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Bullion for Trade, War, and Debt-Relief: British Movements of Silver to, around, and from Asia, 1760–1833*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 May 2009

H. V. BOWEN
H. V. BOWEN*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Swansea University, Swansea, SA2 8PP, UK Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This paper provides the first detailed assessment of British exports of silver to Asia during the initial phase of imperial expansion in India. It demonstrates that, contrary to the views of some historians, exports of silver were at times very considerable, notably after 1785, when they were used to fund war and debt-relief in India, as well as for trade. Focus is on the East India Company, but attention is paid to private exports, to British transfers of silver around Asia, and the paper ends with an analysis of ‘reverse’ flows to Britain established after 1810.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 44 , Issue 3 , May 2010 , pp. 445 - 475
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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References

1 ‘Bullion for goods’ is the title given to a recent collection of essays by Om Prakash, Bullion for Goods: European and Indian Merchants in the Indian Ocean Trade, 1500–1800 (New Delhi: Manohar, 2004), which contains several studies of the flows of precious metals into and around Asia during the early modern period.

2 Campbell, Richard, London Tradesman. Being a Compendious View of all the Trades, Professions, Arts, Both Liberal and Mechanic, Now Practised in the Cities of London and Westminster. . . (London, 1747), p. 311Google Scholar.

3 Ibid.

4 Chaudhuri, K. N., The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company, 1660–1760 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), p. 512CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The figures relate to ‘treasure’, the bulk of which was silver.

5 For example, Sushil Chaudhury suggests that ‘there is no denying the fact that European trade brought in a large amount of bullion and specie into Bengal [during the mid-eighteenth century] but the impact of this on the economy seems to have been only marginal, touching as it did the fringe of the economy. The only plausible explanation for this, it appears, was that a large part of the treasure brought into Bengal was appropriated by the ruling elite and the merchant-middle-men while only a little filtered down to the primary producers’ (From Prosperity to Decline. Eighteenth-Century Bengal (New Delhi: Manohar, 1995), p. 330). On the other hand, Chaudhuri has argued that ‘There cannot be any question that the silver imported by the European Companies played an active and not a passive role. It was coined into current money, and passed directly from their hands to the merchants, and from the latter to the producers of export goods. It is true that its distribution between traders and artisans was likely to be unequal, but the import of silver represented a rise in demand for output and an injection of extra income. The results must have been ceteris paribus a general expansion in the economy of those areas of India that were most actively concerned with foreign trade’ (Trading World of Asia, p. 159, and see also pp. 183 and 189 for the uses to which imports of silver were put by the East India Company). While scholars might agree on the scale of silver imports from Britain before 1760, there is clearly much scope for disagreement about the importance of foreign trade to the regional economies of the subcontinent.

6 Chaudhuri (1978), Trading World of Asia, p. 512.

7 Prakash, Om, European Commercial Enterprise in Pre-Colonial India. The New Cambridge History of India, II. 5 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 274CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Prakash notes the existence of some evidence ‘which suggests that the import of treasure into India was resumed after 1784’ (Ibid.).

9 Cuenca-Esteban, Javier, ‘India's Contribution to the British Balance of Payments, 1757–1812’, Explorations in Economic History, (2007), 44: 159CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also idem, ‘The British Balance of Payments, 1772–1820: India Transfers and War Finance’, Economic History Review, second series, LIV (2001), 58–86.

10 See, for example, Barrett, Ward, ‘World Bullion Flows, 1450–1800’ in Tracy, James D. (ed.), The Rise of Merchant Empires. Long-Distance Trade in the Early Modern World, 1350–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 251–2Google Scholar. A notable exception is the study by Attman, Artur, American Bullion in the European World Trade, 1600–1800 (Göteborg: Kungl. Vetenskaps-och Vitterhets-Samhället, 1986)Google Scholar, but his figures for the value of British exports of bullion (p. 66) are based on customs records and parliamentary papers, two sources that are not without their weaknesses and deficiencies (for which, see below p. 6). Attman's figures were used by Jan De Vries in his important study of bullion flows from Europe to Asia between 1492 and 1795 (‘Connecting Europe and Asia: A Quantitative Analysis of the Cape-Route Trade, 1497–1795’, in Flynn, Dennis O., Giráldez, Arturo, and Glahn, Richard von, (eds), Global Connections and Monetary History, 1470–1800 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), pp. 78–79)Google Scholar.

11 Habib, Irfan, ‘The Eighteenth Century in Indian Economic History’, in Marshall, P. J. (ed.), The Eighteenth Century in Indian History. Evolution or Revolution? (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 111, 112Google Scholar. See also pp. 118–119, n. 85. An earlier version of this essay appeared in Blussé, Leonard and Gaastra, Femme (eds), On the Eighteenth Century as a Category of Indian History: Van Leur in Retrospect (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), pp. 217–236Google Scholar. Habib used the revised version of his essay to respond directly to Datta's earlier revisionist study, Datta, Rajat, Society, Economy, and Market: Commercialization in Rural Bengal, c. 1760–1800 (New Delhi: Manohar, 2000)Google Scholar.

12 Datta, Society, Economy, and Market, pp. 194–200, 220–229, 343, 350. See also idem., ‘Commercialisation, Tribute, and the Transition from Late Mughal to Early Colonial in India’, Medieval History Journal, (2003), 6: 259–291. For Datta's detailed rejoinder to Habib's criticism of his argument, sources, and methods see ibid., pp. 265–7 (n. 23).

13 See below, p. 7.

14 Greenberg, Michael, British Trade and the Opening of China 1800–42 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951), p. 10Google Scholar; Davis, Ralph, The Industrial Revolution and British Overseas Trade (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1979), p. 58Google Scholar. Davis wrote that the outflow of silver from Britain to Asia ‘nearly disappeared’ after 1805, a statement which is well wide of the mark.

15 See Schumpeter, Elizabeth Boody, English Overseas Trade Statistics, 1697–1808 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960), p. 15Google Scholar. Schumpeter used figures recorded annually in the ledgers found in The National Archives [hereafter TNA], London, CUST/3 and CUST/17, a series which extends to 1808.

16 In 1825, the Inspector-General of Imports and Exports, William Irving, reported to Parliament that it was not possible to provide details of silver exports from Britain for the years before 1814 because the relevant records had been destroyed by fire (see Parliamentary Papers [hereafter PP], 1825 (204) ‘Account of quantity of gold and silver bullion, coin, and plate imported and exported, 1815–24’, p.1). It is uncertain whether Irving thought that this applied to all years before 1814 (which clearly it did not, in view of the existence of the ledgers referred to in the previous footnote), or just the period between 1808 and 1814.

17 See, for example, the papers submitted to the Board of Control in British Library, India Office Records, [hereafter BL, IOR], L/AG/10/2/2, pp. 212–213, 235–236; and ‘Papers etc. (East India Company)’, PP, 1812–13, VIII, p. 402.

18 This danger has been pointed out by Prakash, European Commercial Enterprise, p. 274.

19 Until the death of Abraham Mocatta (II) in 1800, nearly all of the silver exported by the Company was purchased in London from either the Bank of England or the various broking firms associated with Abraham Mocatta (I) and (II), most notably the famous company of Mocatta & Goldsmid. Patterns of purchasing can be traced from the Company's General Ledgers, BL, IOR, L/AG/1/1/19–31 and Cash Journals, L/AG/1/5/17–34, although some later wartime transactions were kept from public gaze and recorded in the Minutes of the Secret Committee of Treasury (L/AG/9/5/1). The Company itself only rarely entered the market directly in order to purchase silver, although it did so in 1803–1804 when it took delivery of 800,000 dollars on its own account in ‘the port of New York in America’ in return for payments made in bills of exchange; and the following year the Chairman was authorised to make direct purchases of silver in Lisbon because war-time pressures were such that it proved impossible to procure the necessary consignments through the ‘usual channels of supply’ (BL, IOR, L/AG/9/5/1 (no pagination, 6 April 1804 and 11 November 1805). The Company's commercial records did not consistently record the price paid for silver in London, but an account prepared in 1790 details the price per ounce paid since 1728. Between 1760 and 1789 the price varied between a high of 5 s. 8 ¾ d. in 1760/1 and low of 5s. 1d. an ounce in 1778 and 1779. See BL, IOR, China Factory Records, miscellaneous documents, 1710–1834, G/12/195, f. 66. For assessment purposes, the British customs service always valued exported silver at the fixed rate of 5s. per ounce (see TNA, CUST/3 and CUST/17, passim).

20 Generally speaking, the Company's sailing season for outbound ships lasted from October to April or May; and thus the season ‘1760’ includes all ships dispatched to Asia during the period from early autumn 1760 to late spring 1761. The weight and value of every consignment of silver exported between 1760 and 1833 have been extracted from invoice data in the Commerce Journals, and then aggregated to form the annual totals sent to different destinations. The values recorded for silver in the Commerce Journals, and deployed in the table, are invoice values rather than the ‘prime costs’ paid to the Company's bullion brokers. In addition to the consignments noted in the table, a single shipment of silver (21,393 ounces; £80,244) was sent to Mocha from London in 1764. Throughout the period semi-regular, modest consignments of silver were sent to St Helena in order to sustain the Company's operations on that island.

21 The Court of Directors to John Pownall, Secretary to the Board of Trade, 7 January 1763, BL, IOR, Home Correspondence, Miscellanies, E/1/211, f. 433.

22 On Clive's (much-exaggerated) assessments of the revenue surplus see Bowen, H. V., Revenue and Reform: The Indian Problem in British Politics, 1757–1773 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 12–15, 103–105CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 For the Company's explanation of this to the Board of Trade see Peter Michell, the Company's Secretary, to John Pownall, 17 January 1770, BL, IOR, E/1/214, pp. 366–7.

24 Chaudhuri's figures relate to the export of ‘treasure’, and thus include gold as well as silver. The post-1760 figures relate only to exports of silver. After 1760, the Company only infrequently exported very small consignments of gold to Asia.

25 BL, IOR, Home Miscellaneous Series [hereafter H], 400, p. 244.

26 The directors sanctioned large exports of silver to China in 1814 and 1815 as they adapted their commercial funding strategy to the new conditions that prevailed in the years immediately after the Company's loss of its Indian trade monopoly in 1813. See the directors to Canton, 29 March 1815, BL, IOR, Letters to Canton Supercargoes, R/10/46, ff. 55–56, and the Minutes of the Secret Committee of Treasury for 20 June 1815, ibid., L/AG/9/5/2, pp. 74–76.

27 On the use of sycee see the directors to Canton, 23 December 1817, BL, IOR, R/10/48, f. 94.

28 See Minutes of the Secret Committee, 1 June 1786, BL, IOR, L/P&S/1/9, ff. 143–144; the directors to Bombay, 23 June 1803, extract of letter in ibid., H/374, p. 96; and the directors to Bombay, 22 August 1804, Mumbai, Maharashtra State Archives, Commercial Letters, vol. 4, p. 266.

29 Bengal to the directors, 12 August 1793, Fort William—India House Correspondence and Other Contemporary Papers Relating Thereto [hereafter FW-IHC], XII: (Public Series) 1793–1795, ed. Amales Tripathi (New Delhi: National Archives of India, 1978), p. 286.

30 Bengal to the directors, 18 August 1794, ibid., p. 369.

31 The directors to Bengal, public circular letter, 5 June 1799, BL, IOR, E/4/648, p. 610.

32 Edward Parry and Charles Grant to the President of the Board of Control, Robert Dundas, 26 January 1808; BL, IOR, Letters and Minutes of the Secret Committee of Treasury 1803–1812, L/AG/9/5, vol. 1 (no pagination).

33 Minutes of 8 May and 18 September 1805, ibid.; Extract from the directors to Bengal, political letter, 12 February 1806, BL, IOR, Board of Control's Collections, F/4/198, no. 4444, pp. 67–68.

34 Having sent £875,164 to Bengal between 1816 and 1818, the directors resolved in March 1819 to send ‘a further £500,000—from the surplus commercial profits in England—to be applied to the redemption of the Indian debt . . .’ (directors to the Board of Control, 2 April 1819, BL, IOR, Letter and Minutes of the Secret Committee of Treasury, 1812–1826, L/AG/9/5/2, p. 144). For an elaboration of this debt-relief strategy which involved the creation of a sinking fund see the directors to Bengal, 7 January 1820, BL, IOR, E/4/698, p. 15.

35 Bowen, H. V., The Business of Empire: The East India Company and Imperial Britain, 1756–1833 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 230–234Google Scholar.

36 Total exports = silver and all commodities exported on the Company's account. For full details of commodity exports see the dataset referred to in the ‘source’. The supporting documentation for the dataset includes a full description of the sources and methods used in the compilation of the figures.

37 In 1789, for example, the Company's ship Vansittart was lost in the Straits of Gaspa. Thirty-three chests of silver were salvaged, but the salvagers then claimed eleven of them (Hosea Ballou Morse, The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China, 1635–1834 (5 vols, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926–1929), II, p. 172). When Vansittart left London it was carrying 156,960 ounces of silver with an invoice value of £40,711.

38 See Bengal to the directors, 31 July 1790, FW-IHC, XI: (Public Series) 1789–92, ed. I. B. Banerjee (New Delhi: National Archives of India, 1974), p. 335.

39 Extract of a letter from Cornwallis to the directors, 9 August 1805, BL, IOR, F/198, no. 4444, pp. 45–46.

40 Morse, Chronicles, III, pp. 1, 26. It should also be noted that some silver originally sent to Bombay and Madras was, on the orders of Governor-General Richard Wellesley, re-exported to Calcutta. This happened in 1799–1800 when £408,674 was diverted from Bombay, and in the following year when £105,578 was shipped from Madras (BL, IOR, L/AG/10/2/4, p. 148).

41 During the period under review copies of official records were routinely sent to London from Asia, but many of the shipping, cargo, and financial papers were then destroyed after the Company was wound up in 1858. Of course, some important categories of record were retained in India, but searches of the state archives and other repositories in Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal have not yet revealed any systematically collected local information relating to Company silver imports.

42 The directors reported in September 1816 that ‘very large supplies of bullion’ had recently been sent to India by both the Company and government (Directors to Canton, 24 September 1816, BL, IOR, R/10/47, f. 179). For the background to this see Charles Grant and Thomas Reid to the Earl of Buckinghamshire, 14 and 25 August 1816, BL, IOR, L/AG/9/5/2, pp. 80, 82.

43 Mentz, Søren, The English Gentleman at Work. Madras and the City of London, 1660–1740 (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2005), pp. 82–98Google Scholar. For the large quantities of silver smuggled on Company ships during the 1710s and 1720s, see Yogev, Gedalia, Diamonds and Coral. Anglo-Dutch Jews and Eighteenth-Century Trade (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1978), pp. 100–1Google Scholar.

44 Yogev, Diamonds and Coral, pp. 102, 125, 126, 129, 294, n. 4 and 5. Respondentia bonds were interest-bearing bonds secured against the anticipated sale value of a ship's cargo. They were used by individuals to transfer private funds to Asia.

45 See, for example, the directors to Bengal, 4 August 1791, FW-IHC, XI, p. 174.

46 For details of the silver sent to Martin see Rosie Llewellyn-Jones (ed.), A Man of the Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century India. The Letters of Claude Martin 1766–1800 (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003), pp. 209–210, 214, 276–277, 278, 279 (quotation on p. 276).

47 David Scott's paper on private trade, 10 September 1800, BL, IOR, H/406, pp. 182–183. Scott, a director of the East India Company between 1788 and 1802, was an expert on British trade with India who had earlier established one of the first agency houses in Bombay.

48 In addition, each commander was authorised to carry up to £500 in silver as part of his ship's stock, and it was intended that this be used for the purchase of supplies in Asian ports. For a detailed study of the commercial activities of commanders see H. V. Bowen, ‘Privilege and Profit: Commanders of East Indiamen as Private Traders, Entrepreneurs and Smugglers, 1760–1813’, International Journal of Maritime History, (2007), XIX: 43–88.

49 In 1771, for example, Commanders John Johnson and David Mitchell were granted permission to take two consignments of silver to Canton valued at £1,800 and £1,400 respectively; and the following year Raymond Snow was allowed to ship £2,200 (BL, IOR, Private trade ledgers, H/20, ff. 117, 169, 346). The exchange of silver for gold was, in theory, made profitable by the difference in the value of gold between Europe and China, and commanders were each permitted to carry out silver up to the value of £3,000 for this purpose. See Charles Cartwright, An Abstract of the Orders and Regulations of the Honourable Court of Directors of the East India Company, and of Other Documents Relating to the Pain and Penalties of the Commanders and Officers of Ships in the Company's Service are Liable to, for Breach of Orders, Illicit Trade, etc. . . . (London, 1788), p. liii. Earl H. Pritchard suggests that, in the private trade to China, silver dollars ‘were probably the most important single item prior to the middle of the eighteenth century’, representing over half the total value of all imports. But comparatively little silver seems to have been privately imported from Britain during the second half of the century with, for example, only £8,000 arriving in 1775–1776. See Pritchard, Earl H., ‘Private Trade between England and China in the Eighteenth Century (1680–1833)’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, (1958), I: 128–129, 131Google Scholar.

50 For the small amounts of private silver carried to Canton between 1784 and 1787 see BL, IOR, L/AG/10/2/2, p. 68.

51 No figures are available for Canton for 1791–1799 or 1804–1806. A note on f.68 states: ‘Individuals do not declare a value at the time of export, the value is found by costing the quantity exported at the price of silver at which the Company exported.’

52 National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, Hamilton Papers, HMN/36, p. 3; HMN/46 (un-paginated); HMN/47, p. 43.

53 ‘Papers etc. (East India Company)’, PP, 1812–1813, VIII, no. 136, part 5.

54 Ibid.

55 For a recent study of the Manila trade, and the important role it played in regulating the flow of silver into the regional economies of Asia, see Bhattacharya, Bhaswati, ‘Making Money at the Blessed Place of Manila: Armenians in the Madras-Manila Trade in the Eighteenth Century’, Journal of Global History, (2008), 3: 1–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an important recent revisionist study which suggests that China's demand for foreign silver was actually far smaller than is often claimed by historians, see Deng, Kent G., ‘Miracle or Mirage? Foreign Silver, China's Economy and Globalization from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth centuries’, Pacific Economic Review, (2008), 13: 320–358CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

56 For details see the supercargoes to the directors, 21 December 1767, BL, IOR, Canton Factory Records, Letter Book 1767, R/10/6, p. 73.

57 Calcutta to Canton, 9 February 1768; ibid, Letter Book 1768, p. 11.

58 For the Company's order of November 1767, see FW-IHC, V: (Public Series) 1767–1769, ed. N. K. Sinha (Delhi: National Archives of India, 1949), p. 42.

59 Morse, H. B., Chronicles, V, pp. 149, 156. Ten of the chests sent from Madras were removed en route at Benkulen for the use of that Company trading settlement.

60 Marshall, P. J., East Indian Fortunes. The British in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), p. 98Google Scholar. For details of similar schemes see Morse, Chronicles, V, pp. 156, 166–7.

61 See Thomas Cotton to Cornwallis, 23 November 1786; BL, IOR, G/12/195, f. 96.

62 Select Committee on the East India Company. Fourth Report, PP, 1812, VI, p. 461.

63 Select Committee on the East India Company. Appendix to the Report, PP, 1831–1832, X, part II, p. 630, appendix 13. To place these figures in context, it should be noted that during the same period treasure valued at Rs. 12,26,83,952 was imported into Bengal, Madras, and Bombay from Canton, at a yearly average of Rs. 68,15,775.

64 Select Committee on the East India Company. Fourth report, PP, 1812, VI, p. 461.

65 See, for example, the directors to Bengal, 9 September 1801, BL, IOR, F/4/198, no. 4444, p. 21.

66 Select Committee on the East India Company. Fourth Report, PP, 1812, VI, p. 421. For details of the stock of silver held in the Company's Canton treasury at the end of each year, see Morse, Chronicles, III and IV, passim.

67 Unsigned memorandum on trade between India and China, dated March 1790, BL, IOR, Board of Control Miscellaneous Papers 1755–1802, G/12/20, f. 360.

68 Select Committee on the East India Company. Appendix to the Report, P.P., 1831–1832, X, part II, p. 630, appendix 13. For details of annual consignments to India made by the Company and on private account see Morse, Chronicles, III and IV, passim.

69 See Directors to Bengal, 12 January 1768, FW-IHC, XIV: (Secret and Select Committee) 1752–1781, ed. Amba Prasad (New Delhi: National Archives of India, 1985), p. 17.

70 In August 1810, the authorities at Madras reported the safe arrival of 216 chests of silver on board HMS Phaeton but they concluded that a further consignment on board HMS St Albans ‘had been carried on to England under the discretional authority given to Captain Austin to that effect’; Madras to Canton, 3 August 1810, BL, IOR, Canton Consultations, 8 October 1810, G/12/172, pp. 194–195.

71 Bengal to Canton, 20 July 1810, BL, IOR, Canton Consultations, 30 September. 1810, G/12/172, pp. 137, 139–140.

72 For full details see the invoices, manifests, and related correspondence in BL, IOR, L/AG/17/2, vols. 1–7. Unfortunately, these bound collections of documents are not complete, which makes it impossible to aggregate the figures for the period under review. For the shipments made from Canton in 1810 and 1811 see also Morse, Chronicles, III, pp. 131, 139, 157, 161–163.

73 BL, IOR, L/AG/1/6/24, p. 346.

74 Morse, Chronicles, IV, pp. 222, 253, 324, 342.

75 Reid to George Canning, President of the Board of Control, 7 March. 1817, BL, IOR, L/AG/9/5/2, p. 119.

76 Directors to Bengal, 4 June 1823, BL, IOR, E/4/709, pp. 14–24.

77 BL, IOR, L/AG/1/6/26, pp. 133–134.

78 Siddiqi, Asiya, (ed.), Trade and Finance in Colonial India, 1750–1860 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 20Google Scholar. Rothschild himself had benefited greatly from the Company's transfer of bullion from Asia because he purchased large consignments in 1822 and 1823 and then again during the late-1820s and early 1830s. See, for example, L/AG/1/5/31, pp. 394, 411, 422, 488, 504, which detail the payments totalling £1,114,743 that Rothschild made for imported silver in 1822 and 1823.

79 BL, IOR, L/AG/1/1/31, p. 247.

80 Astell to Lord William Bentinck, 3 June 1830, in Philips, C. H. (ed.), The Correspondence of Lord William Cavendish Bentinck, Governor-General of India, 1828–1835 (2 vols, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), I:451Google Scholar.

81 Report of the Select Committee on East India Produce, PP, 1840, VIII, p. 623.

82 As noted by Imlah, Albert H., ‘British Balance of Payments and Exports of Capital 1816–1913’, Economic History Review, second series, V (1952), pp. 208–239Google Scholar. The reason for this was explained by William Irving, Inspector General of Imports and Exports in 1825: ‘No account of the importation of gold and silver bullion, and coin, can be rendered from this Department, these papers being allowed to be landed without entry at the Custom-House by the Act 27 Geo. III, c.13 §12’, PP, 1825 (204), p. 1.

83 For details of the net outflows of treasure from India to Britain that occurred between 1828 and 1833 see Chaudhuri, K. N., ‘India's Foreign Trade and the Cessation of the East India Company's Trading Activities, 1828–1840’, Economic History Review, second series, XIX (1966), p. 358Google Scholar.