Honourable Company: A History of The English East India Company by John Keay

Author:John Keay
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: History, Business, Asia, British History, Amazon.com
ISBN: 9780025611696
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 1991-01-01T15:00:00+00:00

It is a wonder to us that any of you live six months, and that there are not more quarrellings and duellings amongst you, if half these liquors were guzzled down…We will not have our wine spent but at meals. If you will have it at other times, pay for it yourselves.

Alas, and unknown to the directors in London, their West Coast factors were already ‘paying for it’. This revealing letter only survives in the Madras records because it was never forwarded to Benkulen; for by the time it reached Madras, Benkulen was no longer a Company settlement.

Not that Madras was as yet aware of the disaster. In 1718 there had been more evidence of the pepper crisis with one ship being sent away from Benkulen empty and another dispatched home only half laden. There had also been accusations of perfidious treatment of the natives and rumours of a general uprising. But Collet in Madras was more preoccupied with a bitter power struggle among the English in Sumatra which threatened to undo all his good works there. After barely six months in office, his highly commended successor had been implicated in a sensational fraud and sent to England to answer for it. The man deputed to investigate the matter, who evidently had the confidence of the directors but not of Collet, took over the governorship only to be himself arraigned for a series of misdemeanours and sent a prisoner to Madras. Thomas Cooke, the new inquisitor and one of Collet’s subordinates, succeeded.

Benkulen had thus had four governors in two years. It was indicative of the West Coast’s plight and, since each renounced his predecessor’s commitments, it did nothing for peaceful relations with the local sultans. Besides crimes against the Company, one of the partisan factors stood accused of murdering two Malays, having first removed their fingers joint by joint. Such ‘provoking conduct’ had apparently resulted in a state of undeclared war, for another factor is accused of incompetence in suppressing a revolt and there is mention of much wanton destruction in the pepper plantations.

But Collet had full confidence in Cooke, his new appointee, and had already congratulated him on having restored order. He was thus happily pursuing the charges against Cooke’s predecessor when the first news from the archipelago reached Madras in 1719. It consisted of a slim and soiled package delivered by a Dutch vessel that had happened to call at Moco-Moco, one of Benkulen’s remote outstations. The covering letter read as follows.

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