Mithography

FRENCH COUNTRY TRADE ON COROMANDEL (1720-50)

Catherine Manning*

The importance of country trade and of close contact with Asian trading communities to European Companies and private traders has been extensively explored in recent years. Such trade and such relationships were built up in varying ways in different areas of India and south-east Asia and it is generally agreed that the active co-operation of local intermediaries was essential to the success of the Portuguese in Melaka in the sixteenth century, to the Dutch in Batavia in the seventeenth and to the English in Bengal in the eighteenth. This correlation is by no means the unique perception of twentieth century historians; It was well understood by contemporaries. The French, theoreticians even in the practical world of trade, made a number of studies of the Asian trade of rival Europeans and the importance of attracting local merchants to their enclave of Pondicherry on the Coromandel coast and of developing an active Asian trade were constantly emphasized. 1 However, by the mid-eighteenth century after thirty years of Asian trading, Pondicherry's country trade was not large and French activity had been diverted inland to political and military means of earning an income. This paper seeks to examine the ways in which French country and private traders sought contact with local networks of commerce and finance on Coromandel and the effect of such links on the nature of their trade and on their ultimate success in south India. The material comes from French sources, in particular from the records of the legal office of Pondicherry preserved in the Archives d'Outre-Mer in Aix-en-Provence. 2

The French entered onto the traditional but far from unchanging routes of Asian trade from Coromandel in 1719. Before then the Company had permitted no private trade to its employees and had concentrated its efforts on its trade with Europe. Only a few free merchants, based chiefly in Chandannagar in Bengal, had engaged in local trade. It was not an auspicious moment to begin. The maritime trade of India and of Coromandel in particular had expanded during the seventeenth century, probably peaking in the 1680' s. Prosperity continued though at a lower level into the early eighteenth century, but thereafter certain adjustments in the economic relations of different parts of the Asian trading world began to make themselves felt with particular force in south India. Political change was in part responsible for the difficulties in maritime trade: the advance of the Mughals into the area seriously disturbed the political balance and made it a front line between Imperial and Maratha forces; the fall of the Safavids in Persia severed the link with Machilipatnam, already weakened by the fall of Golconda. The problems were not universal; certain ports, both Indian ones such as Porto Novo and European ones such as Madras, maintained a lively trade to south-east Asia throughout the period. However, Dupleix, writing in 1727, was convinced that the good days were past, Les françois n'ont commencé à faire ce commerce que depuis qu'il est mauvais. 3 Certainly, for whatever reasons in the general Asian economic climate or in their own particular circumstances, high French expectations of Asian trade were disappointed.

"Indico Orientalis Nova Descriptio", printed map with the inscription *Amstelodami Ioannes Iansonniun excudebet.* It show the Nanyang region with placenames in Dutch, Portuguese and Spanish (Évora Public Library and District Archives)

The traditional trading routes from Coromandel lay to the east. The textiles of south India had long been exchanged in the ports of the east coast of the Bay of Bengal, of the Malay peninsula and archipelago for tin, gold, precious stones, horses, pepper, spices, timber and rice. South-east Asia was, too, an entrepôt for the goods of both India and China, and merchants trading from Coromandel staged the goods of Bengal and Gujarat eastwards and those of China westwards. In French minds these eastward trades ranged themselves into a clear hierarchy of prestige, expense and profit. At the summit was the port of Canton, the source of tea, porcelain and silk and a profitable place to exchange silver for gold which was used for the currency of South India. Canton was believed to be the foundation of the legendary fortunes of the governors of Madras, but the voyage was long, trade strictly controlled and customs duties heavy. The capital investment required was high; 80,000 pagodas was the sum suggested in 1733, considerably greater that the amounts normally raised at Pondicherry. 4 As a result only seven voyages were made between Pondicherry and Canton between 1720 and 1750 and the profits did not bear out their reputation. China goods were in demand in the markets of India, the Middle East and Europe, but it was not necessary to go to Canton to obtain them. Junks from China sailed to Manila where the silver-bearing galleons from Acapulco arrived annually, making it an important meeting place of Indian and Chinese traders. The port had experienced a boom in the second half of the seventeenth century and the flow of trade from India had increased as a proportion of the whole. 5 Manila was the most important eastern port for French country traders; a-ship from Pondicherry went there every year but four between 1720 and 1750.

The ports of south-east Asia, of which Aceh, Mergui and Pegu were the most important to the French, were less prestigious than Manila and Canton but were less demanding of capital and could be visited by smaller vessels. The problems of these ports lay in the slowness of turnover and the lengthy credit that often had to be extended to local merchants or the ruler's shahbander. As well as Coromandel textiles, opium from Bengal, firearms, saltpetre and iron were carried in relatively small quantities to be exchanged and sometimes bartered for teak, eaglewood, rattan, gold, rubies, horses, spices and pepper. The ruler of Aceh wrote to Chandannagar to invite French trade in 1726 and French ships regularly visited the port throughout the period, in spite of accumulating debts. 6. Mergui and Pegu were used as shelter for European and Indian shipping during the dangerous months of the monsoon on Coromandel between September and December. The French ships usually carried a small cargo of cloth and freight from Pondicherry and Porto Novo and returned with rice, timber and rope for building and marine repairs. The agricultural market in Mergui and Pegu was evidently well developed as these ports were an important source of rice for the frequently famine-stricken Pondicherry. This basic supply trade, lowest in the French rank of voyages, was an important and profitable one for impoverished French traders; it was carried on in small ships, demanded little capital and several trips a year could be fitted in. Routes with similar advantages were those to the Maldive and the Nicobar Islands, where cloth was exchanged for cowries for use as currency in Bengal and Senegal.

The westward trade from Coromandel had been based in the previous century on the links between Golconda and Persia, but by the 1720's the absorption of the Sultanate into the Mughal Empire had undermined the prosperity of its port at Machilipatnam and the fall of the Safavids had further weakened the westward trade. By the 1720's trade with western India and west Asia from Pondicherry depended on co-operation with Bengal. The French participated in the round-India trade in which small ships sailing from Chandannagar followed the coast, picking up goods on Coromandel and Malabar, aiming to reach Goa before the departure of the annual convoy of Portuguese ships to Brazil on 24 December, then continuing on to Surat. Coromandel goods were also included on ships to Basra, the Ottoman port at the head of the Persian Gulf, though the bulk of the cargo and the freight originated in Bengal. An important westward route which was developed by the French of Pondicherry was the voyage to Mokha in the Red Sea. This was based on the Company's annual demand for 500,000 pounds of coffee for Europe. A ship sailed from Coromandel in January each year, carrying freight and a cargo of textiles, pepper and Chinese porcelain which paid for the return in coffee for which the ship's owners were reimbursed by the Company in silver at Pondicherry. The Arab markets of west Asia were more used to the textiles of Gujarat than to the cloth of Coromandel and the French introduced some traditional Gujarati patterns to the weaving communities under their direction in Pondicherry. The imitation-Gujarati cloth, Marchandises façon de suratte as the French called it, provoked hostility both from the Bohra and Chellaby families of Surat and from the Muttasadi of Mokha who wished to tax it at the Gujarati rather than the lower French rate. 7 However, it seems to have found favour with merchants at Mokha, particularly during the early 1730's when the troubles at Surat prevented the Surat fleet from reaching its usual ports in the Gulf and Red Sea. Another route which was to become even more important to the French later in the century was that to the Îles de France (Mauritius) and Bourbon (Reunion). For most of the period the trade of the Islands was held by the Company as part of its monopoly but between 1742 and 1746, during the governorship of La Bourdonnais, trade was opened to private enterprise. Pondicherry immediately began to engage in slave trading to supply the new plantations of sugar and coffee that were being developed on the Islands. Ships were sent from Pondicherry in 1743 and 1744 to the Comoros Islands and some slave trading was done directly from India. In 1743 Louis Judde, a councillor at Pondicherry, in partnership with La Bourdonnais and his brother, ordered slaves from Paramananda, a slave dealer of Coromandel who in fulfilling the order tricked several free men and women into a warehouse where he imprisoned fifty to a hundred people at a time, shaving their heads and chaining them in leg irons. 8

Although Law's newly refounded Compagnie des Indes took the decision in 1719 to enter Asian trade for the first time as a sole trader, it very soon became apparent that with limited capital resources and the demands of European trade the Company would have to go into partnership with local merchants. Its most important partners were its own employees. Whereas the Dutch kept Asian trade as a Company monopoly until 1742 and the English had released it to private interests during the 1680's, the French between 1722 and 1741 developed a partnership unique among the European nations trading in Asia, a partnership between the Company, its employees and other traders, European and Indian. This relationship between the Company and private interests was characteristic of French overseas commercial and colonial enterprise. There was a frequent see-sawing of power within the relationship. The state would engross as much control as it could, initially endowing itself with large rights. On finding its reach exceeded its grasp, it would release a part of its monopoly to private interests, who would try to shift their costs back to the Crown and retain the profits, until the state once again asserted its authority with a new and stricter regime. 9 The partnership between the Company and private traders was an important one in Pondicherry. The sum assigned each year by the Company for investment in country trade was not great, but it was the seed corn of French enterprise. During the 1720's, the Superior Council, as representative of the Company, took the lead in organizing French voyages out of Pondicherry; only in the 1730's had sufficient experience and credit been built up among the French private traders to permit them to develop their commerce independently of the Company.

When Asian trade out of Pondicherry started in 1719, the French began immediately to search for partners among the local trading communities whose capital and expertise could assist their plans. They began with the European and Christian merchant networks which were the easiest for them to penetrate. From the English they obtained expertise. The Governor of Madras issued strong prohibitions against co-operation with the French by any merchant living in the English town, but the domination of country trade by the senior English servants left a disaffected group among the junior employees and free merchants who frequently invested their capital or placed their freight on French vessels. French trade to Mokha from Pondicherry, which was one of the most important voyages of the port was begun in 1722 in an English ship with an English captain, William Keble. The project, the Superior Council, reported complacently in its Deliberations, had become very easy because of Keble's long experience and expert knowledge of the textiles needed for the Yemeni market. 10

In some cases the French took over an existing route from other traders; in this policy community of religion and intermarriage helped them in their penetration of family-based networks. Isaac Elias, an Armenian of New Julfa near Isfahan settled in Pondicherry, had already made three voyages to Manila when in 1721 the Superior Council proposed that the Company should invest in his ship. Elias was permitted to make two more voyages to the Philippines in partnership with the French before he was ousted as captain and replaced by a Luso-Indian. He remained an honoured inhabitant of Pondicherry, his children married to Frenchmen, investing in French country voyages, both of the Company and of free merchants, but there is no evidence of his organizing his own commerce thereafter. 11 A similar penetration of a Portuguese network trading to Manila was made by the French. The Carvalho family had branches in Bengal and Madras and had been trading to the Philippines since early in the century. At first the Carvalhos kept the French at arm's length, making respondentia loans on French ships, but not permitting any direct French investment in their own ventures. By the mid 1730's, the youngest Carvalho brother succumbed after prolonged negotiations with Dupleix in Bengal and the Balocopal sailed to Manila in 1735 and 1737 under joint French, Portuguese and English management. The Carvalhos retained their independence as long as they could but when, in the mid-century, relations between the English and French deteriorated into war, they were forced to choose the French. The last surviving Carvalho brother ended his career as French agent in Patna, no longer an independent merchant.

If from their European and Christian partners, the French chiefly sought knowledge of markets, routes and commodities, from Indian merchants they looked for capital and credit and here they faced two problems: their own poor credit record and a dearth of Indian merchants able to enter into partnership with them. The old French Company had accumulated large debts which were paid off on Coromandel by the early 1720's but which lingered in Surat until the 1750's. Even when commerce recommenced the French Company was severely short of trading capital throughout the 1720's and it was not until increased quantities of bullion were imported in the following decade that the French were able to find creditors willing to make respondentia loans on their voyages.

Even more serious was the lack of Indian merchants willing to invest in French maritime trade. This was a period of mixed ownership and management of country trade and evidence from Madras shows that many English country traders owned ships in partnership with Indian and Armenian merchants as well as attracting freight from many local merchant groups. 12 Such partnerships in Madras had been developed over many years and had begun in the boom years of the previous century. By observation of English experience, the French were sharply aware of the importance of the merchants of the 'Black Town' to the success of Madras and were eager to draw Indian residents to Pondicherry. Indian and Armenian merchants increased prosperity by their payment of inward and outward customs; the takings of the farms of betel and arrack rose; increased economic activity attracted yet more merchants. The French sought in vain for the initiating motor of this vicious circle, at one stage abolishing customs duties, at another trying to force Madras merchants to move to Pondicherry: to no avail. They succeeded in attracting weavers to their port, but the Telegu merchant groups which had begun moving to Madras in the late seventeenth century resisted all blandishments. Pondicherry remained a satellite caught in the orbits of Madras and Porto Novo, dependent for goods and services on its neighbouring Indian and English towns. French religious policy may have had a deterrent effect, but the existence of Madras was probably reason in itself for Pondicherry's comparative weakness.

The French search for Indian partners sheds some light on the position of the Indian merchants of the Coast which was deteriorating during the first half of the eighteenth century. French records state that there was no merchant at Pondicherry who was wealthy enough to undertake even a voyage to Aceh, the least expensive of the country routes. The records of the country voyages in which the Company invested in the 1720's show that the proportion of the capital raised from Indian sources actually declined during the period, a tendency confirmed by signs of a similar fall at Madras. 13

<B>FRENCH PARTNERSHIPS IN ASIAN TRADE,1721-30<HZ14></B>