The colony of Pennsylvania was not settled by Pen till the year 1680: he found there, however, many English families, and a considerable number of Dutch and Swedes. The wise regulations of Pen soon drew to him industrious settlers; but the commerce in which they engaged did not become so considerable as to demand our notice.
III. The commercial intercourse of England with India, which has now grown to such extent and importance, and from which has sprung the anomaly of merchant-sovereigns over one of the richest and most populous districts of the globe, began in the reign of Elizabeth. The English Levant Company, in their attempts to extend their trade with the East, seem first to have reached Hindostan, in 1584, with English merchandize. About the same time the queen granted introductory letters to some adventurers to the king of Cambaya; these men travelled through Bengal to Pegu and Malacca, but do not seem to have reached China. They, however, obtained much useful information respecting the best mode of conducting the trade to the East.
The first English ship sailed to the East Indies in the year 1591; but the voyage was rather a warlike than a commercial one, the object being to attack the Portuguese; and even in this respect it was very unfortunate. A similar enterprize, undertaken in 1593, seems, by its success, to have contributed very materially to the commercial intercourse between England and India; for a fleet of the queen's ships and some merchant ships having captured a very large East India carrack belonging to the Spaniards or Portuguese, brought her into Dartmouth: if she excited astonishment at her size, being of the burthen of 1600 tons, with 700 men, and 36 brass cannon, she in an equal degree stimulated and enlarged the commercial desires and hopes of the English by her cargo. This consisted of the richest spices, calicoes, silks, gold, pearls, drugs, China ware, ebony wood, &c., and was valued at 150,000 l.
The increasing commercial spirit of the nation, which led it to look forward to a regular intercourse with India, was gratified in the first year of the seventeenth century, when the queen granted the first charter to an East India Company. She seems to have been directly led to grant this in consequence of the complaints among her subjects of the scarcity and high price of pepper; this was occasioned by the monopoly of it being in the power of the Turkey merchants and the Dutch, and from the circumstance that by our war with Portugal, we could not procure any from Lisbon. The immediate and principal object of this Company, therefore, was to obtain pepper and other spices; accordingly their ships, on their first voyage, sailed to Bantam, where they took in pepper, to the Banda isles; where they took in nutmeg and mace, and to Amboyna, where they took in cloves. On this expedition the English established a factory at Bantam. In 1610, this Company having obtained a new charter from James I., built the largest merchant ship that had ever been built in England, of the burthen of 1100 tons, which with three others they sent to India. In 1612 the English factory of Surat was established with the permission of the Great Mogul; this was soon regarded as their chief station on the west coast of India. Their first factory on the coast of Coromandel, which they formed a few years afterwards, was at Masulipatam: their great object in establishing this was to obtain more readily the cloths of Coromandel, which they found to be the most advantageous article to exchange for pepper and other spices. For at this time their trade with the East seems to have been almost entirely confined to these latter commodities. In 1613, the first English ship reached a part of the Japan territories, and a factory was established, through which trade was carried on with the Japanese, till the Dutch persuaded the emperor to expel all Europeans but themselves.
The year 1614 forms an important era in the history of our commercial intercourse with India; for Sir Thomas Roe, whom James sent ambassador to the Mogul, and who remained several years at his court, obtained from him important privileges for the East India Company. At this time, the following European commodities were chiefly in repute in India; knives of all kinds, toys, especially those of the figures of beasts, rich velvets and satins, fowling pieces, polished ambers and beads, saddles with rich furniture, swords with fine hilts inlaid, hats, pictures, Spanish wines, cloth of gold and silver, French shaggs, fine Norwich stuffs, light armour, emeralds, and other precious stones set in enamel, fine arras hangings, large looking glasses, bows and arrows, figures in brass and stone, fine cabinets, embroidered purses, needlework, French tweezer cases, perfumed gloves, belts, girdles, bone lace, dogs, plumes of feathers, comb cases richly set, prints of kings, cases of strong waters, drinking and perspective glasses, fine basons and ewers, &c. &c. In consequence of the privileges granted the East India Company by the Mogul, and by the Zamorine of Calicut, their factories were now numerous, and spread over a large extent of coast.
If we may trust the controversial pamphlets on the East India Company which were published in 1615, it appears that up to this year they had employed only twenty-four ships; four of which had been lost; the largest was 1293 tons, and the smallest 150. Their principal imports were still pepper, cloves, mace, and nutmegs, of which 615,000 lbs. were consumed in England, and the value of 218,000 l. exported: the saving in the home consumption of these articles was estimated at 70,000 l. The other imports were indigo, calicoes, China silks, benzoin, aloes, &c. Porcelain was first imported this year from Bantam. The exports consisted of bays, kersies, and broad cloths, dyed and dressed, to the value of 14,000 l.; lead, iron, and foreign merchandize, to the value of 10,000 l.; and coin and bullion, to the value of 12,000 l.; the outfit, provisions, &c. of their ships cost 64,000 l.
The Dutch, who were very jealous of the successful interference of the English in their eastern trade, attacked them in every part of India; and though a treaty was concluded between the English and the Dutch East India Company, yet the treachery and cruelty of the Dutch, especially at Amboyna, and the civil wars into which England was plunged, so injured the affairs of the English East India Company, that at the death of Charles I. its trade was almost annihilated. One beneficial consequence, however, resulted from the hostility of the Dutch; the English, driven from their old factories, established new ones at Madras and in Bengal.
Before, however, this decline of the English trade to India, we have some curious and interesting documents relating to it particularly, and to the effects produced on the cost of East Indian commodities in Europe generally, by the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope. These are supplied by Mr. Munn, in a treatise he published in 1621; in favour of the East India trade. We have already given the substance of his remarks so far as they relate to the lowering the price of Indian commodities, but as his work is more particularly applicable to, and illustrative of the state of English commerce with India, at this time, we shall here enter into some of his details.
According to them, there were six million pounds of pepper annually consumed in Europe, which used to cost, when purchased at Aleppo, brought over land thither from India, at the rate of two shillings per lb.; whereas it now cost, purchased in India, only two-pence halfpenny per lb.: the consumption of cloves was 450,000 lbs.; cost at Aleppo four shillings and nine-pence per lb., in India nine-pence: the consumption of mace was 150,000 lbs.; cost at Aleppo the same per lb. as the cloves; in India it was bought at eight-pence per lb.: the consumption of nutmegs was 400,000 lbs.; the price at Aleppo, two shillings and four-pence per lb.; in India only four-pence; the consumption of indigo was 350,000 lbs.; the price at Aleppo four shillings and four-pence per lb.; in India one and two-pence, and the consumption of raw silk was one million lbs., the price of which at Aleppo was twelve shillings per lb., and in India eight shillings. It will be remarked that this last article was purchased in India, at a rate not nearly so much below its Aleppo price as any of the other articles; pepper, on the other hand, was more reduced in price than any of the other articles. The total cost of all the articles, when purchased at Aleppo, was 1,465,000 l.; when purchased in India, 511,458 l.; the price in the latter market, therefore, was little more than one-third of their Aleppo price. As, however, the voyage from India is longer than that from Aleppo, it added, according to Mr. Munn's calculation, one-sixth to the cost of the articles beyond that of the Turkey voyage. Even after making this addition, Mr. Munn comes to the conclusion we have formerly stated, "that the said wares by the Cape of Good Hope cost us but about half the price which they will cost from Turkey."
Mr. Munn also gives the annual importation of the principal Indian goods into England, by the East India Company, and the price each article sold for in England; according to this table, the quantity of pepper was 250,000 lbs., which, bought in India for twopence halfpenny, sold in England for one shilling and eightpence:--150,000 lbs. of cloves, which bought in India for ninepence, sold in England for six shillings:--150,000 lbs. of nutmegs, bought for four-pence, sold for two shillings and sixpence:--50,000 lbs. of mace, bought for eightpence, sold for six shillings:--200,000 lbs. of indigo, bought for one shilling and twopence, sold for five shillings:--107,140 lbs. of China raw silk, bought for seven shillings, sold for twenty shillings:--and 50,000 pieces of calico, bought for seven shillings a piece, sold for twenty-six shillings.