East India Companies

The success of the Madras handkerchief was mediated by European ‘East India’ Trading Companies. Since the Portuguese inaugurated the maritime route from Europe to India via South Africa in 1497, Asian-European trading relations flourished. Spices, woven textiles, raw silk, cotton yarn, tea, ivory, porcelain, and other manufactured goods and commodities were the drivers of this trade. However, the geographical distance between consumers and producers made this commercial affair a highly capital-intensive, risky venture. Cargoes could become damaged, and ships could be sunk, attacked, or seized. It certainly could bring revenues up to 200 per cent, but returns on investment could take up to three years.

To split the risks, groups of private merchants united in distinct large corporate organisations. This was the case of, for example, the English East India Company (est.1600) or the Dutch East India Company (est.1602), both of which were joint-stock companies. In other instances, the initiative and funding came directly from the Royal Treasury, as was the case of the first French East India Company (est.1662). Crown, or joint-stock funded, these companies were granted privileges by their respective monarchs to guarantee profitability. This is to say; they enjoyed -at least on paper- the monopoly in their home markets for the Asian goods they traded with. These major trading companies are what Connecting Threads has referred to as ‘European ‘East India’ Trading Companies.’

All these European ‘East India’ Trading Companies developed commercial interests all over Asia, from the Persian Gulf to Japan and Indonesia. However, European merchants had little to offer in exchange for their desired goods. Bullion was the primary payment method, notably silver from Spanish-American mines, but silver’s purveyance was challenging, and European ‘East India’ Trading Companies were compelled to develop intricate financing mechanisms. For example, the Portuguese, Dutch and Danish mastered the intra-Asian trade, or ‘country trade,’ which was crucial in raising funds, e.g., they would exchange silver for Indian cloths in demand in Indonesia, where they would further exchange that cloth for pepper, which they would bring to Europe. Each of these companies was characterised by different and shifting characteristics, their individual features varied not only over time but also across geographies. Madras and its surroundings, Connecting Threads’ focus, was no exception.

From 1639 onwards, Madras, on the Coast of Coromandel, became one of the most significant factories for the English East India Company, despite sieges and intra-company wars. To be clear, ‘factories’ in this context refers to the systems used to organise the trade in a particular Asian enclave or settlement. Factories included fortified urban areas, warehouses and offices. The choice of Madras for a factory was not random. India’s textile industry was highly regionally specialised, and the Coast of Coromandel’s prowess was in woven cottons, particularly in checked, striped and white textiles. It was strategically located close to Pondicherry and Pullicat, where the French and Dutch had respective settlements and where similar handkerchiefs were manufactured, illustrating an overlapping relationship marked by competition and interaction. Indeed, the history of the Madras handkerchief is an imbricate of such dealings.

However, The East India Company could not simply access Madras’ resources (which was being fought over by mostly the Marathas, the Mughal Empire and the Kingdom of Mysore). During the seventeenth century and part of the eighteenth, the English East India Company lacked the military, manpower and financial capacities to impose itself upon any Indian ruler. This situation changed significantly from the mid-eighteenth century when the English East India Company benefited from the Mughal Empire’s debilitating situation. It expanded its political interests, and military capability harnessed by Indian manpower. Although the English East India Company’s aims were commercial, its imperialist influence set the stage for Britain’s formal colonial control of India from the mid-nineteenth century. Yet, colonialism lingers and colonises the past. In popular culture, it is often assumed that the English East India Company resulted from a British colonial enterprise (rather than the other way round).

Since their arrival in India, all the European ‘East India’ Companies, but the English in particular, had to negotiate the conditions of the trade, sometimes town by town, including the not minor issue of internal customs taxes. These deals could involve diplomatic gifts, time (sometimes years), and significant arrears, among other issues. In the case of Madras, the English had to first confer with the regional Telugu overlord (nãyaka) who controlled that area he wished to have called Chennappattinam, but that the English labelled as Madras. Negotiations and alliances were equally vital in transforming markets’ information into finished textiles.

The organisation of the textile trade was different from the European putting-out system. In a putting-out system, contractors purchased and furnished weavers with the required raw materials and, often also, looms. Contractors subcontracted only the labour. In the case of Indian textiles, European traders advanced the cash only. Contracts between handweavers or local merchants and the English were meticulous, and the consequences of their failure were dire. The English merchants in Madras were particularly attentive to the quality of the fabrics well into the mid-eighteenth century. However, Indian head weavers owned their looms, and they purchased and selected the cotton, which conferred them a degree of bargaining power. English company traders reacted in despair when Madras weavers sold goods to other buyers, or, worse when they abandoned weaving for other occupations because contracts were discontinuous or abandoned the city of Madras altogether, burying their possessions when they felt threatened by war. This was even the case after the 1760s when the English East India Company tightened the stranglehold over the weavers. English traders in Madras were further dependent on cultural and linguistic interpreters (dubashes) and other private intermediaries to access credits (sometimes also offered by the dubashes). In addition, unlike the French or Dutch in their respective factories, English merchants also needed to hire ships from third parties. One condition in hiring these ships was that the ship owners had to enjoy some shipping space, widening trading possibilities for private merchants who moved textiles there where the English East India Company may not have been allowed to do so legally, such as Manilla.

The Madras handkerchief is a company-mediated product whose definition exists in motion. From the seventeenth century onwards, European ‘East India’ trading companies became increasingly influential inbetweener markets and producers, but this connection was neither linear nor homogenous. Interactions among Indian rulers, various European ‘East India’ Trading Companies, private merchants, merchant bankers, several other middlemen, weavers, and other producers dynamically shaped the global making of the Madras handkerchief. The reception of the Madras handkerchief in the Caribbean has been explored here. Indian cottons like the Madras handkerchief circulated legally and illegally across borders, informing industrial developments in Europe. European ‘imitations’ co-existed with the Indian ones, informing consumer haptic knowledge globally, which, in turn, reverted into new material and terminological resignifications of the ‘Madras handkerchief’.