In Bengal, where the staples of commerce could not be purchased near the coast but had to be procured from places lying far up the waterways of the province, the Company was subject to payment of tolls at numerous customs-posts and to vexatious demands by the local officers. In 1651 Sultan Shuja issued a firman granting the Company the privilege of trading in return for a fixed annual payment of duties worth Rs 3,000. Another nishan, granted in 1656, laid down that ” the factory of the English Company be no more troubled with demands of customs for goods imported or exported either by land or by water, nor that their goods be opened and forced from them at under-rates in any places of government by which they shall pass and repass up and down the country; but that they buy and sell freely, and without impediment”.
The Company at last decided to protect themselves by force, for which they thought it necessary to have a fortified settlement at Hugli. Hostilities actually broke out between the Mughuls and the English on the sack of Hugli by the latter in October, 1686. Hijli and the Mughul fortifications at Balasore were also stormed by the English. The English were repulsed from Hugli, and abandoning it went down the river to a fever-stricken island at the mouth of the river, whence the wise English agent, Job Charnock, opened negotiations which ended in securing permission for the English to return to Sutanuti in the autumn of 1687. But hostilities were renewed in the next year when a fresh naval force was sent from London, under Captain William Heath, with orders to seize Chittagong. The commander however, failed in his object and then returned to Madras.
These rash and unwise actions on the part of the English stopped when the President and Council of Bombay concluded a peace with the Mughul Emperor in 1690. Job Charnock returned to Bengal in August, 1690, and established an English factory at Sutanuti. Thus was laid “the foundation of the future capital of British India, the first step in the realization of the half-conscious prophecy of 1687″. Under the orders of the Mughul Emperor, Ibrahim Khan, successor of Shaista Khan in the government of Bengal, issued a firman in February, 1691, granting the English exemption from the payment of customs-duties in return for Rs. 3,000 a year. Owing to the rebellion of Sobha Singh, a zamindar in the district of Burdwan, the English got an excuse to fortify their new factory in 1696, and in 1698 they were granted the zamindari of the three villages of Sutanuti, Kalikata (Kalighata=Calcutta) and Govindapur on payment of Rs. 1,200 to the previous proprietors. In 1700 the English factories in Bengal were placed under the separate control of a President and Council, established in the now fortified settlement which was henceforth named Fort William, Sir Charles Eyre being the first President of Fort William. The position of the Company in its Bengal settlement was somewhat peculiar. It held Bombay on behalf of the English Crown, no Indian prince having any jurisdiction there. At Madras its powers were based on the acquiescence of the Indian rulers and also on its English characters. ” In Bengal this dual source of the Company’s position was much more evident.” It owed its authority over the English subjects here to English laws and charters; but over the Indian inhabitants it exercised authority as a zamindar.
The prosperity of the Company under Charles II and James II roused the jealousy of its enemies who resented its monopoly of trading privileges after the Revolution of 1688, which gave power to the Whigs. The Whigs were opposed to a body of traders who had been in alliance with the old government. They lent assistance to the interlopers, as the private traders were called. In 1694 the House of Commons passed a resolution to the effect that all the subjects of England had an equal right to trade in India unless prohibited by statute. In 1698 a Bill was passed into law establishing a new Company on the lines of a regulated Company.
The expansion of the English East India Company’s trade and influence in India during the first forty years of the eighteenth century was quiet and gradual, in spite of the political disorders of the period, which only created occasional, but not very serious, hindrances for it and were easily overcome. The most important event in the history of the Company during this period was its embassy to the Mughul court in 1715, sent with a view to securing privileges throughout Mughul India and some villages round Calcutta. It was conducted from Calcutta by John Surman, assisted by Edward Stephenson. William Hamilton accompanied it as a surgeon and an Armenian named Khwaja Serhud as an interpreter. Hamilton succeeded in curing the Emperor Farrukhsiyar of a painful disease, and he, being thus pleased with the English, issued firmans complying with their request and directed the governors of the provinces to observe them. The privilege enjoyed by the English of trading in Bengal, free of all duties, subject to the annual payment of Rs. 3,000 per annum, was confirmed; they were permitted to rent additional territory round Calcutta; their old privilege of exemption from dues throughout the province of Hyderabad was retained, they being required to pay only the existing rent for Madras; they were exempted from the payment of all customs and dues at Surat hitherto paid by them, in return for an annual sum of Rs. 10,000; and the coins of the Company minted at Bombay were allowed to have currency throughout the Mughul dominions. In Bengal, Murshid Quli Jafar Khan, a strong and able governor, opposed the grant of the additional villages to the English. Still, the other rights secured by the firman of 1716-17 greatly furthered their interests. It has been aptly described by Orme as the ” Magna Charta of the Company”. The trade of the Company in Bengal gradually prospered, in spite of the occasional demands and exactions of the local officials. The importance of Calcutta increased so that it came to have a population of 100,000 by A.D. 1735, and the Company’s shipping at the port during the ten years following the embassy of 1715 amounted to ten thousand tons a year.
