CAUSES OF THE LOSS OF CALCUTTA
(Evidence of David Rannie, Captain in E.I. Co.’s service, August, 1756)
(S. C. Hill, Bengal in 1756-57, Vol. III, pp. 283-4)
The causes of the war were principally three, viz., our acting unjustifiably by the Moors [Mahommedans]; our being tricked out of Cassim bazaar Fort, and the example shown on the coast of Coromandel, where the English and French have in a great measure, it is said, divided the country, while their respective Nabobs are no better than shadows of what they should be.
The injustice to the Moors consists in that being by their courtesy permitted to live here as merchants, to protect and judge what natives were their [our?] servants, and to trade custom free, we under that pretence protected all the Nabob’s subjects that claimed our protection, though they were neither our servants nor our merchants, and gave our dustucks or passes to numbers of natives to trade custom free, to the great prejudice of the Nabob’s revenue, nay more, we levied large duties upon goods brought into our districts from the very people that permitted us to trade custom free, and by numbers of their [our?] impositions [framed to raise the Company’s revenue] some of which were ruinous to ourselves, such as taxes on marriages, provisions, transferring land, property, etc., caused eternal clamour and complaints against us at Court.
INFLUENCE OF ENGLISH MERCHANTS ON COLONIAL POLICY
(Callender, Economic History of the United States, p. 140. Franklin, Causes of American Discontent, Works, IV, p. 249)
The colonists being thus greatly alarmed ... by the news of the Act for abolishing the legislature of New York, and the imposition of these new duties ... (accompanied by a new set of revenue officers) ... began seriously to consider their situation....
That the whole American people was forbidden the advantage of a direct importation of wine, oil and fruit from Portugal but must take them loaded with all the expense of a voyage, one thousand leagues about, being to be landed first in England, to be re-shipped for America, ... and all this, merely that a few Portugal merchants in London may gain a commission on those goods passing through their hands.... That on a slight complaint of a few Virginia merchants, nine colonies had been restrained from making paper money, become absolutely necessary to their internal commerce, from the constant remittance of their gold and silver to Britain....
Iron is to be found everywhere in America, and the beaver furs are the natural produce of that country. Hats and nails and steel are wanted there as well as here. It is of no importance to the common welfare of the empire, whether a subject of the King’s obtains his living by making hats on this or on that side of the water. Yet the hatters of England have prevailed to obtain an act in their own favour, restraining that manufacture in America; in order to oblige the Americans to send their beaver to England to be manufactured, and purchase back the hats, loaded with the charges of double transportation. In the same manner have a few nail-makers, and a still smaller body of steel-makers (perhaps there are not half a dozen of these in England) prevailed totally to forbid by an Act of Parliament the erecting of slitting-mills or steel-furnaces in America; that the Americans may be obliged to take all their nails for their buildings, and steel for their tools, from these artificers under the same disadvantages.