The title is intended to provoke. We hear the refrain that those who came to trade conquered us and colonised us. How far is it true? Was it a one-sided conquest or did our rulers aid and abet the conquest by their actions?

For instance, the 19th century historian Philip Anderson observes that the British empire in India ‘began without a strip of territory. A warehouse was expanded into a province; a province into an Empire’. How did this happen?

 

A good way to understand this is by following a couple of early English expeditions and how they were treated by the Indian rulers.  The first two voyages of the East India Company focused more on the Spice Islands in search of cinnamon, cloves and other spices. It was the third voyage which was mandated to touch Aden and Surat, to explore a market for English broadcloth.

 

The fleet was commanded by William Keeling and had William Hawkins, the seasoned navigator who also spoke Turkish, who was expected to use his linguistic skills in Aden.
 

They took off on 1st April 1607 with Keeling piloting the Red Dragon and Hawkins leading the ship, the Hector. While Keeling aborted his plans for Aden and headed straight for Bantam, Hawkins landed in Surat on 28th August 1608, and became the first commander of an East India Company vessel to set foot on Indian soil. Surat was the principal port of the land-locked Mughal Empire.

 

Hawkins did not have a happy experience in Surat, as Mukarrab Khan, the Mughal officer in charge of ports was hostile to the new visitors, having been influenced by the Portuguese who were entrenched in the port. Hawkins tried to browbeat the Portuguese by claiming to hold the commission from his King; the Portuguese reply to this was:’a fart for his commission’!
 

Hawkins then decided to travel to Agra to plead with the Emperor himself. Armed with the letter of introduction from King James I to the Emperor Akbar (who had, by now, been interred in his tomb at Sikandra) Hawkins travelled to Agra and was received by Emperor Jahangir with embarrassing warmth. They soon became such pals that Hawkins became a permanent invitee to the Emperor’s daily drinking spree.

 

 Hawkins was ordered not to move out of the Emperor’s side and was offered an annual salary of 3200 pounds, the rank of ‘Khan’ and permission to build a factory at Surat (the permission remained on paper, though, till Sir Thomas Roe used his superior diplomatic skills on the Mughals, and got the promise implemented  in 1615.) 


The Emperor also found a suitable bride for Hawkins – the daughter of an Armenian Christian who was in the service of his father, Akbar. But for the intrigue of the courtiers who thought that the Emperor was being far too generous to the ‘Inglis Khan’, the first Englishman to have landed in India could have got half the Mughal Empire for the asking! Call it conquest?

 

As for Keeling, he did not fare badly, either. He was sailing past Calicut when the Zamorin sent his minister to invite him offering him many inducements. The Zamorin was then at war with Cochin and was in the vicinity of Cranganore. He concluded a treaty with Keeling : As I have been ever an enemy of the Portuguese, so do I propose to continue forever.

 

The Zamorin wanted the English to help him win over the combined forces of Cochin and the Portuguese. And in return, the Underecon Cheete (a corruption for Poonthurakkon Cheet, the name by which Zamorin’s communications are known)offered : And if I succeed in taking the port of Cranganore, I engage to give it to the English, to possess as their own, together with the island belonging to it, which is in length along the sea coast nine miles and three in breadth’. 

 

 Further, if he succeeded in conquering Cochin with the help of the English, the cost will be apportioned half and half and ‘the benefits of the plunder thereof, whatsoever kind, shall belong half to me and half to the English’.

 

This was more than 140 years before the Battle of Plassey which is described in history as the beginning of territorial acquisition by the East India Company!

 

It would appear that the idea of territorial sovereignty was a western concept imported into India by the colonials in the 18th Century. Our rulers – the Mughals as well as smaller rulers like the Zamorin – had viewed the state more as an economic unit which could be controlled to extract revenue for the state.

 

Ultimately, it looks as if our rulers were too keen to offer portions of their territory on a platter to the colonial powers in return for protection, weapons, money or even a cask of red wine, as in the case of Jehangir! Cheers!!