: 3-5; also Robert Orme, A History of the Military Transactions of the British Nation in Indostan, (henceforth Military Transactions) 2 vols. (London, 1775-77) vol. 2: 58. 12 The Armenian Trade of New Julfa and its commercial-economic ties with Russia during the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries, Yerevan, 1988 (in Armenian). Edmund Herzig (see note below) and Ina Baghdiantz Mccabe refer to her work in detail. I have communicated with Khachikian who kindly conrmed her position through e-mail, 21 September, 2003. 13 The Armenian Merchants of New Julfa, Isfahan: a Study in Pre-Modern Asian Trade, D. Phil. Thesis, Oxford, 1991; also The family rm in the commercial organisation of the Julfa Armenians, in Etudes Safavides, ed. J. Calmard, (Paris Teheran: Institut Franais de recherche en Iran, 1993), 287-303. 14 Armenian merchants in the Textile Trade in the 17th and 18th centuries: a Global Enterprise (unpublished) paper presented at the Conference Carpets and textiles in the
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Herzig nor Bekius subcribes to the thesis that Julfa Armenians conducted trade as a centrally organized company. Most of the Armenians trading in India were from Persia, where they had long been living.15 The Safavi Emperor Shah Abbas deported a large number of Armenians to New Julfa from the commercial town in Armenia bearing the same name in the early years of the seventeenth century.16 It was a conscious attempt on the part of Shah Abbas, who was aware of the expertise of the Armenians in trans-continental commerce, to settle them in the outskirts of Isfahan. During the following two centuries the Armenians would traverse the Indian Ocean and sail up to the coast of China. Mathee and Baibourtian have pointed to the symbiotic relationship between the Safavid state and the Armenian merchants of Irana relationship in which the court granted those merchants a favoured status in return for certain commodities, revenue and information.17 But that notwithstanding, Armenian merchants were not backed by any national monopoly that would empower them to represent Persia in India, for example. In India they traded at the market places and ports side by side with the Indians, Jews, Persians and Turks among others, and were dependent on the favours they received from the Mughals in Delhi and their representatives in the provinces. Consequently, for the Indian merchant at an Indian port, an Armenian merchant was more like himself than the western European who could point to his company, the factory and the fort belonging to his nation and use these symbols either as carrot or as stick as the situation would permit. No one could, however, stop the Armenians from referring to, and using their connections back in Persia and Europe. This connection, including knowledge of Persian, often gave them an edge over others in that they had easy access to the Mughal court. Secondly, though Baghdiantz Mccabe has suggested that there was a company of Armenian merchants in New Julfa directing the Armenian commerce worldwide, she has not given any evidence and has drawn on the work of Khachikian who does not claim there was an East India Company type association of the Julfa Armenians.18
Iranian World, 1400-1700, organised by the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and the Iran Heritage Foundation, 30-31 August, 2003, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. 15 Armenians lived in Persia since pre-Christian times. See David Marshall Lang, The Armenians: A People in Exile (London: Allen & Unwin, 1981): 81. 16 On the deportation of the Armenians see E. M. Herzig, The deportation of the Armenians in 1604-1605 and Europes myth of Shah Abbas 1, Pembroke Papers 1, (1990), 59-71. 17 R. P. Matthee, The Politics of Trade in Safavid Iran: Silk for Silver, 1600-1730 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 73-74; V. Baibourtian, International Trade . . ., 203. 18 Ina Baghdiantz Mccabe, Shahs silk. . . .
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So far as Armenian trade in India and the Indian Ocean was concerned, there seems to have been no European-type chartered joint-stock Armenian company. Herzig, for example, has shown that family rms with extended patriarchal household as the basis of business organization were a major organ of this trade.19 Organizing commerce on the basis of family connections has been common in pre-modern societies in Europe and Asia. Braudel noted that the family offered the most natural and sought after solution for commercial networks.20 Baghdiantz Mccabe herself admits that family was the basic unit and the preferred system of Armenian merchant associations.21 In the seventeenth century, John Fryer left a description of the trading method of the Armenians:
The Armenians being skilled in all the intricacies of trade at home, and travelling with these into the remotest kingdoms, become by their own industry, and by being factors of their own kindreds honesty, the wealthiest men. . . .22
This is the organizing principle still followed in many modern Indian industrial rms.23 However, if the family rm provided the basics of the business organization, the other system that was part and parcel of the development of the long distance nancial and trading networks of the Armenians was the sending out of factors or agents, often family members. A description of this system was also provided by Fryer:
they [the Armenians] enter the theatre of commerce by means of some benefactor, whose money they adventure upon, and on return, a quarter part of the gain is their own: from such beginnings do they raise sometimes great fortunes for themselves and Masters.24
E. M. Herzig, The family rm also, Baghdiantz Mccabe, Shahs silk . . . F. Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, vol. 2, The Wheels of Commerce, Trans. S. Reynolds, (London: Harper & Row, 1982): 150. The Tamil Muslim merchants of the Coromandel coast known as Marakkayars organised their trade on the basis of extended kinship. See S. Arasaratnam, Merchants, companies and commerce on the Coromandel coast, 1650-1740, Delhi, 1986 passim and B. Bhattacharya, The Chulia merchants of southern Coromandel in the eighteenth century: a case for continuity, in Commerce and culture in the Bay of Bengal, 1500-1800, ed. O. Prakash and D. Lombard (Delhi: Manohar, 1999), 285-305. 21 Shahs silk: 245-250. 22 A New Account of East India and Persia, being nine years travels, 1672-1681; edited with notes and an introd. by William Crooke, 3 vols. (London: the Hakluyt Society, 190915), 249. 23 After the demise of Dhirubhai Ambani of the Reliance Industries recently, the eldest son Mukesh Ambani took over the charge of the business. Cf. the Ahmedabad industrialist Kasturbhai Lalbhai created companies for his nephews; see Claude Markovits, The Tata paradox, in Institutions and Economic Change in South Asia, ed. Burton Stein and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996), 237-248. 24 A New Account of East India, 249.
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This kind of partnership was prevalent among different merchant communities of South Asia in different forms. The shah-gumastha partnership existing among the Sindhi merchants of Shikarpur, under which a small group of sahukars and sarrafs controlled nancial and commercial transactions over a vast area encompassing Khorassan and Turkestan, was a variant of this system.25 The most popular type of partnership prevalent among the Armenians of New Julfa was the commenda contract, incorporating features of partnership, loan, and in few cases, employment.26 A classic account of this system as it existed among the Armenians was left by Hovannes of Julfa in the pages of his ledger book.27 Though such detailed accounts are available mostly in Armenian documents, the English records of the Fort St. George amply testify to the existence of the system until the end of the eighteenth century. Khoja Zachary di Avetik of Isfahan came to Madras from Amsterdam in 1714. One of the principal merchants Zachary represented was his father, Khoja Avetik of Isfahan.28 At the time Zachary wrote his will, his wife Azis was in Isfahan. He had three sons: Hovannes, Gregory, and Avetik. By the time he came to Madras, Zachary must have been well established in the trade to Europe. In Amsterdam, he seems to have had transactions with Sarhad, a merchant from New Julfa who
25 Claude Markovitz, The Global World of Indian Merchants, 1750-1947: Traders of Sind from Bukhara to Panama, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), ch. 5. 26 Edmund Herzig, The Armenian Merchants of New Julfa, Isfahan: a study in pre-modern Asian trade. Ph.D. thesis, St. Antonys College, University of Oxford, 1991, ch. 3 offers a detailed account of the different kinds of partnership known among the Armenians and how these worked. These were commenda partnership, true partnership, commission agency and representation. The commenda contracts were basically of two types: unilateral, where the whole capital was provided by the investor (sleeping partner) and active partner or agent invested the labour, and bilateral, where a part of the capital invested came from the active partner. 27 L. Khachikian, The ledger of the Merchant Hovannes Joughayetsi, Journal of the Asiatic Society, 8, no. 3, (1966), 153-86. This ledger book has been edited in Armenian recently by L. Khachikian and H. Papazian. 28 Shushanik Khachikian suggested that Khoja Avetik, referred to as master in the will was most probably the father of Zachary de Avetik, e-mail, September 21, 2003. De or di in Armenian names are abbreviation of the word vordi meaning son. Zachary di Avetik, in this sense, means Zachary the son of Avetik. I am grateful to Sebouh Aslanian for this clarication. For reference to Khoja Avetik Kalantar as brother of Aga Piri see See Vahe Baladouni, and Margaret Makepeace ed. Armenian merchants of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries: English East India Company sources, (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1998) (henceforth Armenian Merchants), no. 237; and Aga Piri as the son of Khoja Panous, ibid. nos. 146, 175, 182. This volume offers a unique collection of documents on Armenian merchants and their relationship with the English East India Company. It is also possible that our Avetik was another person, known as Avetik di Petros, operating in Amsterdam in the late 1690s. For Avetik di Petros see R. Bekius, Armenian merchants in the textile trade.
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traded with Russia and Holland.29 Already in 1697 we nd Zachary shipping glass-ware and broad cloth on English Company ships.30 He was one of those merchants who travelled between different places in Europe, Siraz, Gombroon, Isfahan, Madras and Pegu. In 1718 he replaced Khoja Simon as the Armenian alderman of the Madras municipality and was known to have owned the ships Bon Voyage and Silliman, sailing to Pegu, among other places.31 He represented at least another merchant of Isfahan, Khoja Tarkon [?Tarkhan].32 In lieu of a factorage bond worth 300 tomands, his master [in Isfahan] issued two bills of exchange, one worth 150 tomands on Zachary di Avetik in India and the other of similar value on [?his son] Khoja Avetik in Europe. Zachary traded on multiple accounts. Apart from the account together with his master Khoja Avetik, he had three other large accounts with Gregory de Agazar, Ma[natsa]gan di Aga Piri and Issa Gully di Avateek Shaudullah, who were also, like Zachary himself, factors of other principal merchants.33 Since 1714, he had a partnership account with Macartoon Yanhoopa (the second part does not resemble Armenian names), another factor of Khoja Avetik.34 Zachary seems to have had an agent called Beethan in Gombroon. He had four other accounts runningtwo of these were partnership accounts between himself, his masters [not named] and Avid de Zeany and two other between Macartoon Yanhoopa, Khoja Zachary and the latters master [?Khoja Avetik]. Zachary had two more accounts with the prominent Bengal/Madras merchant Khoja Nazar Jacob Jan. One of these accounts
29 Shushanik Khachikian informed the author that the Armenian Sarhad trading in Russia had transactions with a Zachar, who was however, not known as a khoja. E-mails to the author, 23 September, 2003 and 1 February, 2004. 30 Armenian Merchants, no. 241. 31 Records of Fort St. George (henceforth RFSG), Diary and Consultation Book, 1718: 56, 171 and 1719: 93 and 120. 32 Was he a grandson of Khoja Minas? See Edmund Herzig, The Armenian Merchants, The family tree of Khoja Minasean family p. 451. Zachary does not mention Tarkhan as his master but mentions that the latter, when he visited India, handed Gregory (son of Zachery) a full discharge for 300 tomands, Tamil Nadu Archives, (henceforth TNA), Records of the Mayors Court, Copy of Wills, Probates, etc. vol. 1: The Last Will and Testament of Zachary De Avateek, dated 10 September, 1736, henceforth the last will of Zachary. 33 It is very much likely that this Issa Gully was the same person as the Armenian Issa Coolly/Coollyan at the Mughal court, Armenian Merchants . . . nos. 141, 169, 231. He was related to Khoja Zachary and replaced him as the Armenian alderman when Zachary left for Pegu. See RFSG, Diary and Consultation Book, 1719: 177. Issa Cooly was noted by the Dutch at Surat as a person friendly with the Mughal ofcial Salabat Khan, see Nationaal Archief, the Hague (henceforth N.A.), Dag Register Surat, 14 June 1685, V.O.C. 1409, (lm 1035) f.1599v. Similarly, Magan di Aga Piri was a son of Aga Piri Kalantar of Surat and Madras (see more on him below). 34 English East India Company sources refer to one Persia de Marketon freighting goods on the company ships, Armenian Merchants, documents 241, 249, 253.
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was part of Zacharys account with his masters [not named]. In the other account Zachary, together with his sons, seems to have acted as factor of Khoja Nazar Jacob Jan, as the latter possessed a factorage bond worth Rs. 24,000 in the name of Zachary and his sons.35 Was Zacharys father (Avetik) a son of the famous Armenian Khoja Panous Kalantar, the very inuential merchant of New Julfa and London in the second half of the seventeenth century?36 Though there is no direct evidence connecting the two Avetiks, it is evident that the widespread network of transactions Zachary mentioned in his will was facilitated by the connections established over more than one generation.37 Moreover, it appears that the number of Armenian families involved in the Euro-Asian trade in the Companys bottoms at the end of the seventeenth century was limited.38 Zachary had a partnership contract with Ma[natsa]gan, a son of Aga Piri (son of Khoja Panous)39 and was member of a family rm consisting of three generations operating simultaneously from different parts of the globe. He was part of a wide-ranging network of commercial transactions in which the interests of his principals (including his father), their other factors, his own interests as well as those of his sons were intertwined in an extremely intricate cris-cross pattern of partnership. Unfortunately, the will does not specify the type of partnerships Zachary had with all these different partners. In another case in 1732, Khoja Sarkies di Agavelly and Khoja Gregory of Fort St. George had Khoja Simon as
The last will of Zachary. In 1688 he signed a contract with the directors of the English East India Company in London on behalf of the Armenian merchants of New Julfa. See Armenian Merchants, no. 112 for the text of this agreement. For a lively discussion on the agreement see M. J. Seth, Armenians in India: From the Earliest Times to the Present Daya work of Original Research (Delhi: Oxford etc., 1937), 231-44. All further references to this work are from this edition. Also, R. Ferrier, The agreement of the EIC with the Armenian Nation. 37 Armenian Merchants, refers to two Avetiksone without (documents 62, 74, 77) and one with the title kalantar (documents 153, 179, 183, 188-89 and passim)though indexed together under one name Coja Aveatick Calendar p. 281. Though the term Calandar, alternately Calendar, or Callenter is treated in European records as surname, it referred to kalantar (alderman or mayor), a city ofcial appointed by central government in Iran. 38 Ibid. documents 261 and 262 for example. 39 Aga Piri was active in Surat during the 1690s. When his father was returning from London to Julfa in 1692, the English expected Aga Piri or some other member of the family to go to London in order to look after his business. Armenian Merchants, no. 146. He was a well known Armenian inhabitant of Surat and broker for the Dutch East India Company. 52250 lb. of indigo was purchased by De Keyser at Agra through the broker Aga Piri for f.79662. Generale Missiven v.5 1686-97, ed., W. Ph. Coolhaas (s Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1975): 770. Aga Piri settled in Madras somewhere at the turn of the century. Later he became the Armenian Alderman of the Mayors Court at Fort St. George. Armenian Merchants, no. 264.
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their factor in Pegu.40 Again, Khoja Thaddeus Aga Piri & co. Brothers, a merchant rm of Fort St. George appointed Khoja Aveat their factor at Pegu. Upon accepting the factorship, Aveat signed a factorage bond with the said rm valid for ve years and set out for Pegu with a sum of Pagodas 2,750, Principal sum advanced by the Aga Piri brothers to be employed in their interest. At Pegu he worked together with one Petrus. During his stay in Pegu, Aveat received several consignments from the Aga Piri brothers amounting to more than Pagodas 17,000.41 In a distinct case of commenda partnership, Khoja Cachick Khojamal, when he set out from Isfahan in May 1740, received from Khoja Nazar di Abid Aga the sum of 320 tomands on the condition that out of the prot made, 220 parts together with the principal sum would go to Khoja Nazar while 100 part of the prot would be Khojamals. On his arrival at Madras in September 1740, Khojamal was employed by the famous Khoja Petrus Woskan who advanced him Rs. 18,000. Khojamal particularly mentioned in his testament that the two accounts were entirely separate and should not be mixed up. He had another account with his nephew Marcar di Sattoor, and here the prot was to be equally divided between the two partners.42 The references we come across to Armenian trade in Persia and India, in the wills and testaments of Armenian merchants suggests that the organization of Armenian trade was left to individual initiatives. Partnership among these individuals in different capacities was indeed a salient feature of this trade. This was, however, far from the formal superstructure represented by the East India Companies, whose structure, size and scale made the nature of commercial operations impersonal.43 Armenian merchants in the Indian Ocean were rather like the multitude of other Asian merchants engaged in networks of private trade, based on personal networks of extended kinship and the pursuit of similar goals. The Companies with their modern structure co-existed with this pre-modern structure of trade, but the basic differences are clear. The reliance on the ethno-religious community provided the Armenians of New Julfa with a network that spanned at least half the globe. The network of the Armenian merchants indeed reected a structure, as dened by Markovits,
40 RFSG, Pleadings in the Mayors Court 1731-32, 75. Khoja Simon acted as the Pegu agent of other Armenians and sailed as nakhuda on ships sailing between Madras and Pegu. 41 RFSG, Pleadings in the Mayors Court, 1737, 8-9. 42 Calcutta High Court, Old Will no. 224, The last will and testament of Coja Catchick Cojamaul deceased, 17 November, 1755. 43 There were of course informal connections behind this formal structure of the companies; and the informal networks formed by the representatives of these formal companies in their private capacity were crucial for country trade.
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facilitating a continuous circulation of capital, credit, goods, information and human resources.44 Almost any ship sailing between two ports in Asia, or leaving an Asian port for a destination in Europe could be used for sending agents, or consignments, or both. In addition to caravans, pattamars or messengers were used for sending messages overland. Through a multitude of partners and agents, or representatives of agents, or even the kin of acquaintances working at different levels, in some or other way related to the community, the consignmentno matter if it contained an important message related to business or family, a couple of bills of exchange or promissory notes, a parcel containing cash or a few precious stones, a copy of a contract, a few bales of cloth was bound to reach the destination. As the Julfa dialect (Armenian, with many Persian loan words) was the medium of all commercial transactions, there was no possibility of disclosure of a confendential information. In 1711 the governor and council of Fort St. George wanted to buy up the new companys debt to Masulipatnam merchants amounting to Pagodas 80,000. The merchants of Masulipatnam must have sought assistance of Armenians in soliciting the Companys favour in London. When the separate stock ship Windsor arrived in Madras in 1713, rumour had it that the Armenians had received advice that the directors of the Company had ordered the Fort St. George Council to discharge that debt fully. Initially the council did not take notice of this rumour. But to their dismay, after the arrival of the ship King William, Aga Piri Kalantar, then residing in Madras, produced an original letter to Khoja Babur di Sultan [Piris agent in London] dated January 29, 1712. The letter acquainted him, by order of the Court of Directors, that the council of Fort St. George had been directed to satisfy the merchants demands on the New Company as far as these were just.45 The news of the Anglo-French War starting in Europe in 1756 reached the Armenian Khoja Wajid in Bengal through his kothi in Surat.46 From the seventeenth century onwards centres in IndiaSurat, Bombay, Madras and Calcutta in particularseem to have come up as places where Armenian capital was concentrated. Wealthy Armenian merchants of such ports had agents at places like Pegu, and Manila. One is struck by the continuous circulation of even the leading members of the community. We have noted the case of Zachary above. Khoja Petrus Woscan left New Julfa at for Madras in 1705 when he was about twenty-ve years of age. It is not known exactly when he
Claude Markovitz, The Global World of Indian Merchants, 25. RFSG, Despatches to England, v.3, 1711-14, 133. Khoja Babur di Sultan seems to have functioned as the London agent of other Armenians too. See Armenian Merchants, nos. 261, 262. It must have been Aga Piri who referred the case to Babur. who got the order issued. 46 S. C. Hill, Bengal in 1756-57, vol. 2, no. 144.
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sailed for Manila where he spent about twenty years. It is clear from his testament that the beginnings of his fortunes were made in Manila. He came back to Coromandel in 1722 when he settled down permanently at Madras. He never went back to New Julfa, but recovered his ancestral property in that town, that had been mortgaged to others. Though the overseas transactions of his network stretching from Constantinople to Manila were made mostly through his agents and their partners, he travelled frequently between Madras, Pulicat, Masulipatnam and Pondicherry in connection with his trade and was kept informed about the transactions of his agents through other itinerant members of the community.47 Armenian aldermen of Madras often left for Pegu, no doubt in connection with their business. While someone else from his family or community would take over the absentees duties, he would take care of the commercial transactions of his compatriots in Pegu. The exible and unassuming character of the members of their network, willing to take up almost any role that suited the occasion, offered Armenians the potential to exploit the existing and newly opened channels of commerce and communication to the maximum. ARMENIANS AND THE MILIEU OF THE INDIAN TRADING WORLD As noted above, the Arabian Seas especially provided the major thoroughfare in transcontinental commerce, in addition and to the overland route, since very ancient times. Even before the rise of Islam that led to the expansion of commerce along the Indian Ocean littoral, Arabs, Syrian Christians and Persians had traded and settled at Indian ports. While ports like Cambay, Mangalore, Calicut, Cochin and Quilon housed merchants of international communities, both overland and overseas trade connected India with the world outside. Prior to the seventeenth century, Armenians coming to India seem to have used the overland route to a greater extent than the overseas route. Babur, the founder of the Mughal empire already noted the importance of Kabul and Kandahar in the overland route to India.48 At least since the close of the sixteenth century onwards, Safavid Iran, Uzbek Turan, and Mughal India provided a broadly similar commercial and liguistic environment, with Persian as the most widely used language for administrative and cultural purposes.49 In the
47 TNA, Records of the Mayors Court, Copies of wills, probates etc. vol. 5, ff.212-311: the last will and testament of Coja Petrus Uscan (henceforth, the last will of Petrus Uscan). See my work on the Armenian merchants of Madras (under preparation). 48 Babur-Nama: (Memoirs of Babur), tr. from the original Turkish text by Annette Susannah Beveridge (rep. Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint, 1970): 202. 49 S. F. Dale, Indian Merchants and Eurasian Trade, 1600-1750 (First Indian edition, 1994), 7-13.
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same way as Indian Sindhi rms and Hindu merchants operating in this route spread to Kandahar, Bukhara, Isfahan and beyond, Armenian, Persian, Turkish, and other merchants followed this caravan route to different market and production centres in north and northwest India.50 Except for short segments, the major route from Kabul to Agra underwent few modications since the close of the sixteenth century, testifying to relatively stable urban setting.51 Indian rural economy, with its commercial production, was very much geared to an integrated pattern of trade through networks of mandis and qasbas stretching from Lahore, Multan, and Sind on the west to Assam and Bengal in the east, connected through road and river routes.52 In the early seventeenth century, Lahore was a principal commercial centre of India, attracting commodities from far and near brought by merchants of all the nationalities mentioned above. It has been suggested, that in the pre-Mughal period, most of the Armenians coming to India were travelling merchants who came here for business and returned to their own country each year.53 But considering the distance and the nature of the overland or caravan trade, it seems unlikely that one year was enough to travel all the way from Eurasia or western Asiawherever these merchants came fromto carry out such business and return.54 Moreover, as many of these itinerant traders traded in multiple (relatively small) accounts, it would take a few years to accumulate some prot from all the accounts. The description provided by the ledger book of Khoja Hovannes in the late seventeenth century can again be taken as examplary: one set out on a journey that covered several years during which the traveller-cum-trader invested his masters
50 For the Sindhi diaspora see C. Markovitz, The Global World of Indian Merchants and Scott C. Levi, The Indian Diaspora in Central Asia and its Trade, 1550-1900 (Leiden: Brill, 2002); for Armenians taking this route see J. Russell, Two Armenian grafties from Zirat, Pakistan, Revue Etude Armeninnes (1988-89), XVI, 471-75. 51 Jean Deloche, Transport and Communications in India prior to Steam Locomotion, 2 vols., tr. From the French by James Walker, Delhi, 1993-94, v.1, 34. 52 B. R. Grover, An Integrated Pattern of Commercial Life in the Rural Society of North India during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Money and Market in India, 11001700, ed. S. Subrahmanyam (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994): 219-255. 53 S. Neill, A History of Christianity in India, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984-85), vol. 1: The Beginnings to A. D. 1707, 384. Neills information here is based on the account left by the eighteenth century Armenian merchant-cum-historian Thomas Khojamall. According to M. J. Seth, however, Khojamalls account is not reliable. See his Armenians in India especially 15-21. 54 A journey from Surat to Agra took 86 days. See R. J. Barendse, The Arabian Seas, 158; a journey from Goa to Lahore via Daman and Cambay (up to Cambay by ship), which usually took two months, could easily take as long as six months. P. du Jarric, Akbar and the Jesuits. An account of the Jesuit Missions to the Court of Akbar, tr. with introduction and notes by C. H. Payne (London: Routledge & Sons, 1926): 52-59.
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(partner)s as well as his own capital; made new acquaintances and renewed the old ones; carried goods from one place to another for sale and noted the demand for new ones. In the end, the ones lucky enough to survive the odds of the weather and the roads, and to make enough prot to settle the accounts with the master, went back. During the intermittent period the trader had to live at different places along the route. At the beginning of the sixteenth century we nd Armenians, together with Arabs, Parsees, and Turks, sailing from Cambay as part of the four Gujarati ships annually leaving that port for Melaka where many of them stayed back.55 In the course of the sixteenth century, Armenians were to be found at different places in India and at least a few Armenian settlements seem to have been there. Portuguese missionaries in the early sixteenth century noted that in matters of faith, the Christians of St. Thomas in Coromandel gave hearing to
none except their bishops, who come from Armenia, because with the people of this country, no one can succeed but these bishops.56
At Pulicat, Portuguese merchants coming from Melaka stayed with Armenian Christians. It was at the invitation of Coja Escandel (?Iskandar), among other Armenians, that Diogo Fernandes and Bastio Fernandes made the pilgrimage to the house of the Apostle St. Thomas at St. Thome in 1517.57 Akbars farman to the Jesuit Provincial at Goa asking the latter to send him learned priests capable of informing the emperor about Christianity was carried by the ambassador Abdallah and Dominic or Domingo Pires, an Armenian Christian.58 Pires accompanied both the rst and the third Jesuit missions to the Mughal court as interpreter.59 Though it is not clear if Akbar met the parents of Mirza Zulqarnain,
55 Tome Pires, The Suma Oriental, 2 vols. (London: the Hakluyt Society, 1944), vol. 1:46, v.2:268-69. 56 G. M. Moraes, A History of Christianity in India: from Early Times to St. Francis Xavier, A.D. 52-1542 (Bombay: Manaktalas, 1964): 226. Moraes was not sure if these Christians were Armenians or Syrians. It is true that early Portuguese sources referred to all Eastern Christians as Armenians. See E. Maclagan, The Jesuits and the Great Mogul (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne, 1932): 271 and S. Neill, A History of Christianity: 466 fn. Armenians were elsewhere in India and also engaged in the overseas trade to Southeast Asia, but it is possible that the Christian priests the Portuguese came across in Coromandel were Syrians. 57 A. Mathias Mundadan, History of Christianity in India, vol. 1: From the Beginning up to the middle of the Sixteenth century (up to 1542) (Bangalore: Theological Publications in India, 1984): 407. 58 M. J. Seth suggested that this Portuguese name was perhaps assumed by the person for strategic purposes. 59 E. Maclagan, The Jesuits and the Great Mogul: 24, 39, 41, 196; S. Neill, A History of Christianity in India . . . vol. 1: 170.
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the well-known Armenian Catholic with close contact with the Jesuit fathers at Agra or somewhere in Kashmir, it is clear that they were living in (Mughal) India where both Zulqarnain and his brother were born.60 The brief account of the merchant pilgrim Khwaja Martyrose in Seths work reminds us of a Su saint.61 Though we have such accounts of Armenians in different parts of the country in the sixteenth century, it is, however, difcult to accept Hewsens position that there were large settlements of Armenians already at Agra (by 1562), Surat (by 1579) and Calcutta (by 1630).62 At the beginning of the seventeenth century the Jesuit Fr. Emmanuel Pinheiro at Lahore came across the books and a copy of the Gospels being carried by an Armenian merchant from Jerusalem for the Emperor Akbar. Travelling overland from Ormuz, the Armenian had breathed his last near Lahore.63 The mission of the lay brother Benedict Goes to China sent by Fr. Jerome Xavier from Lahore in 1603 was accompanied by the Armenian Isaac, who remained with Goes till the end.64 At this stage of settlement, Armenians living in India were
See below for more on Mirza Zulqarnain. M. J. Seth, Armenians in India: 102-7. On pp. 22-23 he gives the names of seven Armenian priests who died at Agra between 1614 and 1675. 62 Robert. H. Hewsen, Armenia: A Historical Atlas (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001). As far as South Asia is concerned, Hewsens atlas is a bit confusing because the symbols explained on p. xvii point to the size of the place (e.g. village, small town and city) but refer to the size of the community on the map (p. 160). Hewsen bases himself on Mesrobv Seths work. Except for two tombstones from 1557 and 1560, the rest of the tombstones of Armenians at Agra dated back to 1611. Seths assumption that a large number of Armenians had ocked to Agra during the reign of Akbar was not corroborated by any historical source. See his Armenians in India: 110. According to the account of Khojamall, whom Seth elsewhere dismissed as untrustworthy, Akbar had allowed an Armenian church to be built in Agra as early as 1562. But the Jesuit priests, who had a close contact with Armenians, do not mention any Armenian church in Agra. E. Maclagan, The Jesuits and the Great Mogul: 271. About Seths position that no Armenian women came to India in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, see below. As regards the possibility of a large Armenian colony in Calcutta by 1630, a hypothesis based on the discovery of the tombstone of Reza Bibi dated July 11, 1630 in the churchyard of the Holy Church of Nazareth (Calcutta), C. R. Wilson already dismissed it on the ground that the tombstone in question was an isolated instance, and that the stone was not in situ. He suggested that the stone was probably brought to Calcutta from somewhere else at a later date. See Early Annals of the English in Bengal: being the Bengal Public Consultations for the rst half of the 18th century, (henceforth Early Annals of the English in Bengal) 3 vols. (London: W. Thacker, 1895-1919), vol. 1: 137, n. 4; also P. T. Nair, Calcutta in the 17th Century (Calcutta: Firma KLM, 1986): 443-46. Calcutta became an important centre of commerce in the 18th century following the foundation of the English settlement there in 1690. It is more likely that if Armenians were there in Bengal in the early 17th century, they were based mainly at Chinsura, and not in Calcutta. 63 E. Maclagan, The Jesuits and the Great Mogul: 213-215. 64 C. Wessels, Early Jesuit Travellers in Central Asia, 1603-1721 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1924): 1-42.
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well integrated into the existing socio-economic fabric of India. For commerce overland they travelled in caravans consisting of merchants of different Indian and west Asian communities. Overseas commerce too, as we have noted above, was carried out with merchants of different origins. The relationship of the Armenians with non-Christians was often not limited to trade alone. Familiarity with Persian provided them access to the Mughal court, which often employed them as trusted interpreters.65 As regards the conversion of Armenians to Islam, not much is known so far. The relationship between Armenians and Muslims of different denominations has never been free from tensions as historical Armenia has often fallen prey to the aggressive policies of Turkey and Persia. At the same time, it also provided Armenians with the experience of living under Muslim domination. One account that was widely known among the European missionaries and travellers in seventeenth-century India was that of Mirza Zulqarnain mentioned above. His father, Mirza Sikandar, acquired great favour at the court of Akbar, who married him to Juliana, the daughter of the Armenian Mir Abdul Hai, in charge of the royal harem.66 After Jahangir succeeded to the throne, both Zulqarnain and his brother Sikandar were forcibly converted to Islam. This seems to have been more of a political show as after his conversion, Zulqarnain did not practise Islam but became an adherent of the Roman Catholic Church.67 It was not uncommon for Armenians during this period to conceal their faith under some real or assumed political pressure. When the governor of Lahore threatened in 1604 to arrest all the Christians of that city, some twenty-three Armenian merchants seem to have ed the city hastily. According to Fr. Pinheiro, the three
65 For the legend about the (Armenian) Christian wife of Akbar see M. J. Seth, Armenians in India: 151-61. Seth maintained that Akbar indeed had an Armenian wife. But he also quoted the paper of Fr. J. Hosten published in the Statesman, 14 November 1916, where Hosten left the issue open as he had no conclusive evidence. Also, E. Maclagan, The Jesuits and the Great Mogul: 157-61. 66 Abdul Hai, an Armenian, was in the service of the imperial harem of Akbar. His daughter was married to Iskandar who was also in the service of Akbar. Iskandar had two sons: the elder son, also called Iskandar, was later named Mirza Zulqarnain. Tuzuk I Jahangiri, tr. By Alexander Rogers, ed. By Henry Beveridge, 2 vols., (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1968), vol. 2: 194. The life of Mirza Zulkarnain attracted the attention of many contemporary accounts perhaps because of the fact he was, together with his brother, forcibly circumcised by Jahangir. 67 Except for the period 1633-35 when he suffered from Shah Jahans anti-Christian outbursts, Mirza seems to have enjoyed the favour of Jahangir and Shah Jahan who entrusted him with various responsibilities. For his carreer see Fr. H. Hosten, Memoirs of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1916; E. Maclagan, The Jesuits and the Great Mogul: 170-80; M. J. Seth quoted extensively from Fr. Hostens work in Armenians in India, 22-87.
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to four Armenians he met did not want to be seen talking to him, as they wished not to be recognised as Christians.68 The Italian traveller Pietro Della Valles Persian Christian servant Cacciatur (the name suggests he was an Armenian) had declared himself at the customs at Surat to be a Muslim as he was afraid he would be persecuted in the Mughal dominions.69 Contemporary accounts suggest that Armenians in India in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries cohabited with Hindu and Muslim women.70 These Hindu and Muslim concubines were later either abandoned or accepted as partners through marriage in the church.71 Such co-habitation would be logical even if for entirely strategic purposes. Akbar himself seems to have been present at the wedding ceremony of his Armenian interpreter Dominic Pires and his Indian bride in 1582.72 Another interesting case, though we have not come across any conclusive evidence about this one so far, is that of Khoja Wajid, a colourful personality of Bengal trade and politics in the eighteenth century.73 The indigenous historian Gulam Hussain noted that Khwaja Ashraf Kashmiri, son of Mir Afzal, was a nephew of Wajid.74 Though S. C. Hill refers to him as Armenian, Dutch and French sources refer to him as a moor, a term indicating Muslim,75 and historians have wondered about this confusion. Sushil Chaudhury, who has written extensively on Wajid, has noted that there is no evidence to show that Wajid, who was undoubtedly an Armenian, had ever converted to Islam. Chaudhury assumes that Wajid perhaps added Muhammed to his name to enhance his
68 E. Maclagan, The Jesuits and the Great Mogul: 271-72; cf. Letter from the president Fremlen &messrs. Breton, Robinson and Wylde at Swally Marine to the Company, December 29, 1640: . . . the greater part of whom [Armenians] here call themselves Mussulman . . .. English Factories in India, ed. W. Foster, 13 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906-27), vol. 6: 281. 69 The Travels of Pietro Della Valle in India. From the old English translation of 1664 by G. Havers, ed. With a life of the author, an introd. And notes by Edward Grey. 2 vols. (London: Hakluyt Society, 1892); v.1:126-30. 70 P. du Jarric, Akbar and the Jesuits: 135. 71 Ibid. 72 E. Maclagan, The Jesuits and the Great Mogul: 194. The name Dominic Pires is not Armenian. Seth suggests that this was perhaps an adopted name. 73 For details on Khoja Wajid see below. 74 Saiyid Ghulam Husain Khan Tabatabai, Seir i Mutakherin, 2 vols. (Lahore: 1975), vol. 2: 400. 75 See the letters from the Dutch chief Bisdom quoted in S. C. Hill, Bengal 1756-57, passim. Jean Law, the chief of the French factory at Kashimbazar in 1756-57 also referred to Wajid as a Moor: Wajid passed for the Nawabs [Siraj-uddaula] condential agent with the Europeans; a sufcient reason for this belief was founded on the very considerable losses which this Moor had just suffered by the English capture of Hugli; see S. C. Hill, Bengal in 1756-57, vol. 3, Appendix III, translation of the rst part of the memoir of Jean Law: 187.
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business prospects.76 Writing about Bengal in 1757, Rajat Ray wondered how the Muslim Mir Afzal could be related to the Armenian Wajid, as matrimonial relationships between the Armenians and Muslims were not usual. 77 It is extremely interesting to note that Thomas Khojamall, the eighteenth century Armenian historian, who referred to Khoja Petrus and Khoja Gregorytwo other well known Armenian personalities in Bengal in the eighteenth century did not mention Khoja Wajid.78 Curiously enough, Seth, who was at pains in putting together the history of the Armenians in India, did not have much to say about Wajid.79 Repeated reference to him as moor in the records of the Dutch East India Company, and the silence of Armenian sources about this personality leads one to think, in the light of the history of the Armenians sketched above, that either Khoja Wajid or his father had embraced Islam at some point of time.80 Armenians seem to have lived in close social contact with Christians of other denominations. The Jesuit fathers considered all Armenians of northern India to be under their charge and paid special attention to the conversion of Armenians to the Catholic Church.81 Though Armenians were initially opposed to the activity of the fathers, it was possible for the latter to convert some of the Armenians. It should be noted that Mirza Zulqarnain, after his forced conversion to Islam, converted to the Catholic Church. Letters written by Jesuit fathers from Goa attest to the good relationship between Mirza Zulkarnain, then governor of the province of Sambhar in Rajasthan and the Jesuits. Zulkarnain was referred to as the pillar of Christianity extending his liberality not only to the Jesuits, but also to the rest of the Christians. Mirza was a generous supporter of the conversion of the indigenous population by the Jesuits, who spoke of him as brother and procured for him the title of Founder of Agra College.82 Even
76 S. Chaudhury, Khwaja Wazid in Bengal Trade and Politics, The Indian Historical Review, (July 1989-Jan. 1990), v. XVI, no. 1-2: 137-48. 77 R. K. Ray, Polashir Shorojontro o Sekaler Somaj (The Conspiracy of Plassey and the Contemporary Society) (Calcutta: Ananda Publishers, 1998): 161. 78 I am grateful to Sebouh Aslanian for drawing my attention to this point. 79 Seth refers to Khoja Wajid only in passing, with reference to the question of monopoly in salt. Armenians in India: 364-65. 80 Scholars like Baghdiantz Mccabe, Khachikian and Zekiyan relate that if an Armenian was converted, he was not considered Armenian any more. Zekiyan adds that as Armenians did not have a state, nationality was not the issue, while adherence to the church was. This would also explain why Wajids grave cannot be found either in Chinsura or in Calcutta. 81 E. Maclagan, The Jesuits and the Great Mogul: 271-72. 82 The Travels of Peter Mundy, 1608-67 in Europe and Asia, 5 vols. (London: Hakluyt Society, 1907-36), vol. 2: Travels in Asia, 1628-1634, Appendix E; also Seth, Armenians in India . . ., 22-87.
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the Great Mughals were not in a position to (or did not) make a distinction between Christians of different denominations. Pleased with Captain William Hawkins, the envoy of King James II, Jahangir wanted him to settle down in India and offered him all accommodations, including a wife. Extremely embarrassed, but not daring to refuse the imperial offer, Hawkins replied that as a Christian he could marry only a Christian woman. But the emperor outwitted him by nding a match in the daughter of a lately deceased Armenian, and Hawkins felt obliged to obey the emperor.83 When the Dutch and the English were struggling to initiate commerce in the western Indian Ocean and Mughal India from their base at Surat, Armenians were thus already established in the eld. But the settlement of Armenians in New Julfa and other places in Persia which coincided with the arrival of the western European companies in the Indian Ocean, acted as a boost to the rst major eastward surge of Armenian trade. The proximity of India, the main trading partner of Iran,84 prompted an increasing number of Armenian merchants to frequent India. There is evidence to show that Armenians, together with Persian merchants continued to use the overland route to India in the seventeenth century.85 A Dutch source written in 1630 claimed that Armenians and Persians transported indigo from Byana in huge quantities and textiles from the region around Agra and Delhi to Isfahan via the overland route to Persia and Turkey.86 An estimate made in the 1630s put the ratio of textiles, indigo and sugar exported overseas to Persia to those taken overland at 70:30. Van Santen maintains that this list underestimated the overland trade as it did not include the quantity of indigo from Byana transported overland, especially because the same list also indicated that transporting cotton piece-goods from the area around Agra and Delhi overland to Isfahan was cheaper (20% of the cost) than transporting them by caravan to Surat, then to Bandar Abbas by ship, and again to Isfahan by caravan (27% of the cost).This list suggests that it would be more protable to send textiles coming from the centres of production in north India overland.87 It was noted that every year 20- to 25,000 camels, carrying chiey
See Purchas: His Pilgrims (Glasgow: MacLehose, 1905-07), vol. III: 15-16. Willem Floor, The Economy of Safavid Persia (Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2000): 245. 85 See Henry Bornfords account of his journey from Agra to Tatta [? March 1639] in English Factories in India, vol. 6: 134-138. 86 N.A., V.O.C. 1099, Surat-Heeren XVII, 30 July, 1630, 312v. 87 Another estimate put the cost of both the routes at about 50%. H. W. Van Santen, De VOC in Gujarat en Hindustan, 1620-1660, Ph.D. thesis, Leiden University (Meppel: 1982): 64-65.
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piece-goods, arrived at Isfahan from India.88 In 1638 the Dutch factors at Surat noted that Armenian and Muslim merchants carrrying more than 100 cartloads of indigo and textiles overland to Persia could not pass the region around Kandahar due to a war in the region, and were forced to return to Surat for shipment to Persia on board Dutch and English ships.89 Due to the import of a large quantity of cotton textiles in Isfahan by a caravan consisting of 6,000 camels in 1644, there was little demand for the textiles carried by the Dutch Company.90 In 1668 Nicolaes Witsen, the famous burgomaster of Amsterdam was informed by a certain Armenian merchant of Julfa about the major places along the overland route connecting Persia and India.
Table. Distance between Isfahan and the major cities in India as calculated by an Armenian merchant of Julfa, 166891 From Isfahan Isfahan Kandahar Multan Lahore To Kandahar via Mashed Kandahar via desert route Multan Lahore Agra Distance in miles 375 250 160 50 110
It has been assumed that the growth of the overseas trade of Surat in the second half of the seventeenth century did not automatically imply an increase in the total export from India. Bulk of the commodities that had earlier been taken overland, was being shipped from Surat at the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries.92 The rebellion at Kandahar (1709), followed by the Afghan occupation of Persia (1722-30) and then by the invasion of India by Nadir Shah made the roads unsafe and had a negative impact on overland trade. The Indo-Gangetic plains and the sub-Himalayan zones,
Ibid. Generale Missiven, vol. 1: 725. 90 H. W. Van Santen, De VOC in Gujarat en Hindustan: 65. 91 Nicolaes Witsen, Noord en Oost tartarye, of te bondig ontwerp van eenige dier landen en volken, welke voormaels bekent zijn geweest. Beneffens verscheidene tot noch onbekende, en meest nooit voorheen beschreve Tartersche en nabuurige gewesten, landstreken, steden, rivieren, en plaetzen, in de Noorder en Oosterlyke gedeelten van Asia en Europa enz. 2 vols. (Amsterdam: Halma, 1705), vol. 1: 426. I am grateful to Ren Bekius for drawing my attention to this work. 92 H. W. Van Santen De VOC in Gujarat en Hindustan: 65; for the question of the continuity of overland trade from India in the seventeenth century see R. J. Barendse, The Arabean Seas: 154-64; Willem Floor, The Economy of Safavid Persia: 200-10.
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however, continued to be connected with Persia and Central Asia through Kabul and Kandahar during the period that followed.93 Seth found only one tombstone of an Armenian woman at Surat in the sixteenth century (dating from 1579), and the fact that no Armenian woman was buried at Agra between 1611 and 1777 led him to conclude that no Armenian ladies travelled to India with their husband in those days.94 This is inaccurate and simplistic, because Seth was aware of the presence of Armenian women in India in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.95 Subsequent to their settlement in New Julfa, Isfahan, the number of Armenian merchants settling in India . with their families seems to have increased. This was particularly so in major trading settlements like Surat where quite a few Armenian women were to be found already in the rst half of the seventeenth century.96 The relationship between the Armenians and the two northwest European nationalities at Surat was rather close. A Catholic Armenian called Iskandar Beg, the interpreter of the English lodge at Surat, worked as interpreter for Pieter van den Broecke who arrived there as director of the Dutch East India Company in 1620.97 When Della Valle was in Surat with his Georgian wife, he was touched by the demonstration of affection on the part of the English president Thomas Rastel, who often sent Della Valle his own coach and his interpreter. It was the time when Jan Pietersz. Coen, the governor-general of the Dutch East Indies, who considered women as a pre-condition for trade, advocated the policy of populating Batavia. After initial attempts of shipping marriageable women or entire families to Asia had failed, the Dutch decided to follow the Portuguese example.98 Della Valle noticed that many of the Dutch Companys servants, contrary to those of the English, were married, and quite a few to Armenian women. He was informed that this pattern was encouraged in order to populate Batavia:
At Batavia Dutchmen settled with their family enjoyed many privileges. That is why many of them are married to women from Syria, Armenia, India and other countries.99
93 Muzaffar Alam, The Crisis of Empire in Mughal India: Awadh and the Punjab 1707-48 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1986): 141-43. 94 M. J. Seth, Armenians in India: 126. 95 Ibid. e.g. 263. 96 The large proportion of women among the Armenians of Surat drew attention of an Englishman even two centuries later. Anonymous, Suratits past and present Calcutta Review, (1848) 9, January-June: 136. 97 See Om Prakash, Dutch Factories in India, 1627-1623, v.1 (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1984): 19n. 98 L. Bluss van Oud-Alblas, Strange Company: Chinese Settlers, Mestizo Women and the Dutch in VOC Batavia (Leiden: KITLV, 1986): 158-62. 99 The travels of Pietro della Valle in India. vol. 1: 29.
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At Surat, he lodged at the palatial building owned by the director Van den Broecke, who sent the young Armenian wife of one of the Dutch factors, accompanied by a few female servants for the convenience of Mrs. Della Valle.100 The way Van den Broeke mentioned the Armenians in his journal leads one to think that in the early stage of settlement in India the Dutch were quite friendly to the Armenians, who, together with other Europeans, formed part of one Christian society.101 On Christmas Day in 1621 the slave girl of Sebalt Wonderaar, the senior merchant of the Dutch lodge, was baptised along with Catherina, the girl child of the well known Armenian Yadgar. As godfather, Van den Broecke was witness to the event.102 On his trip to Ahmedabad, where Armenians were active in the indigo trade, Van den Broecke stayed at their sarai.103 On another occasion in 1626 the baptism of an Italian child by the Dutch priest David Sijmonssen took place in the house of Iskander Beg. This time, too, Van den Broecke was the godfather and Angela, the wife of Yadgar, was the godmother.104 Next year Yadgars daughter Marican was married to Issack Scholliers, an assistant in the Dutch lodge. The junior merchant Paulus Stigel van Neurenberg married the daughter of Khoja Rafael. Van den Broecke, who looked upon the girls as his own daughters, gifted them with 600 and 500 guilders respectively as presents on this occasion.105 The merchant Anthoni Claesz. Visscher was married to Mariam Gomez, an Armenian woman from Baghdad.106 When in 1621-22 the Dutch Company was facing a shortage of capital, the Company could borrow money from Mariam at an interest of 1 per cent per month. It has been assumed that before it was shifted to another building, the lodge of the Dutch at Surat was initially set up in the house of Mariam Gomez.107 Some Armenians informed Van den Broecke that Huijbert Vissnich, the Company chief in Persia, was not performing his duty and was giving preference to his own interests above those of the Company.108 Della Valle, along with the English and other Christians of Surat, was present at the wedding party
Ibid. vol. 1, 28. Cf. H. W. van Santen, De V.O.C. in Gujarat en Hindustan: 10. 102 Pieter van den Broecke in Azi, 2 vols. ed. W. Ph. Coolhaas (s Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962-63); vol. 1, journaal: 265. 103 Ibid. vol. 2: 268. 104 Ibid. vol. 2: 265, 325. 105 Ibid. 331. 106 The travels of Pietro Della Valle . . ., vol. 1: 120, 123, 124. 107 De Geschriften van Francisco Pelsaert over Mughal Indi, 1627: Kroniek en Remonstrantie, ed. D. H. A. Kolff and H. W. van Santen (s Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1979): 22, n. 78. 108 Pieter van den Broecke . . ., vol. 2: 5.
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of the assistant Willem Jacobsz. and Mariam, the daughter of an Armenian merchant from Ahmedabad.109 A critical insight into the situation in Gujarat, Persia and Arabia written in the 1630s suggested that the Dutch could attract the Armenian merchants who were deserting Goa and other Portuguese settlements because of the lack of trade at those places; inviting entire Armenian families with nice promises and civil measures and employing them at the Companys factories at Dabhol and Surat would help the Company to populate those settlements.110 The Dutch-Armenian marriages, the attitude of Van den Broecke towards these marriages and the relationship between the English director Thomas Rastel and his Portuguese ance, have inspired Kolff and Van Santen to reect on the homogenous nature of the pluriform Christian nation at Surat.111 When an Armenian merchant was framed by the Bohra community of Surat in a murder case that actually involved the servant of the Armenian merchant, Aga Piri appealed to the chiefs of all the European Companies in the name of Christianity. Christians are obliged, Piri pointed out to the director of the Dutch lodge, to stand by and protect each other if need be, as all trees whether bearing fruit or not deserve dewdrops from the heaven.112 What was the situation like in European settlements like Madras and Calcutta? As per the agreement signed between Khoja Panous Kalantar, an eminent merchant of Isfahan and the East India Company in London in 1688, Armenians were to trade and settle at all English ports on the same terms as English freemen, and possess all rights enjoyed by British subjects. Though the agreement was not put into effect due to the opposition of the Armenian merchants of New Julfa, the spirit of the Companys over-enthusiastic messages about the utility of the Armenians had set the tone of the day and paved the way for a new phase of Armenian settlement in India.113 Whenever there were forty Armenians resident in a town under the jurisdiction of the Company, a temporary
The travels of Della Valle vol. 1: 120, 123, 124. N. A. Collectie Sweers, inv. no. 9, Corte Remonstrantie van de gelegentheijd van Guseratte, Perzien en Arabien ook eenighe noodwendighe procedures welke in die quartieren dienen gehouden te worden tot preservatie, versekeringe ende ook verbeteringhe der comptoiren en negotien van Guseratte ende Persia, als mede tot restauratie van de gelden schade in Mocha, pr consequent tot merkelijke voordeel van honorable Comp. en affbreuke des algemeijnen vijants, addresserende, ff.119-125. I am grateful to Ms. Natalia Tojo for drawing my attention to this document. 111 De Geschriften: 17-25. 112 N. A. Dag Register, Surat, VOC 1549, f.505v, 507; for a description of Surat in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, see Ashin Das Gupta, Indian Merchants and the decline of Surat, c. 1700-1750, Wiesbaden, 1979, ch. 1. 113 See Armenian Merchants e.g. documents 116, 117, 122, 136, 140, 146, 148, 184.
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church was to be built for their use, and ground granted them for the erection of a permanent place of worship, the Company allowing 50 a year for seven years for the maintenance of a priest.114 In the 1680s and 1690s, the English East India Company was recommending that its employees attract Armenians to the English settlements and encourage their trade in every possible way. Armenians were allowed to freight the Companys Europe-bound ships with commodities like shellac, stick lac, pig-iron and wax. As India goods were very much in demand, the Company was sure it would prot from the freight.115 Experienced Armenians like Aga Piri were entrusted with training freshly arrived factors of the Company in language and the method of trading.116 As the Armenians were familiar with the centres of production and market places in India, they were in a position to procure goods at a cheaper rate.117 Moreover, they would populate the settlements:
It is undoubtedly our interest to make our garrisoned ports in India marts for nations, which will in a few years aggrandize our revenue, and with that our strength 200 Armenian Christians living in Madrass [sic] by whom we get money in every thing they eat or drink or trade for as well as by the ground rents of the houses they live in, and to whom we pay no wages being as good a security to our garrison and trade as hired English soldiers . . .118
It should be remembered here that as the central political power in India was disintegrating towards the end of the seventeenth century and the centre of gravity was shifting towards the littoral, the growth of the European settlements provided the Asian merchants with alternate bases of operation. Since the English left the port to port trade in Asia to private enterprise already in the late 1660s, many private Asian merchants serving the Europeans in numerous ways, crowded the English settlements. Because the Dutch Company was a direct participant in the intra-Asian trade, ship owning merchants often avoided their settlements. The tendency to seek support in European settlements was particularly noticeable in Coromandel where the close proximity of the ports made it possible for Indian merchants to operate from more than one base at a time.119 The regulations of the European Companies prohibiting trade with rival establishments could be avoided through a network based on kinship. As they wanted to
114 H. D. Love, Vestiges of old Madras: 1640-1800: traced from the East India Companys Records preserved at Fort St. George and the India Ofce and from other sources, 4 vols. (London: Murray, 1913), v.1: 543. 115 Armenian Merchants, documents 116, 117, 120, 124, 127, 131, and passim. 116 Ibid, document 156. 117 Ibid, e.g. documents 121, 141, 142. 118 Ibid. no. 163, Company in London to Fort St. George, 3 January, 1693/94. 119 B. Bhattacharya, The Chulia merchants of southern Coromandel.
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attract local shipping magnates to their ports, Indian merchants could use the Companies against one another.120 Armenians followed the same pattern. For merchants trying to escape the wrath of indigenous elites, too, the European settlements were a place of refuge. A case in point was that of the Armenian merchant Khwaja Nazar. As there were some proceedings against him in the nawabs (Shuja Khan) darbar in Murshidabad, the English in Calcutta, while stopping him from sailing for Europe, also made it sure that he did not fall in the hands of the nawabs people. They were determined
not to submit [sic] their merchants being carried off the place which would be of the utmost ill consequence to the Honble Companys affairs as it would be a precedent for the darbar to demand every man of substance out of the place.121
The English were willing to pay as much as Rs. 20,000 to make up the case, but the nawab demanded Rs. 50,000. The case was later settled by Nazars vakil at the darbar.122 In 1691, Elihu Yale noted that recently a few more Armenians had come to settle in Fort St. George, while more were expected.123 In 1696, the council noted that though there were a few Armenians constantly residing at Madras, many of them were annually sailing to Bengal, Manila, Aceh, Persia and other places, and/or trading with the kings camp, Zulqar Khans camp and Golconda and thus by the bulk of their trade contributed greatly to the revenues of Fort St. George.124 One year later the council noted that Khoja Gregorys [resident of Madras] invitation to his countrymen at Julfa to repair to and reside at Madras
has mett with a good effect esteeming it our advantage to have Madrass as populous especially with Christians as possible.125
By 1711 Armenians had become numerous and opulent in Madras.126 With the growth of the ports of Bombay, Madras and Calcutta in the eighteenth cen-
Ibid. Bengal Public Consultations, 17 April, 1733, quoted in S. Bhattacharyya, The East India Company and the Economy of Bengal (from 1704 to 1740), (Calcutta: Graphic Art Press, 1969): 55. Khoja Nazar built the Armenian Apostolic Church (called St. Nazareth after him) in Calcutta in 1724. In analysing the relationship between the nawab and the English, Bhattacharyya presents other cases as well, ibid. 55-60. 122 Ibid. 59. 123 Armenian Merchants, document 139. 124 RFSG, Despatches to England, vol. 1: 1694-96, 35. 125 Armenian Merchants, document 239. 126 RFSG, Despatches to England, vol. 2: 147.
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tury, European, especially English settlements became the major habitat of the Armenian community in India, though many of them were settled at places like Surat, Hugli, Saidabad, Patna and Dhaka. Most of the promises made by the English were geared to securing their own trade and revenue; yet the three major Armenian churches that were built in India in the course of the eighteenth century were at the three principal English settlements along the coast.127 When the council of Fort St. George wanted to levy a land tax for the construction of a town wall in 1718, the Armenians pleaded exemption from payment on the ground that they were only six in number.128 The number is misleading, as we have noted above that there was a constant ow of Armenians in and out of the town. As many Armenians travelled frequently to distant places organizing the business, the number of permanent residents of a place could have been small. The survey seems to have included only very wealthy Armenian residents owning extensive landed property. The eminent Armenian, Khoja Sultan David, owned landed property in Madras.129 The legendary merchant Khoja Petrus Woscan, who constructed the Marmalong bridge and the fty-six stone staircases leading to the mount of San Thome, owned at least forty-two houses in Madras. Orme noted that north of the White Town in Fort St. George were many good buildings belonging to Armenian and rich Indian merchants.130 It is possible that such wealthy merchants, dealing in real estate, provided housing to the lesser members in the diaspora, albeit against the payment of rent.131 The church also offered lodging to travelling Armenians.132 However, the course of events in the eighteenth century had changed the situation in Madras. Armenians were suspected to have assisted the French when the latter attacked Fort St. George in
The church at Saidabad was built in 1758. H. D. Love, Vestiges of old Madras, vol. 2: 162. 129 Khoja Shawmir Sultans petition on behalf of his father Khoja Sultan David and himself for permission to continue in the White Town was rejected. Their house in Charles Street was rented by the Company for public purposes. Only Khoja Petrus Woscan was allowed to continue at his Choultry Gate Street redidence. ibid. 405, 426, 494. 130 Robert Orme, Military Transactions, vol. 1: 65. 131 The last will of Petrus Uscan. He expressed the wish that Armenian merchants coming to Madras for trade should feel obliged to stay in those buildings. The income from the rent would be invested in the welfare of the town of New Julfa and the Armenians there. Khoja Petrus Aratoon, the eminent merchant of Bengal and brother of Khoja Gregory owned twelve houses, nine in Calcutta and one each in Serampore, Chinsura and Dacca. Calcutta High Court, O.W. 2623. Ghulam Husain noted that Khoja Wajid, the Armenian merchant prince of Bengal, had a harem with 125 women. The information may not be entirely correct, but it is possible that many relatives and other families were housed in the same building, hence many women. Ghulam Husain Khan Seir ul Mutakherin vol. 2, 400 fn. 132 H. M. Nadjarian, Life story of Mr. A. M. Arathoon (Calcutta, 1958): 9.
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1746, and by 1750 the English Company ordered the council of Fort St. George to direct the Armenians to leave the White Town, where no Armenian was to live in future. The chapel and other buildings built by Petrus Woscan at Vepery were transferred to the Danish missionaries.133 Those who possessed landed property in the White Town, were to sell it to European Protestants. However, as very useful people, Armenians were to be allowed to inhabit the Black Town.134 Calcutta, the second city in the British colonial empire, also suffered from the phenomenon of dualism reected in the Europeans concern for defence and security, manifested in the fort and the fence.135 In the colonial period, the fence gradually fell down. The fort, with its accommodational function, became an embellishment, the urban area began to grow and spread and the component elements began to interpenetrate, resulting in the development of new areas.136 The Black Town gradually drove wedges into the White Town, especially into the intermediate zone, or the Grey Town where the Portuguese, Greeks and Armenians were settled from the pre-colonial times.137 As late as 1758 the Court of Directors were anxious not to discourage Armenians and other inhabitants of Calcutta from settling within their bounds, especially the Armenians, as no bad consequences from their residence were apprehended.138 Many of the magnicent buildings in the White Town of Calcutta were built by the Armenians. The Grand Hotel, the Nizam Palace, the Park Mansionsto name only a few bear testimony to the zeal of the Armenian pioneers of the real estate business in Calcutta.139 The formation of bigger Armenian settlements around the church did not reduce social contact between Armenians and western Europeans. As far as Armenian-European marriage is concerned, it is interesting to note that in all the cases that have come down to us, the brides were Armenian and the bridegrooms European.140
H. D. Love, Vestiges of old Madras, vol. 2: 403-404, 467. Ibid. 426. 135 P. Sinha, Calcutta in Urban History (Calcutta: Firma KLM, 1978): 7-8. 136 Ibid. 137 Ibid. 138 J. Long, Selections from Unpublished Records of Government: for the years 1748 to 1767 inclusive. Relating mainly to the Social Condition of Bengal with a map of Calcutta in 1784. Ed. M. Saha (Calcutta: Mukhopadhyay, 1973): 161. 139 I owe this information to P. T. Nair. 140 Records of Fort St. George registered only 9 marriages between Armenian and western European individuals between 1680-1800. See H. Dodwell ed., List of marriages registered in the Presidency of Fort St. George, 1680-1800 (Madras: Madras Government Press, 1916). One well-known marriage in Surat in the late eighteenth century was that between Hripsimah,
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Whether in the traditional port towns like Surat, or in the White, Grey, or Black town of the European settlements, until at least the middle of the eighteenth century Armenians provided a major source of strength for the European presence in India. It should be remembered that the presence of the Europeans in the Asian waters opened up various possibilities and opportunities for expanding the existing networks of Asian trade. The English Company explicitly mentioned how by catering to their trade, Armenians themselves would also prot.141 A more important element, so far as the intra-Asian trade was concerned, was the private trade of the Europeans. The next section will focus on the interaction of Armenians and Europeans in the eld of commerce in India. COMMERCIAL RELATIONSHIP WITH EUROPEANS: COMPETITION OR CO-OPERATION? Considering the relationship between Armenians and Europeans, it should be pointed out that the potential of conict was very much present as the Europeans in the Indian Ocean, while wooing the Armenians, were at the same time aiming at the commerce which had so far been the mainstay of the livelihood of many Armenians.142 Ferrier noted the importance of the Armenians and other local merchants as suppliers of credit to the European Companies in Persia.143 Herzig, in his study of the Armenian merchants of New Julfa, has maintained that Armenian merchants relationship with their European counterparts was ambivalent. On the one hand, Armenians were suspicious of the Europeans and often openly hostile towards them. On the other hand, they co-operated with the European Companies. In the nal analysis, Julfa Armenians were more willing to have nancial dealing with foreigners than to enter into trading partnership with them.144 Baghdiantz Mccabes position is that it was the Companies that solicited co-operation of the Armenians, not the other way round. As
the daughter of the wealthy Armenian merchant Eleazer Woskan, and Robert Henry Leembruggen of the Dutch East India Company. Hripsimah was rst married to an old Armenian called Stephen Agabob. Following the death of the latter she was remarried to Leembruggen. See M. J. Seth, Armenians in India: 263-66. 141 See Armenian Merchants, no. 245 for the Companys arguments in connection with the trade in Persia. 142 The tension of the Europeans could be noted in their account of Armenians. See note 2 above; also see documents 5, 23, 79, 107 and passim in Armenian Merchants . . . 143 See his The Armenians and the East India Company in Persia in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, The Economic History Review, 2nd series, 26 (1973): 38-62. 144 E. M. Herzig, The Armenian Merchants of New Julfa, Isfahan: 203-6, 212.
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the trade carried on by the European Companies was no match for that of the Armenians, East India Companies were no competitors of the Armenians, and consequently, Armenians did not have to enter into any trading partnership with them.145 Bekius has shown, on the other hand, that Armenians both competed and co-operated with Europeans.146 In India, as we have seen, Armenians intermarried with western Europeans and ocked to the European towns.147 What was the role of the Armenians in the networks of European trade in the Indian Ocean? The capital that the Armenians possessed seems to have gone a long way to rid European trade of its want of ready money in Persia and Mughal India. Kolff and Van Santen have pointed to the greater relevance of the marriages between Armenians and Europeans in this respect. That so many servants of the Dutch East India Companymuch more than their English counterpartsgot married to Armenian women, was, in their opinion, an attempt to get access to the credit and extensive network of trade of the Armenian merchants.148 Marriage relationships often went hand in hand with business interests. It was noted that the married servants of the Dutch Company bought textiles at a low cost and sold the same to the Company at a higher price through middlemen.149 This however, does not imply that it was only the Europeans who needed Armenians, and not the other way round. It is true that Armenians were already established in the trade of the Indian Ocean. Many of them possessed their own shipping.150 Yet, starting from the procurement of goods at the centres of production, transporting them to the port of embarkation, getting them ready for shipping, and reaching the ultimate destination, the market where the goods were disposed at a reasonable prot, was a long drawn and extremely intricate process. In his study of Indonesian trade and society, Van Leur noted that in the primarily agricultural societies of Asia, agricultural surplus was extracted by the state. The trade that was carried on here was small-scale and in luxury goods, by merchants whom he termed peddlers.151 Steensgaard, who studied the
I. Baghdiantz Mccabe, Shahs silk: 327-47. R. Bekius, Armenian merchants in the textile trade. 147 Armenian Merchants enumerates 114 cases where Armenians served the English East India Company in different capacities between 1617 and 1708/09. index 3, 283-84. 148 De Geschriften: 21-22. 149 Ibid. 150 It was part of the policy of the English East India Company to employ small vessels owned by Armenians for coasting trade, Early Annals of the English in Bengal vol. 3: 141. 151 J. C. Van Leur, Indonesian Trade and Society: Essays in Asian social and economic history (The Hague: Van Hoeve, 1955): 133. Van Leurs thesis has been criticised by many
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caravan trade of the Middle East, upheld Van Leurs characterization of Asian trade by characterizing Asian merchants as peddlers and the markets as peddlers markets.152 Due to limited production, supply in the peddlers market was limited and could not be adjusted to the uctuation in demand. To this was added the hazards in the transportation of the commodities from the centres of production to the ports of shipment.153 Not only was overland transport slow; it was exposed to the dangers of the road. Hence the payment of protection cost to the local rulers of all the territories through which the caravans passed. While all this pushed up the cost of transport, delay in reaching the port might mean missing a sailing season. As markets were non-transparent and information incomplete, prices uctuated making trading operation extremely insecure.154 Analysing the modus operandi of the merchants in early modern India, Chris Bayly noted that when operating in a market that was intransparent, and when supply and demand were unpredictable, a merchant often divided his investments among various partners and pursuits with a view to spreading the risk and sharing the prot. While many of the Armenian merchants trading on behalf of a principal were peddlers,155 merchants like Zachary Avetik, Khoja Catchick Khojamal, Khoja Minas,156 Khoja Petrus, and many others like them seem to have been like those merchants termed by Bayly as port-folio capitalists.157 In
historians. See e. g., M. A. P. Meilink Roelofsz, Asian Trade and European Inuence in the Indonesian Archipelago between 1500 and about 1630 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962); K. N. Chaudhuri, The Trading World of Asia and the East India Company, 1660-1670 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 136-37, 138-39. 152 N. Steensgaard, The Asian Trade Revolution: 22-31. 153 The cost of transporting cloth from Agra to Surat, including the customs duties, could amount to 40 per cent of the cost price. See R. J. Barendse, The Arabian Seas, 1640-1700 (Leiden: Centre for Non-Western Studies, 1998), 135. 154 Even a very wealthy merchant like Abdul Ghafur of Surat at the beginning of the eighteenth century was also not free from such insecurity, a reason that inspired Ashin Das Gupta to characterise that merchant prince as peddler. See his Indian Merchants and the decline of Surat, introduction. 155 See e.g. Calcutta High Court, O.W. no. 4926. The merchant Abraham Isaac who passed away in Calcutta on August 18, 1796 had a credit of little over Rs. 1,512. It is possible that he started as an agent of Khoja Petrus Aratoon who was paid Rs. 200 toward the discharge of a bond. The cost of the other transactions made by Isaac varied from Rs. 2 to Rs. 48. 156 See below. 157 C. A. Bayly, Indian merchants in a Traditional setting: Varanasi 1780-1830, in C. A. Dewey and A. G. Hopkins ed., The Imperial Impact: Studies in the Economic History of India and Africa (London: Athlone Press for the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, 1978): 186; also S. Subrahmanyam, The Political Economy of Commerce in Southern India, c. 1550-1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993): 299-300, 327-36; also S. Subrahmanyam and C. A. Bayly, Portfolio capitalists and political economy in early modern India, in S. Subrahmanyam ed. Merchants, Markets and Trade in Early Modern India, 1770-1870: 242-65.
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spite of all the elements of tension and conict involved, Armenians, like many other groups of Asian merchants, co-operated with Europeans because the presence of the latter provided Asian merchants with further opportunities of spreading the risks.158 This being said, it should be added that Armenian merchants appear to have acted in different capacities and were dexterous at keeping the accounts separate. From the reading of their testaments it would appear that the network based on extended kinship was trusted so far as investment in their own trade was concerned. The actual carrying out of the trade, however, was part of a broader framework and it is here that the Armenian merchants cooperated with Europeans in numerous other accounts by lending money, acting as agents or suppliers, freighting their ships, sailing as nakhuda on board European ships, and providing cover when necessary. During 1693-94, following a ban on the trade of the Europeans, De Keijser, the Dutch director at Surat, bought 200,000 pounds of indigo and 30,000 pieces of chadar Dariabadi under the cover of Aga Piri.159 Such cover was indispensable so far as trade to Manila was concerned. Though wills and testaments do not throw much light on this aspectexcept when an unrecovered due was involved, traces of such co-operation are to be found in the archives of the European companies. Long before the agreement of 1688, Armenians freighted Asia-bound ships of the English Company. The Dolphin, which left London on April 29, 1646 and reached Swally in November of the same year, carried Armenians.160 In the eighteenth century, Armenians were using Danish company ships for their Europe trade. Their agents carried piece goods from Bengal and Coromandel to Europe and took back Dutch and English broad cloth to Tranquebar. This trade was organized by Armenians in Holland, Khoja Baba Sultan, the correspondent of Aga Piri Kalantar of Madras in London, and two Armenians of Madras.161 The Companies, of course, encouraged the procedure as some empty space in the Asia-bound ship was utilised in this way, and the Armenians had to pay freight charges. But it also ensured direct shipping of goods and persons and was less hazardous than the route via the Levant and then Middle East. In the Asian waters the ships belonging to European Companies ensured security
158 The dichotomy in the relationship between the English at different levels of the Company on the one hand and the Armenian merchants on the other has not escaped the attention of Baladouni in the introduction to Armenian Merchants . . . XXXII-XXXIII. 159 N.A., De Keijser and the Council at Surat to the Directors, 11 December 1694 (copy) VOC 1548, f.656. 160 See English Factories in India, vol. 8 (1646-1650): 86 and vol. 11 (1661-1664): 328; also Armenian Merchants . . . documents 62, 65, 67, 68, 71 for similar evidence. 161 RFSG, Despatches to England, vol. 3 (1711-14): 18. It is possible that Khoja Zachary, mentioned above, was one of the Madras Armenians involved in this trade.
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against pirates and other dangers at sea.162 Especially in the seventeenth century both the Dutch and English Companies often chartered whole ships to local merchants for voyages to the Persian Gulf. The Sulleiman, belonging to the Armenian Khoja Minas of Surat, was hired by the French (in huur bij de Fransen). In Basra, Muslim merchants freighted their money, and goods and sailed on board the same ship for Surat.163 The Armenians, with their contacts in India, took the responsibility for collecting the piece goods and other commodities and loading them on the companys ships.164 Khoja Minas, who owned at least ve ships himself, freighted English company ships.165 The George that left Surat for Gombroon in December 1669, was permitted to carry any horse that would be shipped by the agent of Khoja Minas.166 Minas had purchased two ships from the English who again rented the ships and sent them to Persia.167 While soliciting the favour and assistance of Khoja Israel Sarhad, the leading Armenian merchant in Bengal, in obtaining a good freight of ne piece goods in Bengal for the Sedgewick he was planning to send to Persia in September 1700, Thomas Pitt referred to his acquaintance with Sarhad and his uncle Khoja Panous Kalantar in London.168 In December 1702 Sarhad offered the English company Rs. 38,000 for freighting the Colchester for a voyage to Gombroon and Basra.169 The same year the council of Fort St. George let out the Phoenix to an Armenian for a voyage to Persia via Bengal.170 The French ship Pontchartreijn renamed Queen Louise carried freightgoods worth Rs. 300,000 belonging to Armenian merchants.171 All the three ships that arrived in
Armenian Merchants, document 209. N.A. Dag Register, Surat, 29 August, 1685, VOC 1409, ff.1616-1617. 164 Armenian Merchants, document 257. The English Company servants in Bengal stated that Armenians bought textiles 10 to 20 per cent cheaper than them. R.F.S.G., Despatches to England, v.1, (1694-96): 35. 165 R. Maloni, European Merchant Capital and the Indian Economy: a Historical Reconstruction based on Surat Factory Records, 1630-1638 (Delhi: Manohar, 1992), 367-69. 166 English Factories in India, vol. 13 (1668-69): 204. 167 N.A., Surat-Batavia, 4 March, 1268, VOC 1264, ff.1275-87. 168 C. R. Wilson, Early Annals of the English in Bengal, 1: 369-71. 169 S. Chaudhuri, Bengal merchants and commercial organisation in the second half of the seventeenth century, Bengal Past and Present, 90 (1971): 182-216. For Armenian merchants freighting Dutch company ships on the SuratBandar Abbas run see R. J. Barendse, The Arabian Seas . . . 159-60. 170 RFSG, Despatches to England, vol. 2 1701/021710/11, 2. Compare: . . . It is expected that the Armenians will freight the Little London for Persia, ibid. September 12 and October 9, 1706: 52-53. 171 This was in 1704. The ship could not, however, sail to Persia as it hit the shore near Point Palmyras and had to unload the goods at Tranquebar. Generale Missiven, vol. 6, ed. W. Ph. Coolhaas, (1698-1713): 271, 336.
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Tranquebar from Denmark in 1709 were to be freighted by the Armenians to Persia.172 Again, in 1737 Armenian merchants of Madras freighted the Galatea, under Captain Mylne to Kung and Bushire.173 Similarly, Armenian merchants taking passage on board European ships in Asia was common.174 In the wake of troubles in Persia in the early eighteenth century, the agent of the English at that place proposed that the subjects of the king of Persia and their effects at Fort St. George be seized. The Council of Fort St. George maintained that such a step would put a stop to the freighting of the Companys ships that year and drive away all Armenians from their settlements.175 The other routes where Armenian and European interests were intertwined were the routes to Southeast Asia, Manila and China. When the Dutch East India Company decided to close their factory at Pegu, one Portuguese and one Armenian were entrusted with the task of collecting the outstanding debts of the Company amounting to more than f.30,000.176 Researches of G. B. Souza have pointed to the involvement of Armenians in the commerce carried on by the Portuguese of Macao to Manila and India.177 Using European bottoms for consigning goods to factors, mostly a relative or a member of the community settled at ports like Mergui, Pegu and Manila seems to have been common.178 Throughout the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries Armenians assisted Europeans in their investment in India. At least till the middle of the eighteenth century European merchants needed Asian merchants, including Armenians. It was a relationship of accepting each other for mutual prot. ARMENIANS AS EMISSARIES Equally, if not more important aspect of Armenian-European relationship was the role of the Armenians as emissaries of especially the English to the Mughals. Sending emissaries to the head of a state is a practice common since ancient times. In the early modern period, the trading companies sent embassies
Ibid.: 689. H. Furber, Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient, 1600-1800 (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 1976): 285. 174 English Factories in India, vol. 6: 106. 175 RFSG, Despatches to England, vol. 3: 56. 176 Generale Missiven, vol. 4 (1675-1685): 446. 177 Cinnamon, silver and opium: Foreign shipping and trading activities at Batavia, 16841792, unpublished paper presented to the 11th Annual Conference of the World History Association, Seoul, Korea, August 15-18, 2002. 178 In 1712 the St. Juan that left Madras for Manila carried goods freighted by Armenian and Indian merchants, RFSG, Despatches to England, vol. 3: 56.
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to heads of various countries for trading privileges. The embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to the court of Jahangir is a well known case. It was a period when many attributes of Persian culture were visibly adopted by the courts in countries in South and Southeast Asia.179 Familiarity with Persian offered the Armenians easy access to the Mughal court and made them extremely suitable as emissaries. We have noted above that Emperor Akbar had employed an Armenian as his interpreter. When the king of Ethiopia sent an embassy to the Mughal emperor, he appointed Khoja Murad, an Armenian, to head the delegation.180 Sir William Norris, on his embassy to Aurangzeb, had the advantage of gaining information about the court (through his accessory Pedro Pereira) from an Armenian who had been to the Emperors camp twice and had lived there some time in attendance on the Dutch envoy.181 In the late 1690s, the English company wanted to send a delegation to Zabardast Khan, General of the Mughals forces who was suppressing the revolt of Sobha Singh in Bengal. In order to secure the rights of the company against the activities of the interlopers, the English company approached Khoja Israel Sarhad, the nephew of Khoja Panous, who was sent to the camp of Zabardast Khan as the Political Agent of the English. Sarhad procured a parwana from the general for the governors of Hugli and Balasore to prevent the interlopers from taking part in the trade of Bengal.182 In spite of that, interlopers also were able to secure some trading favours for themselves from the same general. At this the English decided to send another delegation, also headed by Khoja Sarhad, who was accompanied by Mr. Walsh. It was this delegation that secured for the English the right to farm the three townships of Sutanuti, Govindpur and Calcutta in Bengal in 1698 for the sum of Rs. 16,000.183 At the camp, Sarhad was able to win the friendship of the young prince Farrukhsiyar. On September 22, 1698 the Sutanuti council noted that Mr. Walsh and Khoja Sarhad went back from the camp having nished all business to our greatest satisfaction.184 They had promised the young prince three small pieces of brass cannon.185
179 S. Subrahmanyam, Persianization and Mercantilism: two themes in the Bay of Bengal History, 1400-1700, in Prakash and Lombard eds., Commerce and Culture. . . . 180 E. J. Van Donzel, Foreign Relations of Ethiopia, 1642-1700: documents related to the journeys of Khodja Murad (Istanbul: Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut, 1979). I am greatful to Dirk Kolff for drawing my attention to this work. 181 H. Das, The Norris Embassy to Aurangzeb, (1699-1702) (Calcutta: Firma KLM, 1959): 211-12. 182 C. R. Wilson, ed., Old Fort William in Bengal. A Selection of Ofcial Documents dealing with its History. Indian Records Series, 2 vols. (London, 1906) vol. 1: 25-27. 183 Ibid., 36-38. 184 Ibid. 185 Ibid.
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Khoja Sarhad, who was engaged in sea-borne trade, and acted as vakil or agent of (his cousin) Aga Piri Kalantar of Fort St. George, seems to have been less successful in trade and was indebted to Aga Piri for a considerable sum. Unable to recover his dues, Aga Piri appealed to the English in Bengal to oblige Khoja Sarhad to adjust his accounts.186 This debt was not recovered as late as 1709. 187 The next we hear of Khoja Sarhad is in 1713 when the English intended to send a deputation to Farrukhsiyar, now Emperor at Delhi, for the renewal of their privilege of trading free of duties in return for a lump sum payment of Rs. 3,000.188 At the meeting held on January 27, 1714 the council noted the reasons for appointing Khoja Sarhad on the mission to the court of the Great Mughal. By his prudent conduct, Sarhad had been able to procure the grant of Calcutta for the English. Secondly, Sarhad knew the Emperor personally who would be favourably disposed to him as the latter had presented the Emperor with diverse toys in his youth. More importantly,
It is absolutely necessary that some person who is perfect master of the Persian language and understands our affairs very well, and what may be useful for us, be sent, and we know no man so qualied in both these respects as Cojah Surhaud. He is therefore, the ttest man we can send.
The council apprehended that sending Sarhad as vakil, and inferior to the Englishmen in the embassy would draw the Emperors attention to the Armenian. Therefore, on June 5, 1714, the Calcutta council unanimously agreed that
Cojah Surhaud, whose interest &c. at Court has already had the good effect of procuring us the Hasbull-Hukum and several other useful orders from Court be sent to assist in suing for the Kings Phirmaund, and that he sit and vote in the Council along with the three English gentlemen . . .
Consequently, Mr. John Surmon was appointed the rst, Khoja Sarhad second and Mr. John Pratt third in the embassy to Farrukhsiyar. Sarhad was to try to conrm all the privileges that the English enjoyed in the Mughals dominions to date in a new farman. He was to see that the boundary of the English territory would be extended towards the south so as to include Kidderpore and the shore on the other side of the river in Howrah. He was also obliged to try
RFSG, Despatches to England, vol. 2: 67. Ibid. 188 The following information on the Surmon Embassy (including the quotations) is based on Early Annals of the English in Bengal, vol. 2: 157-58. The Dutch referred to him as the notorious Armenian bankrupt (berugten Armeensch banquerottier), Generale Missiven, vol. 7 (1713-1725): 106.
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to obtain the island of Diu off Masulipatnam for the council of Fort St. George. A reward of Rs. 50,000 would be given to Sarhad if he was successful in all these efforts. He would not get anything if he failed. Secondly, Sarhad was to obtain for the English the privilege to trade free of customs at Surat for which he would get another Rs. 50,000. Also in this case he was not to receive anything if he was not successful. But in any case Sarhad was to try to get the customs duty paid by the English at Surat reduced to 2.5 percent. Mr. Edward Stephenson was appointed secretary and accountant to the negotiation with the responsibility to take down the minutes of consultation. Dr. William Hamilton, the companys surgeon, cured Farrukhsiyar from a malignant distemper he had been suffering from. The farman that Farrukhsiyar granted the English in 1717 was more respected than the old one and made them the most favoured nation in Bengal. The following decades saw the growth of Calcutta, its eet and the country trade of the British.189 Even before the formation of the embassy, the Fort William Council, however, was not unanimous about the inclusion of Khoja Sarhad in it. It was apprehended that Sarhad, if not well looked after, would play tricks and enrich himself at the cost of the Company.190 His attitude during the journey evoked suspicion and irritation among the English.191 The success of the Surman Embassy was ascribed to the services of Dr. Hamilton.192 The service of the Armenians was, however, indispensable in all political negotiations of the English in India in the eighteenth century. The council of Fort St. George often consulted Aga Piri, among others, for their negotiation with the governor of Golconda.193 When it was considered necessary to send presents to the nawab of Arcot, Khoja Petrus and Hodjee Addy were entrusted
189 M. J. Seth quoted from William Bolts to show that contemporary Englishmen knew the contribution Sarhad made in getting the farman renewed in 1717. See Armenians in India . . . 427. Compare the following statement made by C. R. Wilson about Khoja Sarhad: He is said to have been personally known to Prince Farrukhsiyar, the son of Prince Azmush-shn, from whom he procured permission to rent the three townships. He afterwards played a conspicuous, but not altogether creditable part in the Surman Embassy to Delhi in the years 1715 to 1717, Old Fort William: 25, n. 3. 190 Early Annals, vol. 2: 154-55; W. K. Firminger, Historical Introduction to the Bengal Portion of the Fifth Report (Calcutta: Indian Studies Past & Present, 1962): 87. 191 After the sanad from the diwan at Murshidabad was obtained, Sarhad had left for Patna when the rest of the embassy was still in Murshidabad; when the embassy left Delhi after the imperial rman had been obtained, Sarhad stayed on in Delhi. C. R. Wilson, Early Annals, vol. 2: 193, 214, 281. 192 W. K. Firminger, Historical Introduction: 87. 193 RFSG, Diary and Consultation Book, 1713: 4, 24, 56, 67, 70, 71.
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with the task of procuring items suitable for the occasion.194 Khoja Petrus Aratoon, popularly known as the Armenian Petrus of Clive, was an Armenian merchant-diplomat of Saidabad, a town in the silk producing region near the court at Murshidabad. He appeared on the scene after the siege of Calcutta by Sirajuddaula in 1756. Together with a Jewish friend, he supplied provisions to the English at Fulta for six months before the arrival of Robert Clive and Admiral Watson from Madras. He was employed as condential agent by Clive to negotiate with Mir Jafar for overthrowing Siraj-uddaula. Petrus was never rewarded for his services to the Company.195 He was employed again for negotiating with Mir Qasim for deposing Mir Jafar. But the English never completely trusted Khoja Petrus who, in their eyes, was a spy of the nawab in Calcutta. This was due to the fact that Khoja Gregory, a brother of Petrus, was the commander-in-chief of the army of Mir Qasim. When war broke out between the English and Mir Qasim in 1763, Petrus was kept as a hostage by Major Adams in his camp lest Ellis, the chief of Patna, and English troops suffer at the hands of his brother.196 A few members of the council in Calcutta wanted to have Petrus ousted from the town on the grounds that he was a spy of the nawab. Vansittart, president of the council of Fort William, pointed out that it would be arbitrary to order a merchant of long standing out of the settlement. Petrus was forbidden to act as vakil to the nawab in future.197 The role of Khoja Wajid during the Plassey Conspiracy marked the culmination of the Armenian-European relationship prior to the establishment of colonial rule in India. It is well known that Plassey witnessed how the vested interests of the ofcials of the court, indigenous merchants, bankers and foreign trading companies combined to create a rupture that changed the course of the history of India. According to Orme, Wajid was the principal merchant of the province of Bengal.198 He was settled in Hugli and had transactions with the French and the Dutch through lodges at both Chandernagore and Chinsura. His
Ibid. 1743: 55. M. J. Seth, Armenians in India: 328-32. 196 H. Vansittart, A Narrative of the Transactions in Bengal 1760-1764, ed. by A. C. Banerjee and B. K. Ghosh (Kolkata: K. P. Bagchi, 1976) henceforth Narrative, passim; S. C. Hill, Bengal in 1756-1757, passim. M. J. Seth, The Armenians in India . . . for Khoja Petrus; for a recent biography of Khoja Gregory see B. Bhattacharya, Between Fact and Fiction: Khoja Gregory alias Gurguin Khan, the evil genius of Mir Qasim, in J. J. L. Gommans and O. Prakash eds. Circumambulations in South Asian History: essays in honour of Dirk H. A. Kolff (Leiden: Brill, 2003): 133-58. 197 James Long, Selections from Unpublished Records: 421, document 647 and note. 198 Robert Orme, Military Transactions, vol. 2: 58.
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step brother Jubbo lived in Chinsura.199 Through his lodges at Patna and Surat he was engaged in inland trade. Wajid owned ve ships and had extensive overseas trade with Mocha and Basra. In 1756, Collet and Watts described Khoja Wajid as the greatest merchant in Bengal having great inuence with the Nabab.200 He had close contact with the Jagat Seths and other merchants of Patna.201 He had large stakes in the salt trade of Bengal and the opium trade of Bihar. Through his contacts in the nawabs darbar, he was able to secure the salt farm in 1752 and the saltpetre farm in 1753. During the few years before the battle of Plassey, Wajid enjoyed the monopoly of saltpetre and salt. As the leader of the Asian merchants, he mediated in conicts between Asian and European merchants. On behalf of the nawab, he maintained diplomatic negotiations with the Danish, Dutch, English and French Companies. He represented the French in the nawabs darbar and Monsieur Law, the chief of the French factory at Kashimbazar who kept a watchful eye on the affairs of the court in Murshidabad, described him as a condential agent with the Europeans.202 It appears from the letters Siraj wrote to Wajid that the nawab conded in the latter, through whom he negotiated with the Europeans.203 When the English plundered Hugli during the dispute with Siraj, Wajid was in favour of having the dispute settled through the mediation of the French. But as war with the French was imminent, Clive did not agree to the proposal and wanted Wajid and the banker nancier Jagat Seth to settle the dispute.204 As the English attacked Chandernagore, Wajid wanted the nawab to assist the French with his troops and arranged a meeting between Law and the nawab.205 For a long time Wajid wanted to counterbalance the English with the French in the nawabs court. But the growing political and military power of the English manifested in their activity in Coromandelas pointed out by Clive in his letter to Wajidand the recapture of Calcutta and the plunder of Hugli seems to have persuaded Wajid not to alienate the English and to join in the conspiracy against the nawab. He
S. C. Hill, Bengal in 1756-57, vol. 2, no. 167. S. Chaudhuri, Merchants, companies and rulers: Bengal in the Eighteenth Century, in Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, v. XXXI, 93-94. 201 K. Chatterjee, Merchants, politics and society in early modern India: Bihar: 1733-1820: 72. 202 S. C. Hill, Bengal in 1756-57, vol. 3, Appendix III, translation of the rst part of a memoir by Monsieur Jean Law, chief of the French factory at Kashimbazar: 187. 203 S. C. Hill, Bengal in 1756-57, vol. 1: 3-5. 204 Letter from Khoja Wajid to Clive, in S. C. Hill, Bengal in 1756-57, vol. 2: 110 (no. 166) and Clives letter to Khoja Wajid, ibid. 125-6 (no. 175). 205 Nawabi troops, were, however, not sent.
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sent his chief gumastah, Shibbabu, to Clive who informed Pigot in Madras that he was conspiring with powerful persons including Jagat Seth and Khoja Wajid.206 It was Wajid who told Watts that he had seen the nawab writing to the French commander Bussy asking him to proceed for Bengal. He again informed the English that Bussy had written the nawab that he would not be able to go to Bengal and that on receiving this news, the nawab had asked Law to leave Patna for Murshidabad. Arriving at Bhagalpur, Law informed Wajid that he was on his way to Murshidabad. This letter also was handed over to the English by Wajid. Within two years after the battle of Plassey (1757) that yielded the English political power in Bengal, Wajid was imprisoned on the grounds that he was conspiring with the Dutch and the French. CONCLUSION This paper has sought to examine the relationship between Armenian merchants and the increasing European trade that paved the way for creating the colonial empire in India. In doing so, it has been necessary rst to understand how the Armenian merchants organized their trade. Mobility and exibility had always been characteristics of this ethno-religious network, and these characteristics reached their height in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The deportation of a large number of Armenians to Persia by Shah Abbas in the beginning of the seventeenth century was instrumental in a major eastward surge of Armenians. It coincided with the arrival of the European Companies in Asia when Armenians, as neutral Christians, could make use of the increasing Europeanin addition to Asianshipping in the Indian Ocean region. Familiarity of the Armenians with the trading world of Asia added a different dimension to their relationship with Europeansthe English in particularand helped the Armenians in further extending their activities. Unlike the modern joint-stock European Companies, Armenians were part of a pre-modern structure of trade operating on the basis of extended family and other kinship networks. Both the structures co-existed with each other, but the parameters of the two structures were totally different. Whereas the Companies drew their strength from the state that backed them, private networks of trade maintained by members of the community remained the source of strength of the Armenians. One cannot compare the two structures; one can only emphasize their differences.
206
Letter from Clive to Pigot, Bengal in 1756-57, 2: 368-69, (no. 371).
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The second issue evolved around the relationship between the Armenians and Europeans. The logic of the growth and development of European trade in Asia was that while from the sixteenth century onwards there had been a section of Asian rulers and merchants who opposed the Europeans, there were places where they received co-operation, exemplied in the classic cases of Calicut and Cochin. The different forms of co-operation between the Asians and the Europeans in the Asian waters in the early modern period led the American historian Holden Furber to term this period as the age of partnership.207 Writing extensively on the Armenians in India M. J. Seth showed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries how the English owed their position in India to the Armenians. He called Khoja Sarhad Israeli, the merchant who negotiated with the nawab of Bengal and then with the Mughal Emperor to obtain territories and privileges that really laid the foundation of British empire in India, as the political stepping stone of the English. Baghdiantz Mccabe, in her work on the Armenians in Persia, has dismissed the notion of co-operation between Armenians and Europeans stating that co-operation was exception and not a regular practice. According to her, the position of Seth was politically motivated, guided by the idea to attract the attention of the Imperial crown to the state of the Armenians in India and elsewhere. Our study of the last wills and testaments of Armenian merchants, Company documents and contemporary travel accounts conrms the position of Seth. Armenians in India, and elsewhere in Asia, formed part of the existing structure of trade. In that structure, as pointed out by Siraj-uddaula, the nawab of Bengal, merchants of foreign origin traded side by side with indigenous merchants. When the Mughals, and their representatives in different parts of India, welcomed the presence of Europeans, it was in this light. This paper has tried to show that Armenian support for European endeavour went far beyond the horizons of mere trading activities. Indeed, as M. J. Seth noticed, Khoja Sarhad was the political stepping stone for the English in India. But Sarhad himself was hardly aware of the future implications of the benets he was securing for the English. It was only gradually that leading Armenians and indigenous merchants would comprehend the difference between the prevalent structure and the new overpowering structure that was being imposed on them. Khoja Wajid, the
207 H. Furber, Asia and the West as partners before Empire and After, Journal of Asian Studies, v. XXVIII, 1969 (4), 711-21; this was the theme of the collection of essays in B. B. Kling and M. N. Pearson ed., The Age of Partnership: Europeans in Asia before Dominion (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1979). For further discussion on this issue, see S. Subrahmanyam, Political Economy of Commerce.
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merchant prince of Bengal sounds almost helpless when we hear him charging the English during the course of a legal case between the English and the leading merchants Amirchand-Deepchand in 1744:
you have overset the custom of merchants.208
But by that time the die had already been cast. Individual merchants, Armenians and Indians alike, were not able to inuence the larger economic decisions and acting in self interest, they assisted Europeans. When matters came to a head in the middle of the eighteenth century, they had reached a point of no return. BIBLIOGRAPHY
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ARMENIAN EUROPEAN RELATIONSHIP IN INDIA, 1500-1800: NO ARMENIAN FOUNDATION FOR EUROPEAN EMPIRE?

ARMENIAN EUROPEAN RELATIONSHIP IN INDIA, 1500-1800

ARMENIAN EUROPEAN RELATIONSHIP IN INDIA, 1500-1800

ARMENIAN EUROPEAN RELATIONSHIP IN INDIA, 1500-1800

ARMENIAN EUROPEAN RELATIONSHIP IN INDIA, 1500-1800

ARMENIAN EUROPEAN RELATIONSHIP IN INDIA, 1500-1800

ARMENIAN EUROPEAN RELATIONSHIP IN INDIA, 1500-1800

ARMENIAN EUROPEAN RELATIONSHIP IN INDIA, 1500-1800

ARMENIAN EUROPEAN RELATIONSHIP IN INDIA, 1500-1800

ARMENIAN EUROPEAN RELATIONSHIP IN INDIA, 1500-1800

ARMENIAN EUROPEAN RELATIONSHIP IN INDIA, 1500-1800

ARMENIAN EUROPEAN RELATIONSHIP IN INDIA, 1500-1800

ARMENIAN EUROPEAN RELATIONSHIP IN INDIA, 1500-1800

ARMENIAN EUROPEAN RELATIONSHIP IN INDIA, 1500-1800

ARMENIAN EUROPEAN RELATIONSHIP IN INDIA, 1500-1800

ARMENIAN EUROPEAN RELATIONSHIP IN INDIA, 1500-1800

ARMENIAN EUROPEAN RELATIONSHIP IN INDIA, 1500-1800

ARMENIAN EUROPEAN RELATIONSHIP IN INDIA, 1500-1800

ARMENIAN EUROPEAN RELATIONSHIP IN INDIA, 1500-1800

ARMENIAN EUROPEAN RELATIONSHIP IN INDIA, 1500-1800

Letter from Clive to Pigot, Bengal in 1756-57, 2: 368-69, (no. 371).

ARMENIAN EUROPEAN RELATIONSHIP IN INDIA, 1500-1800

K. Chatterjee, Merchants, Politics and Society: 77.

ARMENIAN EUROPEAN RELATIONSHIP IN INDIA, 1500-1800

ARMENIAN EUROPEAN RELATIONSHIP IN INDIA, 1500-1800

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