The East India Company: The World's Most Powerful Corporation (The Story of Indian Business) by Tirthankar Roy

Author:Tirthankar Roy [Roy, Tirthankar]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9788184756135
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2012-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Piracy

In 1694, an English sea captain, Avory, raided a merchant ship belonging to the great Bohra merchant of Surat, Abdul Ghafoor. The raid upon the most important firm in western India laid bare a problem that had been growing for some time—the proliferation of European pirates. These mariners moved between private trade, plunder of ships on the high seas and service for the royal navy as privateers. Being simultaneously on the right and the wrong sides of the law, they could buy political protection with offer of a share in the profit from trade.

Avory’s raids raised popular protest in Surat. The protests threatened to become violent, even posed a threat to the life of the president, were he not meanwhile arrested and kept in irons inside the state prison. The Company got away by offering escort ships to accompany the haj-bound fleets. Two years later, Avory was followed by a more illustrious figure, William Kidd, a Scotsman who had spent the first forty years of his life in the West Indies and New York City in predatory pursuits. In 1696, he reached the pirate haven Madagascar. Thereafter, Kidd took a decision that was entirely unusual even for pirates of this time. He raided and robbed a ship returning from Mecca to India, loaded with rich Indian pilgrims. The ‘brutality was extreme, and [the pirates] carried it so far as to violate several women of rank who were on board’, reported Niccolao Manucci in 1707. Kidd probably thought he would get away without being identified, but the fleet was accompanied by a ship belonging to the Company, and it defended the party against the attack. Having been exposed, Kidd now openly prowled the west coast of India in search of prey and pillaged a number of French ships as well as friendly ones.

Aurangzeb held the English accountable for this, not without reason, for the Company representatives knew what was going on. But they did not do anything to stop it because some of the pirates, in their role as traders and privateers, helped the Company officials. Aurangzeb, however, did not take a very harsh stand against the British and his prime minister Asad Khan and naval officers diffused the threat to the Company. The dispute nevertheless unnerved the English, and they wrote frantic letters to the directors apprising them of the political risk that piracy posed for the official trading missions. These reports resulted in the sponsors of piracy to wash their hands off these episodes and deny their role. Kidd’s own political sponsors either turned against him or were out of power when Kidd was captured, tried and executed in 1701.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.