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Surat During the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century: What Kind of Social Order?

A rejoinder to Lakshmi Subramanian

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Michelguglielmo Torri
Michelguglielmo Torri
Affiliation:
University of Turin
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Extract

In a recent and thought-provoking article, Dr Lakshmi Subramanian has forcefully made the case that, in the second half of the eighteenth century, the history of the West Coast of India in general and the history of the city of Surat in particular are explained by the rise of what she terms the ‘Anglo-Bania order’, namely ‘a mercantile and political order distinguished by the mutually beneficial cooperation of the English East India Company and the Bania bankers and merchants of Surat and Bombay’.More specifically, Dr Subramanian claims that the rise of the Anglo-Bania order is at the roots of the first Hindu—Muslim communal clash about which a reasonably good documentation has survived, namely the ‘great tumult’ of August 1795, when ‘the lower orders of the Muslim population fell upon the shops and houses of the Bania residents of the city, looting grain, demolishing the images of their gods and tearing up their account books’.

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Articles
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Modern Asian Studies , Volume 21 , Issue 4 , October 1987 , pp. 679 - 710
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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References

Thomas Eisemon and Filippo Sabetti's criticisms of the first draft of this paper have forced me to re-write large parts of it. Jim Masselos and Suranjan Das have crosschecked some of my references. Carlo Beccaria made a suggestion which speeded up enormously the pace of my research. I wish to thank all of them heartily.

1 Subramanian, Lakshmi, ‘Capital and Crowd in a Declining Asian Port City: The Anglo-Bania Order and the Surat Riots of 1795’, in Modern Asian Studies, 19, 2 (1985), p. 205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Ibid. The term ‘great tumult’ was sometimes used by the English for the riot of 1795 in the years following the event. See, e.g., PR XVII, p. 489.

3 Subramanian, , ‘Capital and Crowd’, p. 206Google Scholar, for her definition. See, also, her sketch of the Surat Hindu community, ibid., p. 220. The term ‘bania’ was used in the English sources as synonym of ‘broker’. Accordingly, Parsis and Muslims are sometimes indicated as ‘banias’. For example, Bishop Heber, reporting on the situation of the Surat Bohra Muslims in 1825, wrote: ‘[they] drive a trade all through this part of India as bunyans and money-lenders’. See Heber, Reginald, Narrative of a Journey…, (London: John Murray, 1849), p. 123.Google Scholar Although I find Dr Subramanian's definition somewhat misleading, I have adopted it throughout the present rejoinder for the sake of simplicity. This is because one of the aims of the present rejoinder is to criticize Dr Subramanian's description of the political role played by the group of Surat inhabitants which she defines as ‘Banias’.

4 Subramanian, , ‘Capital and Crowd’, p. 212.Google Scholar

5 Public Prs, 6 January 1755.

6 Secret Prs, 28 January 175.

7 Ibid.

8 For the failed expedition of 1758, see Secret Prs, January, February, March 1758, passim. For Ellis's request to be recalled to Bombay, Ibid.: 2 April 1758.

9 Ibid., 25 November and 5 December 1758. Pocock's squadron was in the Indian Ocean to fight the French. The significance of its role in screening Bombay and making possible the Surat expedition has already been highlighted by Shejwalkar, T. J., ‘The Surat Episode of 1759’, in Bulletin of the Deccan College Research Institute, VIII (1947), p. 185Google Scholar, and Marshall, P. J., ‘British Expansion in India in the Eighteenth Century: A Historical Revision’, in History, LX (02 1975), p. 39.Google Scholar

10 Secret Prs, 18 December 1758.

11 Spencer's letter of the 11 January 1759 was originally minuted in Secret Prs, 14 January 1759, and, later, in Public Prs, 6 February 1759. Henceforth it is quoted as ‘Spencer's 1st report’.

12 Subramanian, , ‘Capital and Crowd’, p. 212 (emphasis added).Google Scholar

13 Spencer's 1st report, para 5.

14 A list of the principal merchants and shroffs is in FRS, 30 April 1752. It includes 7 Muslims, 2 Armenians, 4 Hindus. To the names listed there, one should add that of Muncherji Cursetji, a Parsi, who, in the 1750s, emerged as one of the wealthiest merchants in town. For hints to his wealth see, e.g., FRS, 13 April 1757 and 18 November 1758. By the 1760s, the most influential merchants under English protection were all Parsis. See below.

15 This had been the situation at least since Jagannath Laldas was appointed Marfutteahin 1747, thanks to Governor Wake's protection. See FRS, 5 June and 12 July 1747 and the letters by James Fraser to the Court of Directors in IOR, E/4/461. The fact that, still in the early 1770s, the role of the English Marfutteah had not changed is shown in Public Prs., 10 June 1772 (deposition and examination of Mr. George Perrot) and 16 June 1772 (John Watson's note of dissent).

16 Spencer's 1st report, para. 5. Spencer went on explaining that the coldness of the Chellabis was due both to the fact that they managed Sidi Ahmed's trading interests and to their fear of English competition in the trade to the Middle East.

17 Spencer's 1st report, para. 6 (emphasis added).

18 For the whole paragraph, Ibid., paras 6 and 7, and Public Prs, 13 February 1759 (Spencer's letter of 4 February 1759, henceforth quoted as ‘Spencer's and report’).

19 Spencer's 1st report, paras. 7.

20 This clearly emerges from the Secret Prs of 16 January 1759, when the inner circle of the Bombay Government took the decision to launch the expedition. The decision was later ratified by the whole Government. See Public Prs, 8 February 1759. The latter is the source quoted by Dr Subramanian, who seems to be unaware of either the existence or the relevance of the Secret Prs.

21 Spencer' 1st report, para. 8.

22 Writing on 4 February, Spencer informed Bombay that the Head Syed had promised ‘to use every means in his power to facilitate our attempt by uniting the inhabitants in our favour’. Spencer's 2nd report. For further hints at the pro-English role played by the Head Syed during the 1759 campaign, see FRS, 16 and 18 February 1759.

23 For the whole campaign see FRS, from 27 December 1758, when Spencer arrived at the Surat Factory, to 4 March 1759, when the castle was taken. Another important source is Duperron, Anquetil, Zend Avesta, Ouvrage de Zoroastre, vol. 1, tome 1 (Paris: N. M. Tilliard, 1771)Google Scholar, which has the subtitle of Discours Préliminaire and is a travelogue relating Duperron's experiences in India. Duperron arrived in Surat a little before the English expedition and witnessed the conquest of the castle, which he relates on pp. CCXCIV-CCCIII.

24 FRS, 3 March 1759.

25 Giderlal, and Laldas appear in FRS, 19 02 1759.Google Scholar The latter is not to be confused with Jagannath Laldas, who is usually indicated by his first name only (variously spelled) in the English records.

26 The fact that Sidi Zafar was the real leader of what the English called ‘Pharas Caun's party’ comes out unambiguously in Spencer's and report and in FRS, 1 March 1759.

27 On Meah Achan's character see, e.g., the opinion of the Surat inhabitants as reported by the English Chief in FRS, 20 February 1748 and the evaluation of the Portuguese Chief in FRS, 22 December 1748. It is a fact that when Meah Achan made his come-back to power in 1758 by toppling Ali Nawaz Khan, he did not take any revenge on the latter, who, in spite of being his nephew and former protégé, had been instrumental in Meah Achan's fall from power in the early 1750s. On his part, Faris Khan was the man who put Surat to the torch on 12 February 1748, causing damage of the order of 15 lakhs of rupees. See Orme O. V. 147, pp. 129–30, and Anquetil Duperron, Zend Avesta, vol. 1, tome 1, p. CCLXXVIII.

28 FRS, 1, 2 and 3 March 1759.

29 FRS, 3 March 1759.

30 Spencer's 2nd report.

31 FRS, 4 and 5 August 1759. It was after the take-over of the castle that the English made a conscious effort to appear as protectors of the ‘trading interest’. See FRS, 5 August 1759 (letter to Bombay).

32 Subramanian, , ‘Capital and Crowd’, p. 213.Google Scholar

33 Ibid., fn. 23.

34 The agreement between the Governor of Bombay, Richard Bourchier, and Faris Khan was originally minuted in the Secret Prs of 12 March 1758, the date of its signature. Later, it was entered in FRS, 15 March 1759. The quotation is from article 3.

35 Treaty with Meah Achan, in FRS, 4 March 1759, article 2.

36 E.g., Spencer's 2nd report.

37 Agreement between Richard Bourchier and Faris Khan, quoted in fn. 34, article 4.

38 FRS, 4 and 5 August, 28 November 1759.

39 FRS, 28 November 1759 (‘The Arzee of Jaggernautdass Lolldass, the English Vakeel’).

40 Ibid. (‘The Nabob's Duschutt above the Arzee’).

41 Of course, this does not mean that those who, in 1759, found themselves in a position of strength were always able to keep their preeminence, nor that those who started at a disadvantage might not eventually end up among the winners.

42 Subramanian, , ‘Capital and Crowd’, p. 220.Google Scholar

43 See below. The two main branches in which Meah Achan's family was subdivided went on being extremely wealthy well after the termination of the Mughal government in Surat. See Clunes, John, Itinerary and Directory of Western India (Calcutta: Bishop's College Press, 1826), pp. 42–3Google Scholar, and [Id], An Historical Sketch of the Princes of India (Edinburgh: Andrew Shortrede, 1833), pp. 66–7.Google Scholar

44 On 17 October. See Public Prs, 3 November 1761.

45 Dadabhai was one of the two adopted sons and heirs of Manockji Nowroji, former Vakil of the English Company at Surat, who died in Bombay, leaving behind an enormous fortune amounting to 12 lakhs of rupees. Dadabhai appears to have moved back to Surat soon after the castle take-over. There he entered into business partnership with his childhood friend, Eddul Dada, himself a merchant of standing. From 1767 to 1779, the two jointly held the contract for the ‘Europe’ investment. In 1779, the two partners quarrelled and split, while their fortunes appeared on the wane. A detailed account of their career will appear in my forthcoming monograph on Surat, where I will provide the related bibliographical references, which are too long to be given here. See, however, IOR, P/417/41, pp. 470–1 (Mayor's Court Prs, 18 April 1782) for a description of Manockji Nowroji's business network, and Rustom Jessu's testimony, in FRS. 25 April 1780, for a hint at Dadabhai and Eddul as the ‘merchants who [formerly] carried on the greatest trade of any under the Company's protection’. On Danjishah Manjishah, see below.

46 This was claimed—the first of several times—by Danjishah himself in 1772. See Public Prs, 29 May 1772 (the…memorial of Dunjeeshaw…). For a confirmation of the importance of Danjishah's role as Ellis's ‘principal agent’, when the latter was Chief at Surat, ibid., 16 September 1772 (extract of Mr Ellis's letter).

47 In 1772, he claimed to be ‘at present by far the greatest trader here [in Surat] under the Hon'ble Company's protection’. See FRS, 1 September 1772 (Dunnjeeshaw's petition). On the contrary, in the 1750s, although he was already active as a broker and a shipowning merchant working in partnership with the English, he never appears as one of the main Surat merchants.

48 IOR, E/4/998, p. 905 (General letter to Bombay, 6 April 1770, para. 178).

49 Again, a detailed account of Danjishah's career and the related bibliographical references—too long to be given here—will appear in my forthcoming monograph on Surat. However, I can here anticipate that a great deal of information on Danjishah's political power and economic wealth appears in the Public Prs and the FRSs of the years 1768 and 1772, in connection with the Bombay Government and Surat Board's discussion of Danjishah's role in persecuting—at different times—Dadabhai Manockji, Arab Ali Khan and Ram Cusson Cuttaree [Ram Krishna Kathri].

50 For a preliminary investigation on those two crises, see Torri, M., ‘In the Deep Blue Sea: Surat and its Merchant Class during the Dyarchic Era (1759–1800)’, in The Indian Economic and Social History Review, XIX, 3 and 4 (1982), pp. 285ff.Google Scholar

51 I will give a detailed treatment of this topic in a forthcoming article focused on the role of the Hindu merchants in the trading world of Surat, which will form the follow-up to the present rejoinder.

52 ‘Tours… by Dr. Hove …’, in Selection from the Records of the Bombay Government, no. XVI—New Series (Bombay, 1885), p. 176.Google Scholar

53 The wealthiest among them was, very possibly, Bomonji Muncherji, who was in charge of the ‘Europe’ investments of 1794 and 1795. See Commercial Prs, 4 February 1794 and 20 March 1795. In 1795, the Company was short of money. Accordingly, Bomonji accepted ‘to proceed on his own capital and credit’, in case of the Company's inability to pay the first instalment of money due to him as contractor (some 2 lakhs of rupees). Ibid., 7 April 1795.

54 Seth, Mesrovb Jacob, Armenians in India (New Delhi: Oxford & IBH Publishing Co., 1983 (1st edn, 1937)), pp. 248–56.Google Scholar Aga Owenjohn Jacob Gerakh, possibly the wealthiest Armenian merchant in Surat, after having sustained losses of several lakhs of rupees in the early 1780s due to the loss of two ships at sea, died in 1795 leaving behind an estate worth the conspicuous sum of Rs 3,50,000. In 1788, the English characterized the Surat Armenians as ‘respectable merchants’. See FRS, 2 December 1788 (report from a Committee …). From scattered references, in the 1780s and 1790s they appear as conspicuous traders of pearls, gold and cotton, in particular to China. See, e.g., FRS, 28 March and 16 May 1782, and Mayor's Court Prs, 29 January 1796 (Nuzershaw Ruttonjeeshaw v. Bomonji Dunjeeshaw).

55 The request for military protection, advanced by the Mulla of the Bohras following the 1795 riot, had on the Surat Board an influence comparable to that of the petition by the spokesmen of the Surat Hindu community. The reason was that—as the Chief recalled—the bulk of the trade to the Gulf of Mocha was carried by the Bohras, who were ‘numerous and rich’. See FRS, 13 August 1795. Of course, Dr Subramanian conveniently forgets all that, as it does not fit her model. As for the Chellabis, a perusal of the FRSs of the 1780s and 1790s shows that they were owners of a conspicuous merchant fleet which traded from the Red Sea to China. The fact that Jonathan Duncan, when Governor of Bombay, put an end to the Surat Chief's surviving privileges on the trade to the Gulfs, following a petition by Tar Chellabi, can be considered a remarkable example of the Chellabis’ political influence.

56 For a further indicator, although an imperfect one, of the fact that the Surat Hindus were far from monopolizing the city trade, even at the time when Dr Howe rightly characterized them as ‘the first and richest merchants’ in town, see the lists of merchants paying customs at the Surat English custom house during the period from August 1786 to January 1787, in Revenue Prs. 20 February and 11 March 1787.

57 Subramanian, , ‘Capital and Crowd’, p. 222 (emphasis added).Google Scholar

58 Torri, , ‘In the Deep Blue Sea’, pp. 271–5.Google Scholar

59 The petition is in Public Prs, 18 September 1770. In Modern Asian Studies, the date is given as 16 September (fn. 38). However, I suspect it to be a printing error, as no petition appears under that date. The identity between the text and signature of the petition as minuted in the proceedings kept at the IOR—where I consulted them—and at the Bombay Archives—where Dr Subramanian appears to have worked—has kindly been verified on my behalf by Jim Masselos. The petition is preceded by the seals of the three Syeds quoted by Dr Subramanian. However, Dr Subramanian cannot possibly be unaware of the fact that the seals of Syeds, Qazis and Shaikhs, when preceding the text of a document, served to certify its authenticity and not to sign it. Of course, such documents were not necessarily signed by people who were all Muslims. For examples see IOR, G/36/74, p. 608, and G/36/75, pp. 823–4.

60 Subramanian, , ‘Capital and Crowd’, p. 220.Google Scholar

61 This and the next section are based on material originally assembled for an article entitled ‘The Masters of Surat in the 1790s’, which was announced as forthcoming in my ‘In the Deep Blue Sea’, fn. 115. Material related to the merchant élites, assembled for the same article, will be used in my forthcoming article on the Hindu merchants and the trading world of Surat. Of course, all this makes the publication of ‘The Masters of Surat’ redundant.

62 No English civil servant in Surat was responsible for any police functions. When the Bombay Mayor's Court ordered the detention and transfer to Bombay of some English subject residing in Surat, a committee in charge of executing the order had to be created on purpose.

63 E.g., FRS, 27 November 1780, 13 September 1792, 22 October 1795 (Chief's letter on Chandoo Bimjee's case) and PR XVII. pp. 141–4.

64 On the working of the custom houses see my ‘Social Groups and Commercial Wealth Redistribution’, in Studies in History, 1, 1, n.s. (1985).Google Scholar The fact that only a minor part of the tax receipts exacted by the Mughal administration came from the custom houses and the way in which taxes were exacted is shown in the documents collected in PR XVII, passim.

65 E.g., FRS, 1 May, 2 May, 19 July, 20 July 1780.

66 FRS, 31 May, 18 and 24 December 1776.

67 Public Prs, 26 June 1767. Dr Subramanian hints at ‘the debased currency of Bombay’ (p. 217). As a matter of fact, at least in the 1760s and 1770s, Bombay rupees had a much higher level of purity than either Surat or Broach rupees.

68 Complete references would be too long. See, however, Public Prs, 26 July, 3 and 10 September, 8 October 1767; 3, 7 and 28 June 1768; 16 May and 28 October 1769; 16 June 1770; and FRS, 30 August 1769.

69 Public Prs, 14 July, 21 August, 16 and 18 September, 16 and 26 October 1770; 15 and 19 March 1771.

70 FRS, 13 October 1772 (emphasis added).

71 Public Prs, 21 October 1772. The mint regulations of 1772 remained in force up to 1797. Significantly, they were changed following a request of Mir Nizamuddin, the then ruling Nawab.

72 For example, in connection with the first expedition against Broach of 1772, the Nawab contributed a sizeable military force, personally and competently led by one of his main advisors, the Bakshi; Sidi Zafar Yab Khan furnished logistic support to the English troops; the Naib—who was then Ali Nawaz Khan—and the Head Syed gathered intelligence and tried to suborn on behalf of the English the troops defending Broach. See Public Prs, 26 June 1772.

73 FRS, 1 February 1793 (correspondence between John Griffith, Chief of Surat, and William Palmer, Resident with Mahadaji Shindia).

74 Without any doubt, the most independent-minded Mughal noble in Surat was, during the second half of the 18th century, Mir Amiruddin, the Bakshi. However, he, too, had good personal relations with some of the Company's servants in Surat. See IOR; Home Miscellaneous 438, p. 50 (William Ewer's report). On their part, both Nawab Mir Hafizuddin and Nawab Mir Nizamuddin had close connections with some of the Company's top servants, such as Benjamin Jervis, Daniel Draper and Daniel Seton. On the first two see PR XVII, pp. 98, 100. On the last one, see FRS, 8 July 1796 (translate [sic] of a Rocca from the Nabob). There is no doubt that Daniel Seton, when Chief at Surat, consistently acted as the advocate of Mir Nizamuddin's interests vis-à-vis the Bombay Government.

75 For a telling case, see Stavorinus, J. S., Voyages to the East Indies (London: G. G. and J. Robinson, vol. 3, 1781), pp. 59–62.Google Scholar

76 The French Consul, Anquetil de Briancourt, who considered the Nawab nothing more than an English puppet, nevertheless admitted that ‘his [Nawab Mir Hafizuddin's] own interests alone touch him; in this point he is stubborn’. After which, de Briancourt relates one of the cases in which the Nawab successfully refused to implement a policy favoured by the English. See Hatalkar, V. G. (ed.), French Records (Bombay: State Board for Literature and Culture, vol. 1, 1978), p. 76.Google Scholar On the same case see FRS, 8 November 1776.

77 This is a very rough estimate, as it is based on conflicting accounts collected by the English when they put an end to the Mughal power in Surat. These accounts are in PR XVII, pp. 283–393. On the coldness subsisting between the Nawab on the one side and the Bakshi and Sidi Zafar on the other, see, e.g., PR XVII, pp. 96 (para. 129) and 152 (para. 19).

78 E.g., FRS, 1 July 1796 (Chief's minute, para. 20), on Sidi Mufta, and Ibid., 13 December 1797 (Committee's minute, para. 2), on Sidi Zamarud.

79 The names of Sidi Zamarud and Sidi Mufta never appear in the English records covering Mir Hafizuddin's reign. For the date of Kirparam's accession to power, see PR XVII, p. 356. It is worth recalling that Kirparam's father, Miaram, had been Teg Bakht Khan's Diwan. Ibid., p. 317. Kirparam went on being the ‘man of business’ of Mir Nizamuddin's younger brother and successor, playing a key role in the negotiations which terminated Mughal power in Surat. Ibid., pp. 159, 175, 176, 467, 471, 480, 486.

80 Ibid., pp. 94, 95, 99, 100.

81 In 1770, at Faris Khan's death, the Surat Board proposed that the Bakshi should be chosen as Naib. The Bombay Government, headed by Thomas Hodges, overruled the Surat Board, as the Bakshi was a man of ‘too great abilities’. See Public Prs, 27 November 1770 (2nd letter from Surat of 23 November) and 18 December 1770 (consultation). For a similarly positive evaluation, made by Daniel Seton in 1799, see PR XVII, p. 455.

82 Ibid., pp. 137, 464, 466, 467–8, on Sidi Zafar's collaborators. The quotation (p. 464) is from a letter of Daniel Seton of 1799. On the Bakshi's servant Ibid., p. 136.

83 Based on the information given Ibid., pp. 297, 311, 316, 322, 364–5. The number of Amildars who administered the Nawab, the Bakshi and Sidi Zafar's land revenues was 12, 4 and 8 respectively. But some Amildars managed the land revenues of more than one of the different branches of the Mughal polity.

84 Ibid. On Womiram, Ibid., pp. 297, 311.

85 Ibid., pp. 355–66 (Kerparam's account of the Mokauts).

86 Compare the various reports on the Surat revenues, ibid., pp. 283–314, 356–66, 392–3. See, also, FRS, 24 December 1776. The names of Sidi Mufta and Arjunji Nath Tarwady appear in PR XVII, p. 309.

87 Of course, Sidi Mufta and Tarwady were members of the ruling class, but this for reasons quite unrelated to the fact that they occasionally managed some mokauts.

88 FRS, 15 June 1795 (letter from the Nabob to the President on the Banias Purvodass and Gopaldass) and 29 June 1795.

89 PR XVII, pp. 311, 312.

90 References to Babul Mehta are scattered throughout the FRSs. See. e.g., FRS, 24 November 1759, 10 and 18 January 1771, 8 and 17 October 1778, 11 February 1779, 4 and 25 February 1797. See, also, PR XVII, p. 252. More in general, on the administration of the Mughal custom houses, see my ‘Social Groups and Commercial Wealth’.

91 This is too complex a problem to be broached here. I will expand on it in my forthcoming monograph. An example of Nawab Mir Nizamuddin resisting the claims of the Bombay Mayor's Court has been given above.

92 Dr Subramanian, in describing the judicial system as she claims it was in Teg Bakht Khan's time, states that ‘the Durbar adalat [was] under the Nawab's brother, Meer Nasiruddin Khan’ (p. 211). However, Mir Nasiruddin, who was actually Nawab Mir Nizamuddin's younger brother, in Teg Bakht Khan's time had not yet been born! (He was 30 years old in March 1790, see PR XVII, p. 76). The report on which Dr Subramanian draws her description of the Surat judicial system is available in both FRS, 13 December 1797, and PR XVII, pp. 135–8. See, also, the Nawab's comments on it in FRS, 24 January 1798, and PR XVII, pp. 139–41. My examination of the FRSs from the 1740s up to 1800 has not uncovered any other detailed description of the Surat judicial system. However, some information on how it worked in the 1770s can be gathered from the Chief's remarks in FRS, 27 November 1780.

93 Dr Subramanian seems quite unaware of this and appears convinced that the Surat Kathris were merely a jati of weavers. See her ‘Capital and Crowd’, p. 220.Google Scholar

94 For the whole paragraph see FRS, 13 December 1797 (or PR XVII, pp. 135–8 ). The remarks of the Chief on the administration of Mughal justice, as they appear in FRS, 27 November 1780, confirm that, even then, the Nawab employed both Muslim and Hindu officers, both of whom were disliked by the English, as was the case in the 1790s.

95 For two of many examples of the role of the caste panchayats, see the already quoted remarks of the English Chief, in FRS, 27 November 1780, and FRS, 22 September 1792. However, the role of caste organizations was clearly a subordinate one. Dr Subramanian's assertion that, in Surat, ‘usually the caste organization of a lower artisan [Muslim] community was strong enough to run a mosque, manage a madrasa and pacify quarrels’ (p. 223) is based on a brief assessment of how Muslim communities in Gujarat were organized at the beginning of the present century! See the source she quotes (in her fn. 40), namely Mishra, S. C., Muslim Communities in Gujarat, (New York, 1964), p. 143.Google Scholar

96 E.g., Public Prs, 26 March 1765, 4 October 1768, 8 August 1770, 13 October 1772, 27 October 1774, 30 October 1776, 19 April 1780, 28 August 1781, and Commercial Prs, 18 February 1794.

97 Yet, the English ‘investment’ continued to be the most sought after among the contracts farmed out by the Europeans to the Surat merchants, as it implied the possibility of wielding English political influence.

98 FRS, 18 July 1781 (report of the Committee for Dutch affairs) and IOR: P/342/25, pp. 2893ff. (Mayor's Court Prs, 16 October 1796), where it is possible to see that Muncherji and Govindram shared a common account book.

99 ‘They [the Banias] did not own ships themselves’. ‘Capital and Crowd’, p. 207Google Scholar. For a preliminary treatment of the emergence of the Hindu merchants as shipowners sec my ‘In the Deep Blue Sea’, p. 279 and fn. 52.Google Scholar

100 E.g., FRS, 25 December 1796, 20 September 1798, 18 May 1800.

101 E.g., Mayor's Court Prs, 8 March 1763 (Sorabjee and Dadabhoy Monackjee v. Muncherjee Cursetjee); Ibid., 21 March 1763 (Juggivandass Gungadass v. Jagunath Lalldass ['s son]).

102 Subramanian, , ‘Capital and Crowd’, p. 205.Google Scholar

103 Two Bohra Muslims, namely Mulla Fakruddin and Essabhai Bohra, gave special bail for Muncherji Cursetji, a Parsi, when he was involved in a legal dispute with two other Parsis, Sorabji Muncherji and Dadabhai Manockji. See Mayor's Court Prs, 23 March 1761 (IOR, P/417/17, p. 13). In 1779, the Muslim merchant-prince, Saleh Chellabi, stood security alone for the whole English investment, then managed by the Parsi magnate, Dadabhai Manockji, who already appeared to be in some economic difficulty. As a rule, the English wanted the security of at least two reputed businessmen for such a big enterprise as the investment. But Saleh Chellabi considered it beneath his dignity to share this responsibility with any other merchant or banker in Surat. Apparently, the English concurred with Saleh Chellabi's high opinion of his own wealth and accepted him as the only security for the investment. See FRS, 10 and 28 March 1779. Again, Saleh Chellabi stood security for Muncherji and Govindram—namely a Parsi and a Bania—when they ran into trouble with the English after the take-over of the Dutch factory in 1781. See FRS, 4 December 1781.

104 FRS, 21 July 1773, in Orme 102.

105 FRS, 28 September, 1 and 2 October 1742.

106 FRS, 1 and 14 April 1775.

107 FRS, 2 December 1788 (report from a Committee…). Unfortunately, the above quotation represents, more or less, all we know on the causes of the 1788 riot.

108 E.g., Anquetil Dupcrron, zend Avesta, vol. 1, tome 1, pp. CCCXXVI–CCCXXVII; Orme O. V. 131, pp. 404–8, 411–13, 415–18, 426–32; Public Prs, 30 September 1768 (translate [sic] of a letter from the Dastoors, Andaroos and all Parsis of Nunsaree).

109 FRS, 24 December 1794, where, in a petition of a group of Banias, it is openly stated that: ‘worse than civil, a religious war is seriously to be apprehended from the determination your petitioners understand their brethren at Surat had taken on no account to submit to the ecclesiastical authority of a man totally unconnected with the family of their bishop [sic] (IOR, 6/36/72, pp. 330–1). The problem keeps on cropping up in the Surat diaries of the following years.

110 FRS, 22 September 1792 (consultation and translate [sic] of a declaration … made by the caste of Nagur Brahmins…).

111 A résumé of the whole affair is given in the pleading by Mulla Abdul Fati, Mulla Fakruddin's son and heir, as recorded in Mayor's Court Prs, 24 November 1789 (cross bill between Nuzershow Ruttonjeeshow and Mulna Abdul Futty Muguldeen).

112 Public Prs, 16 October 1796, for a résumé of the whole case.

113 Subramanian, , ‘Capital and Crowd’, p. 213.Google Scholar

114 Seal, Anil, ‘Imperialism and Nationalism in India’, in Modern Asian Studies, 7, 3 (1973), especially pp. 328–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

115 This was what Danjishah Manjishah himself experienced to his own grief in 1781. See FRS, 25 July 1781 (Dunjeeshaw's petition) and 31 July 1781 (consultation).