armenian european relationship in india, 1500-1800: no armenian foundation for european empire?

Armenian European Relationship in India, 1500-1800: No Armenian Foundation for EuropeanEmpire?Author(s): Bhaswati BhattacharyaSource: Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. 48, No. 2 (2005), pp.277-322Published by: BRILLStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25165093 .

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ARMENIAN EUROPEAN RELATIONSHIP IN INDIA, 1500-1800: NO ARMENIAN FOUNDATION FOR EUROPEAN EMPIRE?

BY

BHASWATI BHATTACHARYA*

Abstract

Historical evidence points to the existence of Armenians in India in small numbers at least since the sixteenth century. Beginning with the Portuguese in that century, Europeans entered the spheres of Euro-Asian and intra-Asian trade in an increasing volume. Armenian contact

with India received a boost following the settlement of a large number of Armenians in New Julfa that coincided with the coming of the European companies in India. The arrival of the

Europeans opened up various possibilities for the Armenians. Consequently, Armenian trade, based to a great extent on various forms of community-based network and partnership, was

not 'exclusive' in nature. In their social life too Armenians formed part of the pluralistic Christian community in India.

Les donnees historiques suggerent l'existence en Inde d'un petit nombre d'Armeniens depuis le XVIe siecle. A partir de l'arrivee des Portugais a cette epoque, les Europeens ont

developpe les echanges avec l'Asie et en ont penetre de plus en plus le commerce interieur. Les contacts des Armeniens avec l'lnde ont connu une rapide expansion a la suite de l'etab lissement d'un nombre important d'entre eux a New Julfa, dans la mouvance de l'arrivee des

compagnies europeennes qui leur offraient des possibilites variees. De ce fait, le commerce

armenien, largement fonde sur diverses formes de reseaux et de partenariats internes a leur

communaute, n'etait pas de nature ? exclusive ?. Dans leur vie sociale, aussi, les Armeniens etaient partie prenante de la communaute chretienne indienne, pluraliste.

Keywords: Armenian commercial network, Asian trade, Armenian-European relationship, Armenians in India, commerce in India in the 17th and 18th centuries

* Bhaswati Bhattacharya, International Institute of Asian Studies, Leiden, Nether

lands, [email protected] Research for this paper was carried out with a grant from the Indian Council of Historical

Research in New Delhi. I would like to thank Gautam Bhadra for the encouragement and advice I received in connection with the research. I have benefited from conversations with Basudeb Chattopadhyay, Bhaskar Chakraborti, and Suranjan Das. Fr. Boghos Levon Zekiyan has been a source of inspiration. The paper was presented in a different form to the International Institute of Asian Studies Workshop on 'Country Trade and Empire in the

Arabian Seas, 17th-18th century', Leiden, 9-10 October 2003. Shushanik Khachikian, Ina

Baghdiantz-Mccabe and Sebouh Aslanian have helped in solving many puzzles. I would like to thank them Rene Barendse and Rene Bekius and the two anonymous experts of this jour nal for their comments on the paper.

? Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2005 JESHO 48,2 Also available online - www.brill.nl



278 BHASWATI BHATTACHARYA

The lively description of Oriental commerce and the profit accruing from it has enriched the genre of travel literature perhaps since the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea. In the aftermath of the discovery of the direct sea-route to the Indian

Ocean, traffic in the region increased from the sixteenth century onwards. An

increasing wealth of information on the port-to-port trade in Asia flooded in,

inviting more and more adventurers seeking the blessings of Mammon in the

wild waters of the East. Though it is not possible to pinpoint exactly when

Armenians, specialised in the overland trade between Eurasia and Europe, entered the circuit of intra-Asian trade,1 European documents from the sixteenth

century onwards mention the Armenians as actively participating in?in addi tion to the Europe trade?various branches of inter-Asian trade, better known as 'country trade.' By the seventeenth century, Armenians were well established in all important centres of trade in Europe and Asia. As merchants buying and

selling in the same markets and trading in the same commodities, Europeans in

the capacity of the East India Companies and private merchants were their com

petitors. The contempt often expressed in European travel accounts against Armenian

merchants as an ubiquitous evil reflects the underlying concern of rivals in the same trade.2 Yet, as part of the pluralistic society of merchants (among people of other professions) that characterised the Asian market towns and ports in the

early modern period, they shared the same lot. When the Portuguese arrived in the East in the sixteenth century, the other factor they shared with the

Armenians was faith: Christianity. All this makes it interesting to see how Arme nians and Europeans interacted with each other in Asian waters. In her recent

study on the role of the Armenian merchants of Julfa in Persia and India, Bagh diantz Mccabe has suggested that in Persia, where a large number of Armenians were to be found outside of Armenia, Armenians did not co-operate with the

Europeans. She does admit, that Armenians in India operating in individual

capacity co-operated with the English in the eighteenth century, but adds that

1 Mesrovb Seth noted that already in the early part of the Christian era the Armenians had

a settlement in Benares. Armenians in India: From the Earliest Times to the Present Day, London, 1897, 22. A recent work maintains that Armenians were engaged in maritime trade

with India since the beginning of the sixteenth century. See V. Baibourtian, International Trade and the Armenian Merchants in the Seventeenth Century (Delhi: Sterling Publishers,

2004): 198. 2

See e.g. Tavernier, 'wherever the Armenians see that money is to be made they have no

scruple about supplying materials for the purposes of idolatry.. ..', Tavernier's Travels in

India, Tr. from French by V. Ball, 2 vols. London, 1889, vol. 1, 261; cf. 'a people in them selves despicable. .. . [the Armenians] are likewise educated in all the servilities of Asia, and

understanding how to accommodate themselves to indignities, which the genius of a free nation will hardly submit to.. ..' J. Hanway, An Historical account of the British Trade over

the Caspian Sea, 4 vols. (London: 1753), vol. 2: 31.



ARMENIAN EUROPEAN RELATIONSHIP IN INDIA, 1500-1800 279

until the English gained political power after the conquest of Bengal, 'Armenian

associations were with Indian merchants and nawabs'.3 This essay will try to trace the relationship between Armenians and Europeans in India from the six

teenth century till the late eighteenth century. Armenians were already present in India in the sixteenth century as traders, and it is not entirely impossible that a few religious personalities travelled over land to India. The arrival of the

Europeans opened up new possibilities for the Armenians in India. With their

unique position as one of the few Asian communities able to link up the

European and Asian worlds of trade through a community based network that

promoted both trade and intelligence, Armenians used these possibilities to max

imize their profit.

Organizing the Trade

Before delving into the actual relationship, an attempt will be made first to

briefly compare the conditions under which Armenians and Europeans operated in India. Baghdiantz Mccabe has maintained that the Armenian merchants of

New Julfa were member-participants in a company of merchants that ran along the pattern represented by the European East India Companies. The richest mer

chants of Julfa were the directors of this company. They invested capital at

home and ruled the commercial affairs of fellow Armenians abroad by taking

responsibility for their unpaid debts, and by pronouncing judgement in litiga tions.4 Since most of the Armenian merchants in India?at least for the greater part of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as we shall see below?were either representatives or partners, or both, of Armenian merchants based in

Persia, it would be interesting to see if the organization of trade by Armenians in the former country reflected the same in the latter.

There is a plethora of literature on the East India Companies, representing a

form of trading organisation with certain characteristics quite unique in the sev

enteenth century. Niels Steensgaard in particular contrasted the company pres ence in the seventeenth century as a 'productive enterprise' with the Portuguese enterprise in the sixteenth century, which he termed as violent and 'redistribu tive'.5 It is not my intention here to go into the details of how the East India

3 Ina Baghdiantz Mccabe, Shah's silk for Europe's silver: the Eurasian Trade of the Julfa Armenians in Safavid Iran and India, 1530-1750 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999), 344-45.

4 Ibid., ch. VIII, esp. 244-245.

5 Niels Steensgaard, 'The Dutch East India Company as an institutional innovation', in

Dutch Capitalism and World Capitalism, ed. M. Aymard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 235-57; also his Asian Trade Revolution in the Seventeenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), passim.




Companies were organized or how they functioned. I shall only point to the

major characteristics of the company trade and those of the Armenian trade. Historians have written at length on the dual nature of the Companies; they

enjoyed certain semi-sovereign rights abroad and a national monopoly at home

delegated to them as a corporation by the government.6 The charter granted by Queen Elizabeth secured for the English East India Company exclusive privi leges of trade with the countries beyond the Cape of Good Hope and the Straits of Magellan for fifteen years.7 It has been suggested that the Companies were

the first forms of the multi-national corporations we see today. Though a large part of the Company's capital came from the investment made by merchants

who were directly engaged in selling the commodities at home or re-exporting to other countries, a number of private citizens also delegated to the Company the right to dispose of parts of their property.8 The bulk of the working capital of the English East India Company for example, consisted of capital borrowed

in London on short-term through the issue of quarterly and half-yearly bonds

at fixed rates of interest. As a joint stock company trading with both equity and debenture type capital, the Companies represented a category of business

organization in which management of capital was partially separated from its

ownership. With their elaborate procedure of government reflected in the

bureaucratic apparatus including the courts of law, the Companies were like a

state within the state.9 By the beginning of the eighteenth century, whether it was Batavia, Madras or Calcutta, the semi-sovereign character of the European settlements yielding some revenue was clear. The privileges obtained from local

sovereigns gave their trade a special status unknown to Asian merchants. The other feature that distinguished European trade from the existing pattern

of trade in the Indian Ocean was the attempt to monopolize trade in certain

commodities and over several routes. Although royal monopolies were not pre

viously unknown, the way the Portuguese claimed their monopoly on pepper and the Dutch on spices, was new. An attempt was made to enforce this mono

poly by the use of force. So, political power went side by side with armed

6 Niels Steensgaard, 'The Companies as a specific institution in the history of European

expansion' in Companies and Trade: Essays on Overseas Trading Companies during the Ancien Regime, ed. L. Blusse and F. S. Gaastra (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 1981): 245

264. According to Steensgaard the companies, with their new form of organization, revolu

tionized the trade in Asia. See his Asian Trade Revolution. 7 K. N. Chaudhuri, The English East India Company: the study of an early Joint-Stock

Company, 1600-1640, London, (London: Cass, 1965): 28. In the case of the Dutch Verenigde Oost Indische Compagnie (henceforth V.O.C.) this monopoly was for 21 years.

8 Niels Steensgaard, 'The Companies as a specific institution. . . .', 247. 9 K. N. Chaudhuri, The English East India Company . .. ch. 2.




force. All of the independent territorial bases the Europeans possessed in Asia

were fortified. Though the Mughal historian Khafi Khan praised the Portuguese for leaving shipping in the Indian Ocean at peace (provided the latter bought the pass or cartaz), it was precisely that nation that started using force system

atically against Asian shipping. This legacy was continued by the East India

Companies. Not only were the Companies able to extract special privileges from

the sovereigns, the privileges were backed up by the threat of the use of force.

Competitive trading in the markets of Europe combined with a fortified territo

rial presence in Asia provided the East India Companies with a sense of pur

pose and institutional cohesion.10 It should be remembered that armed trade

was, after all, one of the main reasons for dispute between Siraj-uddaula, the

nawab of Bengal and the English in the middle of the eighteenth century. In his

letters to the Armenian merchant Khoja Wajid, the nawab mentioned that the

Armenians, also foreigners in Bengal, had not built any fort and traded under

the protection of the Mughal government. Why should the Europeans?the

English in particular?insist on fortifications?11

So far, the best analysis of the organization and structure of Armenian trade

is to be found in the works of Shushanik Khachikian, who, in her study on the

Julfa Armenians in Russia, shows that Armenians did not have European type

companies.12 In addition, Edmund Herzig has made an important contribution

toward the understanding of the commercial organisation of the Armenian mer

chants of New Julfa in his thesis and articles.13 Baghdiantz Mccabe herself

offers an excellent account of the career of Marcara. Rene Bekius's research on

the textile trade of the Armenians touches upon their trade in Persia.14 Neither

10 K. N. Chaudhuri, 'The Engish East India Company in the 17th and 18th centuries: a

pre-modern Multi-national Organization' in Blusse, L. and F. S. Gaastra ed. Companies and

Trade, 29-46. 11

Bengal in 1756-57. A selection of public and private papers dealing with the affairs of the British in Bengal during the reign of Siraj-uddaula ed. With notes and an historical

introd. By S. C. Hill, 3 vols. (London: John Murray, 1905) vol. 1: 3-5; also Robert Orme, A

History of the Military Transactions of the British Nation in Indostan, (henceforth Military Transactions) 2 vols. (London, 1775-77) vol. 2: 58.

12 The Armenian Trade of New Julfa and its commercial-economic ties with Russia during

the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries, Yerevan, 1988 (in Armenian). Edmund Herzig (see note

below) and Ina Baghdiantz Mccabe refer to her work in detail. I have communicated with

Khachikian who kindly confirmed her position through e-mail, 21 September, 2003. 13 The Armenian Merchants of New Julfa, Isfahan: a Study in Pre-Modern Asian Trade,

D. Phil. Thesis, Oxford, 1991; also 'The family firm in the commercial organisation of the

Julfa Armenians', in Etudes Safavides, ed. J. Calmard, (Paris Teheran: Institut Francois de

recherche en Iran, 1993), 287-303. 14

'Armenian merchants in the Textile Trade in the 17th and 18th centuries: a Global

Enterprise' (unpublished) paper presented at the Conference 'Carpets and textiles in the




Herzig nor Bekius subcribes to the thesis that Julfa Armenians conducted trade as a centrally organized company.

Most of the Armenians trading in India were from Persia, where they had

long been living.15 The Safavi Emperor Shah Abbas deported a large number of Armenians to New Julfa from the commercial town in Armenia bearing the same name in the early years of the seventeenth century.16 It was a conscious

attempt on the part of Shah Abbas, who was aware of the expertise of the Armenians in trans-continental commerce, to settle them in the outskirts of Isfahan. During the following two centuries the Armenians would traverse the Indian Ocean and sail up to the coast of China. Mathee and Baibourtian have pointed to the sym biotic relationship between the Safavid state and the Armenian merchants of Iran?a relationship in which the court granted those merchants a favoured status in return for certain commodities, revenue and information.17 But that not

withstanding, Armenian merchants were not backed by any national monopoly that would empower them to represent Persia in India, for example. In India

they traded at the market places and ports side by side with the Indians, Jews, Persians and Turks among others, and were dependent on the favours they received from the Mughals in Delhi and their representatives in the provinces. Consequently, for the Indian merchant at an Indian port, an Armenian merchant was more like himself than the western European who could point to his com

pany, the factory and the fort belonging to his nation and use these symbols either as carrot or as stick as the situation would permit. No one could, how

ever, stop the Armenians from referring to, and using their connections back in Persia and Europe. This connection, including knowledge of Persian, often gave them an edge over others in that they had easy access to the Mughal court. Secondly, though Baghdiantz Mccabe has suggested that there was a company of Arme nian merchants in New Julfa directing the Armenian commerce worldwide, she has not given any evidence and has drawn on the work of Khachikian who does not claim there was an East India Company type association of the Julfa Armenians.18

Iranian World, 1400-1700', organised by the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and the Iran Heritage Foundation, 30-31 August, 2003, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

15 Armenians lived in Persia since pre-Christian times. See David Marshall Lang, The

Armenians: A People in Exile (London: Allen & Unwin, 1981): 81. 16 On the deportation of the Armenians see E. M. Herzig, 'The deportation of the Armenians in 1604-1605 and Europe's myth of Shah Abbas 1,' Pembroke Papers 1, (1990), 59-71.

17 R. P. Matthee, The Politics of Trade in Safavid Iran: Silk for Silver, 1600-1730 (Cam bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 73-74; V. Baibourtian, International Trade ..., 203.

18 Ina Baghdiantz Mccabe, Shah's silk.. . .




So far as Armenian trade in India and the Indian Ocean was concerned, there

seems to have been no European-type chartered joint-stock Armenian company.

Herzig, for example, has shown that family firms with extended patriarchal household as the basis of business organization were a major organ of this

trade.19 Organizing commerce on the basis of family connections has been com

mon in pre-modern societies in Europe and Asia. Braudel noted that the family offered the most natural and sought after solution for commercial networks.20

Baghdiantz Mccabe herself admits that family was the basic unit and the pre ferred system of Armenian merchant associations.21 In the seventeenth century, John Fryer left a description of the trading method of the Armenians:

The Armenians being skilled in all the intricacies of trade at home, and travelling with

these into the remotest kingdoms, become by their own industry, and by being factors

of their own kindred's honesty, the wealthiest men. . . .22

This is the organizing principle still followed in many modern Indian indus

trial firms.23

However, if the family firm provided the basics of the business organization, the other system that was part and parcel of the development of the long dis

tance financial and trading networks of the Armenians was the sending out of

factors or agents, often family members. A description of this system was also

provided by Fryer:

they [the Armenians] enter the theatre of commerce by means of some benefactor, whose money they adventure upon, and on return, a quarter part of the gain is their

own: from such beginnings do they raise sometimes great fortunes for themselves and

Masters.24

19 E. M. Herzig, 'The family firm' also, Baghdiantz Mccabe, Shah's silk. . . 20 F. Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, vol. 2, The Wheels of Commerce, Trans. S. Reynolds,

(London: Harper & Row, 1982): 150. The Tamil Muslim merchants of the Coromandel coast

known as Marakkayars organised their trade on the basis of extended kinship. See S. Arasa

ratnam, Merchants, companies and commerce on the Coromandel coast, 1650-1740, Delhi, 1986 passim and B. Bhattacharya, 'The Chulia merchants of southern Coromandel in the

eighteenth century: a case for continuity', in Commerce and culture in the Bay of Bengal, 1500-1800, ed. O. Prakash and D. Lombard (Delhi: Manohar, 1999), 285-305.

21 Shah's silk: 245-250. 22 A New Account of East India and Persia, being nine years travels, 1672-1681; edited

with notes and an introd. by William Crooke, 3 vols. (London: the Hakluyt Society, 1909

15), 249. 23 After the demise of Dhirubhai Ambani of the Reliance Industries recently, the eldest son

Mukesh Ambani took over the charge of the business. Cf. the Ahmedabad industrialist

Kasturbhai Lalbhai created companies for his nephews; see Claude Markovits, 'The Tata

paradox', in Institutions and Economic Change in South Asia, ed. Burton Stein and Sanjay

Subrahmanyam (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996), 237-248. 24 A New Account of East India, 249.




This kind of partnership was prevalent among different merchant communi

ties of South Asia in different forms. The shah-gumastha partnership existing

among the Sindhi merchants of Shikarpur, under which a small group of

sahukars and sarrafs controlled financial and commercial transactions over a

vast area encompassing Khorassan and Turkestan, was a variant of this sys tem.25 The most popular type of partnership prevalent among the Armenians of

New Julfa was the commenda contract, incorporating features of partnership, loan, and in few cases, employment.26 A classic account of this system as it

existed among the Armenians was left by Hovannes of Julfa in the pages of his

ledger book.27 Though such detailed accounts are available mostly in Armenian

documents, the English records of the Fort St. George amply testify to the exis

tence of the system until the end of the eighteenth century. Khoja Zachary di

Avetik of Isfahan came to Madras from Amsterdam in 1714. One of the prin

cipal merchants Zachary represented was his father, Khoja Avetik of Isfahan.28

At the time Zachary wrote his will, his wife Azis was in Isfahan. He had three sons: Hovannes, Gregory, and Avetik. By the time he came to Madras, Zachary

must have been well established in the trade to Europe. In Amsterdam, he seems to have had transactions with Sarhad, a merchant from New Julfa who

25 Claude Markovitz, The Global World of Indian Merchants, 1750-1947: Traders of Sind

from Bukhara to Panama, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), ch. 5. 26

Edmund Herzig, The Armenian Merchants of New Julfa, Isfahan: a study in pre-mod ern Asian trade. Ph.D. thesis, St. Antony's College, University of Oxford, 1991, ch. 3 offers a detailed account of the different kinds of partnership known among the Armenians and how

these worked. These were commenda partnership, true partnership, commission agency and

representation. The commenda contracts were basically of two types: unilateral, where the

whole capital was provided by the investor (sleeping partner) and active partner or agent invested the labour, and bilateral, where a part of the capital invested came from the active

partner. 27 L. Khachikian, 'The ledger of the Merchant Hovannes Joughayetsi', Journal of the

Asiatic Society, 8, no. 3, (1966), 153-86. This ledger book has been edited in Armenian

recently by L. Khachikian and H. Papazian. 28

Shushanik Khachikian suggested that Khoja Avetik, referred to as 'master' in the will was most probably the father of Zachary de Avetik, e-mail, September 21, 2003. 'De' or

'di' in Armenian names are abbreviation of the word 'vordi' meaning son. Zachary di Avetik, in this sense, means Zachary the son of Avetik. I am grateful to Sebouh Aslanian for this

clarification. For reference to Khoja Avetik Kalantar as brother of Aga Piri see See Vahe

Baladouni, and Margaret Makepeace ed. Armenian merchants of the seventeenth and early

eighteenth centuries: English East India Company sources, (Philadelphia: American Philosophical

Society, 1998) (henceforth Armenian Merchants), no. 237; and Aga Piri as the son of Khoja Panous, ibid. nos. 146, 175, 182. This volume offers a unique collection of documents on

Armenian merchants and their relationship with the English East India Company. It is also

possible that our Avetik was another person, known as Avetik di Petros, operating in

Amsterdam in the late 1690s. For Avetik di Petros see R. Bekius, 'Armenian merchants in

the textile trade'.




traded with Russia and Holland.29 Already in 1697 we find Zachary shipping

glass-ware and broad cloth on English Company ships.30 He was one of those merchants who travelled between different places in Europe, Siraz, Gombroon,

Isfahan, Madras and Pegu. In 1718 he replaced Khoja Simon as the Armenian

alderman of the Madras municipality and was known to have owned the ships Bon Voyage and Silliman, sailing to Pegu, among other places.31 He represented at least another merchant of Isfahan, Khoja Tarkon [?Tarkhan].32 In lieu of a

factorage bond worth 300 tomands, his master [in Isfahan] issued two bills of

exchange, one worth 150 tomands on Zachary di Avetik in India and the other of similar value on [?his son] Khoja Avetik in Europe. Zachary traded on mul

tiple accounts. Apart from the account together with his master Khoja Avetik, he had three other large accounts with Gregory de Agazar, Ma[natsa]gan di Aga Piri and Issa Gully di Avateek Shaudullah, who were also, like Zachary him

self, factors of other principal merchants.33 Since 1714, he had a partnership account

with Macartoon Yanhoopa (the second part does not resemble Armenian

names), another factor of Khoja Avetik.34 Zachary seems to have had an agent called Beethan in Gombroon. He had four other accounts running?two of these were partnership accounts between himself, his masters [not named] and Avid

de Zeany and two other between Macartoon Yanhoopa, Khoja Zachary and the

latter's master [?Khoja Avetik]. Zachary had two more accounts with the promi nent Bengal/Madras merchant Khoja Nazar Jacob Jan. One of these accounts

29 Shushanik Khachikian informed the author that the Armenian Sarhad trading in Russia had transactions with a Zachar, who was however, not known as a 'khoja'. E-mails to the

author, 23 September, 2003 and 1 February, 2004. 30 Armenian Merchants, no. 241. 31 Records of Fort St. George (henceforth RFSG), Diary and Consultation Book, 1718: 56,

171 and 1719: 93 and 120. 32

Was he a grandson of Khoja Minas? See Edmund Herzig, The Armenian Merchants, The family tree of Khoja Minasean family p. 451. Zachary does not mention Tarkhan as his master but mentions that the latter, when he visited India, handed Gregory (son of Zachery) a full discharge for 300 tomands, Tamil Nadu Archives, (henceforth TNA), Records of the

Mayor's Court, Copy of Wills, Probates, etc. vol. 1: The Last Will and Testament of Zachary De Avateek, dated 10 September, 1736, henceforth 'the last will of Zachary'. 33 It is very much likely that this Issa Gully was the same person as the Armenian Issa

Coolly/Coolly an at the Mughal court, Armenian Merchants . . . nos. 141, 169, 231. He was

related to Khoja Zachary and replaced him as the Armenian alderman when Zachary left for

Pegu. See RFSG, Diary and Consultation Book, 1719: 177. Issa Cooly was noted by the Dutch at Surat as a person friendly with the Mughal official Salabat Khan, see Nationaal

Archief, the Hague (henceforth N.A.), Dag Register Surat, 14 June 1685, V.O.C. 1409, (film 1035) f.l599v. Similarly, Magan di Aga Piri was a son of Aga Piri Kalantar of Surat and

Madras (see more on him below). 34

English East India Company sources refer to one Persia de Marketon freighting goods on the company ships, Armenian Merchants, documents 241, 249, 253.




was part of Zachary's account with his masters [not named]. In the other

account Zachary, together with his sons, seems to have acted as factor of Khoja Nazar Jacob Jan, as the latter possessed a 'factorage' bond worth Rs. 24,000 in

the name of Zachary and his sons.35 Was Zachary's father (Avetik) a son of the

famous Armenian Khoja Panous Kalantar, the very influential merchant of New

Julfa and London in the second half of the seventeenth century?36 Though there

is no direct evidence connecting the two Avetiks, it is evident that the wide

spread network of transactions Zachary mentioned in his will was facilitated by the connections established over more than one generation.37 Moreover, it

appears that the number of Armenian families involved in the Euro-Asian trade

in the Company's bottoms at the end of the seventeenth century was limited.38

Zachary had a partnership contract with Ma[natsa]gan, a son of Aga Piri (son of Khoja Panous)39 and was member of a family firm consisting of three gen erations operating simultaneously from different parts of the globe. He was part of a wide-ranging network of commercial transactions in which the interests of

his principals (including his father), their other factors, his own interests as well as those of his sons were intertwined in an extremely intricate cris-cross pattern of partnership. Unfortunately, the will does not specify the type of partnerships

Zachary had with all these different partners. In another case in 1732, Khoja Sarkies di Agavelly and Khoja Gregory of Fort St. George had Khoja Simon as

35 'The last will of Zachary'. 36 In 1688 he signed a contract with the directors of the English East India Company in

London on behalf of the Armenian merchants of New Julfa. See Armenian Merchants, no.

112 for the text of this agreement. For a lively discussion on the agreement see M. J. Seth, Armenians in India: From the Earliest Times to the Present Day?a work of Original Research (Delhi: Oxford etc., 1937), 231-44. All further references to this work are from this

edition. Also, R. Ferrier, 'The agreement of the EIC with the Armenian Nation'. 37

Armenian Merchants, refers to two Avetiks?one without (documents 62, 74, 77) and one with the title kalantar (documents 153, 179, 183, 188-89 and passim)?though indexed

together under one name 'Coja Aveatick Calendar' p. 281. Though the term 'Calandar', alter

nately 'Calendar', or 'Callenter' is treated in European records as surname, it referred to

kalantar (alderman or mayor), a city official appointed by central government in Iran. 38

Ibid, documents 261 and 262 for example. 39

Aga Piri was active in Surat during the 1690s. When his father was returning from

London to Julfa in 1692, the English expected Aga Piri or some other member of the fam

ily to go to London in order to look after his business. Armenian Merchants, no. 146. He was a 'well known' Armenian inhabitant of Surat and broker for the Dutch East India

Company. 52250 lb. of indigo was purchased by De Keyser at Agra through the broker Aga Piri for f.79662. Generale Missiven v.5 1686-97, ed., W. Ph. Coolhaas ('s Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1975): 770. Aga Piri settled in Madras somewhere at the turn of the cen

tury. Later he became the Armenian Alderman of the Mayor's Court at Fort St. George. Armenian Merchants, no. 264.




their 'factor' in Pegu.40 Again, Khoja Thaddeus Aga Piri & co. Brothers, a mer

chant firm of Fort St. George appointed Khoja Aveat their factor at Pegu. Upon

accepting the 'factorship', Aveat signed a 'factorage bond' with the said firm

valid for five years and set out for Pegu with a sum of Pagodas 2,750, 'Prin

cipal sum' advanced by the Aga Piri brothers to be employed in their interest.

At Pegu he worked together with one Petrus. During his stay in Pegu, Aveat

received several consignments from the Aga Piri brothers amounting to more

than Pagodas 17,000.41 In a distinct case of commenda partnership, Khoja Cachick Khojamal, when he set out from Isfahan in May 1740, received from

Khoja Nazar di Abid Aga the sum of 320 tomands on the condition that out of

the profit made, 220 parts together with the principal sum would go to Khoja Nazar while 100 part of the profit would be Khojamal's. On his arrival at

Madras in September 1740, Khojamal was employed by the famous Khoja Petrus Woskan who advanced him Rs. 18,000. Khojamal particularly mentioned in his testament that the two accounts were entirely separate and should not be

mixed up. He had another account with his nephew Marcar di Sattoor, and here

the profit was to be equally divided between the two partners.42 The references we come across to Armenian trade in Persia and India, in the wills and testa

ments of Armenian merchants suggests that the organization of Armenian trade was left to individual initiatives. Partnership among these individuals in differ

ent capacities was indeed a salient feature of this trade. This was, however, far

from the formal superstructure represented by the East India Companies, whose

structure, size and scale made the nature of commercial operations impersonal.43 Armenian merchants in the Indian Ocean were rather like the multitude of other

Asian merchants engaged in networks of private trade, based on personal net

works of extended kinship and the pursuit of similar goals. The Companies with their modern structure co-existed with this pre-modern structure of trade, but the

basic differences are clear. The reliance on the ethno-religious community provided the Armenians of

New Julfa with a network that spanned at least half the globe. The network of

the Armenian merchants indeed reflected a structure, as defined by Markovits,

40 RFSG, Pleadings in the Mayor's Court 1731-32, 75. Khoja Simon acted as the Pegu

agent of other Armenians and sailed as nakhuda on ships sailing between Madras and Pegu. 41 RFSG, Pleadings in the Mayor's Court, 1737, 8-9.

42 Calcutta High Court, Old Will no. 224, The last will and testament of Coja Catchick Cojamaul deceased, 17 November, 1755.

43 There were of course informal connections behind this formal structure of the compa

nies; and the informal networks formed by the representatives of these formal companies in

their private capacity were crucial for country trade.




facilitating a continuous circulation of capital, credit, goods, information and

human resources.44 Almost any ship sailing between two ports in Asia, or leaving an Asian port for a destination in Europe could be used for sending agents, or consignments, or both. In addition to caravans, pattamars or messengers were

used for sending messages overland. Through a multitude of partners and

agents, or representatives of agents, or even the kin of acquaintances working at different levels, in some or other way related to the community, the con

signment?no matter if it contained an important message related to business or

family, a couple of bills of exchange or promissory notes, a parcel contain

ing cash or a few precious stones, a copy of a contract, a few bales of cloth? was bound to reach the destination. As the Julfa dialect (Armenian, with many Persian loan words) was the medium of all commercial transactions, there was

no possibility of disclosure of a confendential information. In 1711 the gover nor and council of Fort St. George wanted to buy up the new company's debt

to Masulipatnam merchants amounting to Pagodas 80,000. The merchants of

Masulipatnam must have sought assistance of Armenians in soliciting the

Company's favour in London. When the separate stock ship Windsor arrived in

Madras in 1713, rumour had it that the Armenians had received advice that the

directors of the Company had ordered the Fort St. George Council to discharge that debt fully. Initially the council did not take notice of this rumour. But to

their dismay, after the arrival of the ship King William, Aga Piri Kalantar, then

residing in Madras, produced an original letter to Khoja Babur di Sultan [Piri's

agent in London] dated January 29, 1712. The letter acquainted him, by order of the Court of Directors, that the council of Fort St. George had been directed to satisfy the merchants' demands on the New Company as far as these were

just.45 The news of the Anglo-French War starting in Europe in 1756 reached

the Armenian Khoja Wajid in Bengal through his kothi in Surat.46

From the seventeenth century onwards centres in India?Surat, Bombay, Madras and Calcutta in particular?seem to have come up as places where Armenian

capital was concentrated. Wealthy Armenian merchants of such ports had agents at places like Pegu, and Manila. One is struck by the continuous circulation of even the leading members of the community. We have noted the case of

Zachary above. Khoja Petrus Woscan left New Julfa at for Madras in 1705

when he was about twenty-five years of age. It is not known exactly when he

44 Claude Markovitz, The Global World of Indian Merchants, 25.

45 RFSG, Despatches to England, v.3, 1711-14, 133. Khoja Babur di Sultan seems to have

functioned as the London agent of other Armenians too. See Armenian Merchants, nos. 261, 262. It must have been Aga Piri who referred the case to Babur. who got the order issued.

46 S. C. Hill, Bengal in 1756-57, vol. 2, no. 144.




sailed for Manila where he spent about twenty years. It is clear from his testa

ment that the beginnings of his fortunes were made in Manila. He came back

to Coromandel in 1722 when he settled down permanently at Madras. He never

went back to New Julfa, but recovered his ancestral property in that town, that

had been mortgaged to others. Though the overseas transactions of his network

stretching from Constantinople to Manila were made mostly through his agents and their partners, he travelled frequently between Madras, Pulicat, Masuli

patnam and Pondicherry in connection with his trade and was kept informed

about the transactions of his agents through other itinerant members of the com

munity.47 Armenian aldermen of Madras often left for Pegu, no doubt in con

nection with their business. While someone else from his family or community would take over the absentee's duties, he would take care of the commercial

transactions of his compatriots in Pegu. The flexible and unassuming character

of the members of their network, willing to take up almost any role that suited

the occasion, offered Armenians the potential to exploit the existing and newly

opened channels of commerce and communication to the maximum.

Armenians and the Milieu of the Indian Trading World

As noted above, the Arabian Seas especially provided the major thoroughfare in transcontinental commerce, in addition and to the overland route, since very ancient times. Even before the rise of Islam that led to the expansion of com

merce along the Indian Ocean littoral, Arabs, Syrian Christians and Persians had

traded and settled at Indian ports. While ports like Cambay, Mangalore, Calicut, Cochin and Quilon housed merchants of international communities, both over

land and overseas trade connected India with the world outside. Prior to the seventeenth century, Armenians coming to India seem to have

used the overland route to a greater extent than the overseas route. Babur, the

founder of the Mughal empire already noted the importance of Kabul and

Kandahar in the overland route to India.48 At least since the close of the six

teenth century onwards, Safavid Iran, Uzbek Turan, and Mughal India provided a broadly similar commercial and liguistic environment, with Persian as the most widely used language for administrative and cultural purposes.49 In the

47 TNA, Records of the Mayor's Court, Copies of wills, probates etc. vol. 5, ff.212-311:

the last will and testament of Coja Petrus Uscan (henceforth, the last will of Petrus Uscan). See my work on the Armenian merchants of Madras (under preparation). 48

Babur-Nama: (Memoirs of Babur), tr. from the original Turkish text by Annette

Susannah Beveridge (rep. Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint, 1970): 202. 49 S. F. Dale, Indian Merchants and Eurasian Trade, 1600-1750 (First Indian edition,

1994), 7-13.




same way as Indian Sindhi firms and Hindu merchants operating in this route

spread to Kandahar, Bukhara, Isfahan and beyond, Armenian, Persian, Turkish, and other merchants followed this caravan route to different market and pro duction centres in north and northwest India.50 Except for short segments, the

major route from Kabul to Agra underwent few modifications since the close of

the sixteenth century, testifying to relatively stable urban setting.51 Indian rural

economy, with its commercial production, was very much geared to an inte

grated pattern of trade through networks of mandis and qasbas stretching from

Lahore, Multan, and Sind on the west to Assam and Bengal in the east, con

nected through road and river routes.52 In the early seventeenth century, Lahore was a principal commercial centre of India, attracting commodities from far and near brought by merchants of all the nationalities mentioned above.

It has been suggested, that in the pre-Mughal period, most of the Armenians

coming to India were travelling merchants who came here for business and

returned to their own country each year.53 But considering the distance and the

nature of the overland or caravan trade, it seems unlikely that one year was

enough to travel all the way from Eurasia or western Asia?wherever these

merchants came from?to carry out such business and return.54 Moreover, as

many of these itinerant traders traded in multiple (relatively small) accounts, it

would take a few years to accumulate some profit from all the accounts. The

description provided by the ledger book of Khoja Hovannes in the late seven

teenth century can again be taken as examplary: one set out on a journey that

covered several years during which the traveller-cum-trader invested his master's

50 For the Sindhi diaspora see C. Markovitz, The Global World of Indian Merchants and

Scott C. Levi, The Indian Diaspora in Central Asia and its Trade, 1550-1900 (Leiden: Brill,

2002); for Armenians taking this route see J. Russell, 'Two Armenian graffities from Ziarat,

Pakistan', Revue Etude Armeninnes (1988-89), XVI, 471-75. 51 Jean Deloche, Transport and Communications in India prior to Steam Locomotion, 2

vols., tr. From the French by James Walker, Delhi, 1993-94, v.l, 34. 52

B. R. Grover, 'An Integrated Pattern of Commercial Life in the Rural Society of North

India during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries' in Money and Market in India, 1100

1700, ed. S. Subrahmanyam (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994): 219-255. 53 S. Neill, A History of Christianity in India, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1984-85), vol. 1: The Beginnings to A. D. 1707, 384. Neill's information here is based on the account left by the eighteenth century Armenian merchant-cum-historian Thomas

Khojamall. According to M. J. Seth, however, Khojamall's account is not reliable. See his

'Armenians in India' especially 15-21. 54

A journey from Surat to Agra took 86 days. See R. J. Barendse, The Arabian Seas, 158; a journey from Goa to Lahore via Daman and Cambay (up to Cambay by ship), which usu

ally took two months, could easily take as long as six months. P. du Jarric, Akbar and the

Jesuits. An account of the Jesuit Missions to the Court of Akbar, tr. with introduction and notes by C. H. Payne (London: Routledge & Sons, 1926): 52-59.




(partner)s as well as his own capital; made new acquaintances and renewed the

old ones; carried goods from one place to another for sale and noted the

demand for new ones. In the end, the ones lucky enough to survive the odds of

the weather and the roads, and to make enough profit to settle the accounts with

the master, went back. During the intermittent period the trader had to live at

different places along the route.

At the beginning of the sixteenth century we find Armenians, together with

Arabs, Parsees, and Turks, sailing from Cambay as part of the four Gujarati ships annually leaving that port for Melaka where many of them stayed back.55 In the course of the sixteenth century, Armenians were to be found at different

places in India and at least a few Armenian settlements seem to have been there. Portuguese missionaries in the early sixteenth century noted that in mat

ters of faith, the Christians of St. Thomas in Coromandel gave hearing to

none except their bishops, who come from Armenia, because with the people of this

country, no one can succeed but these bishops.56

At Pulicat, Portuguese merchants coming from Melaka stayed with Armenian

Christians. It was at the invitation of Coja Escandel (?Iskandar), among other

Armenians, that Diogo Fernandes and Bastiao Fernandes made the pilgrimage to the house of the Apostle St. Thomas at St. Thome in 1517.57 Akbar'sfarman to the Jesuit Provincial at Goa asking the latter to send him learned priests

capable of informing the emperor about Christianity was carried by the ambas sador Abdallah and Dominic or Domingo Pires, an Armenian Christian.58 Pires

accompanied both the first and the third Jesuit missions to the Mughal court as interpreter.59 Though it is not clear if Akbar met the parents of Mirza ZuTqarnain,

55 Tome Pires, The Suma Oriental, 2 vols. (London: the Hakluyt Society, 1944), vol. 1:46, v.2:268-69.

56 G. M. Moraes, A History of Christianity in India: from Early Times to St. Francis

Xavier, A.D. 52-1542 (Bombay: Manaktalas, 1964): 226. Moraes was not sure if these Christians were Armenians or Syrians. It is true that early Portuguese sources referred to all Eastern Christians as Armenians. See E. Maclagan, The Jesuits and the Great Mogul (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne, 1932): 271 and S. Neill, A History of Christianity: 466 fn. Armenians were elsewhere in India and also engaged in the overseas trade to Southeast

Asia, but it is possible that the Christian priests the Portuguese came across in Coromandel were Syrians. 57 A. Mathias Mundadan, History of Christianity in India, vol. 1: From the Beginning up to the middle of the Sixteenth century (up to 1542) (Bangalore: Theological Publications in India, 1984): 407.

58 M. J. Seth suggested that this Portuguese name was perhaps assumed by the person for

strategic purposes. 59 E. Maclagan, The Jesuits and the Great Mogul: 24, 39, 41, 196; S. Neill, A History of

Christianity in India . . . vol. 1: 170.




the well-known Armenian Catholic with close contact with the Jesuit fathers at

Agra or somewhere in Kashmir, it is clear that they were living in (Mughal) India where both Zu'lqarnain and his brother were born.60 The brief account of

the merchant pilgrim Khwaja Martyrose in Seth's work reminds us of a Sufi

saint.61 Though we have such accounts of Armenians in different parts of the

country in the sixteenth century, it is, however, difficult to accept Hewsen's

position that there were large settlements of Armenians already at Agra (by 1562), Surat (by 1579) and Calcutta (by 1630).62

At the beginning of the seventeenth century the Jesuit Fr. Emmanuel Pinheiro at Lahore came across the books and a copy of the Gospels being carried by an Armenian merchant from Jerusalem for the Emperor Akbar. Travelling over

land from Ormuz, the Armenian had breathed his last near Lahore.63 The mis

sion of the lay brother Benedict Goes to China sent by Fr. Jerome Xavier from

Lahore in 1603 was accompanied by the Armenian Isaac, who remained with

Goes till the end.64 At this stage of settlement, Armenians living in India were

60 See below for more on Mirza ZuTqarnain. 61 M. J. Seth, Armenians in India: 102-7. On pp. 22-23 he gives the names of seven

Armenian priests who died at Agra between 1614 and 1675. 62

Robert. H. Hew sen, Armenia: A Historical Atlas (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001). As far as South Asia is concerned, Hew sen's atlas is a bit confusing because

the symbols explained on p. xvii point to the size of the place (e.g. village, small town and

city) but refer to the size of the community on the map (p. 160). Hew sen bases himself on Mesrobv Seth's work. Except for two tombstones from 1557 and 1560, the rest of the tomb stones of Armenians at Agra dated back to 1611. Seth's assumption that a large number of

Armenians had flocked to Agra during the reign of Akbar was not corroborated by any his torical source. See his Armenians in India: 110. According to the account of Khojamall,

whom Seth elsewhere dismissed as untrustworthy, Akbar had allowed an Armenian church to be built in Agra as early as 1562. But the Jesuit priests, who had a close contact with

Armenians, do not mention any Armenian church in Agra. E. Maclagan, The Jesuits and the

Great Mogul: 271. About Seth's position that no Armenian women came to India in the sev

enteenth and eighteenth centuries, see below. As regards the possibility of a large Armenian

colony in Calcutta by 1630, a hypothesis based on the discovery of the tombstone of Reza

Bibi dated July 11, 1630 in the churchyard of the Holy Church of Nazareth (Calcutta), C. R.

Wilson already dismissed it on the ground that the tombstone in question was an isolated

instance, and that the stone was not in situ. He suggested that the stone was probably brought to Calcutta from somewhere else at a later date. See Early Annals of the English in Bengal:

being the Bengal Public Consultations for the first half of the 18th century, (henceforth Early Annals of the English in Bengal) 3 vols. (London: W. Thacker, 1895-1919), vol. 1: 137, n. 4; also P. T. Nair, Calcutta in the 17th Century (Calcutta: Firma KLM, 1986): 443-46.

Calcutta became an important centre of commerce in the 18th century following the founda

tion of the English settlement there in 1690. It is more likely that if Armenians were there in Bengal in the early 17th century, they were based mainly at Chinsura, and not in Calcutta.

63 E. Maclagan, The Jesuits and the Great Mogul: 213-215. 64 C. Wessels, Early Jesuit Travellers in Central Asia, 1603-1721 (The Hague: Martinus

Nijhoff, 1924): 1-42.




well integrated into the existing socio-economic fabric of India. For commerce

overland they travelled in caravans consisting of merchants of different Indian

and west Asian communities. Overseas commerce too, as we have noted above, was carried out with merchants of different origins.

The relationship of the Armenians with non-Christians was often not limited

to trade alone. Familiarity with Persian provided them access to the Mughal court, which often employed them as trusted interpreters.65 As regards the con

version of Armenians to Islam, not much is known so far. The relationship between Armenians and Muslims of different denominations has never been free

from tensions as historical Armenia has often fallen prey to the aggressive poli cies of Turkey and Persia. At the same time, it also provided Armenians with

the experience of living under Muslim domination. One account that was widely known among the European missionaries and travellers in seventeenth-century India was that of Mirza Zu'lqarnain mentioned above. His father, Mirza

Sikandar, acquired great favour at the court of Akbar, who married him to

Juliana, the daughter of the Armenian Mir Abdul Hai, in charge of the royal harem.66 After Jahangir succeeded to the throne, both Zu'lqarnain and his

brother Sikandar were forcibly converted to Islam. This seems to have been more of a political show as after his conversion, Zu'lqarnain did not practise Islam but became an adherent of the Roman Catholic Church.67 It was not

uncommon for Armenians during this period to conceal their faith under some

real or assumed political pressure. When the governor of Lahore threatened in

1604 to arrest all the Christians of that city, some twenty-three Armenian mer

chants seem to have fled the city hastily. According to Fr. Pinheiro, the three

65 For the legend about the (Armenian) Christian wife of Akbar see M. J. Seth, Armenians in India: 151-61. Seth maintained that Akbar indeed had an Armenian wife. But he also

quoted the paper of Fr. J. Hosten published in the Statesman, 14 November 1916, where

Hosten left the issue open as he had no conclusive evidence. Also, E. Maclagan, The Jesuits and the Great Mogul: 157-61.

66 Abdul Hai, an Armenian, was in the service of the imperial harem of Akbar. His daugh ter was married to Iskandar who was also in the service of Akbar. Iskandar had two sons:

the elder son, also called Iskandar, was later named Mirza ZuTqarnain. Tuzuk I Jahangiri, tr. By Alexander Rogers, ed. By Henry Beveridge, 2 vols., (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal,

1968), vol. 2: 194. The life of Mirza Zulkarnain attracted the attention of many contempo rary accounts perhaps because of the fact he was, together with his brother, forcibly circum

cised by Jahangir. 67 Except for the period 1633-35 when he suffered from Shah Jahan's anti-Christian out

bursts, Mirza seems to have enjoyed the favour of Jahangir and Shah Jahan who entrusted

him with various responsibilities. For his carreer see Fr. H. Hosten, Memoirs of the Asiatic

Society of Bengal, 1916; E. Maclagan, The Jesuits and the Great Mogul: 170-80; M. J. Seth

quoted extensively from Fr. Hosten's work in Armenians in India, 22-87.




to four Armenians he met did not want to be seen talking to him, as they wished not to be recognised as Christians.68 The Italian traveller Pietro Della

Valle's Persian Christian servant Cacciatur (the name suggests he was an Armenian) had declared himself at the customs at Surat to be a Muslim as he was afraid

he would be persecuted in the Mughal dominions.69 Contemporary accounts sug

gest that Armenians in India in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries co

habited with Hindu and Muslim women.70 These Hindu and Muslim concubines were later either abandoned or accepted as partners through marriage in the church.71

Such co-habitation would be logical even if for entirely strategic purposes. Akbar himself seems to have been present at the wedding ceremony of his

Armenian interpreter Dominic Pires and his Indian bride in 1582.72

Another interesting case, though we have not come across any conclusive

evidence about this one so far, is that of Khoja Wajid, a colourful personality of Bengal trade and politics in the eighteenth century.73 The indigenous histo

rian Gulam Hussain noted that Khwaja Ashraf Kashmiri, son of Mir Afzal, was

a nephew of Wajid.74 Though S. C. Hill refers to him as Armenian, Dutch and

French sources refer to him as a 'moor,' a term indicating Muslim,75 and his

torians have wondered about this confusion. Sushil Chaudhury, who has written

extensively on Wajid, has noted that there is no evidence to show that Wajid, who was undoubtedly an Armenian, had ever converted to Islam. Chaudhury assumes that Wajid perhaps added 'Muhammed' to his name to enhance his

68 E. Maclagan, The Jesuits and the Great Mogul: 271-72; cf. Letter from the president Fremlen &messrs. Breton, Robinson and Wylde at Swally Marine to the Company, December

29, 1640: ". . . the greater part of whom [Armenians] here call themselves 'Mussulman' . ..".

English Factories in India, ed. W. Foster, 13 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906-27), vol.

6: 281. 69 The Travels of Pietro Della Valle in India. From the old English translation of 1664 by

G. Havers, ed. With a life of the author, an introd. And notes by Edward Grey. 2 vols.

(London: Hakluyt Society, 1892); v.l:126-30. 70 P. du Jarric, Akbar and the Jesuits: 135. 71 Ibid. 72 E. Maclagan, The Jesuits and the Great Mogul: 194. The name Dominic Pires is not

Armenian. Seth suggests that this was perhaps an adopted name. 73 For details on Khoja Wajid see below. 74

Saiyid Ghulam Husain Khan Tabatabai, Seir i Mutakherin, 2 vols. (Lahore: 1975), vol.

2: 400. 75 See the letters from the Dutch chief Bisdom quoted in S. C. Hill, Bengal 1756-57,

passim. Jean Law, the chief of the French factory at Kashimbazar in 1756-57 also referred to

Wajid as a 'Moor': Wajid 'passed for the Nawab's [Siraj-uddaula] confidential agent with the Europeans; a sufficient reason for this belief was founded on the very considerable losses

which this Moor had just suffered by the English capture of Hugli'; see S. C. Hill, Bengal in 1756-57, vol. 3, Appendix III, translation of the first part of the memoir of Jean Law: 187.




business prospects.76 Writing about Bengal in 1757, Rajat Ray wondered how

the Muslim Mir Afzal could be related to the Armenian Wajid, as matrimonial

relationships between the Armenians and Muslims were not usual.77 It is

extremely interesting to note that Thomas Khojamall, the eighteenth century Armenian historian, who referred to Khoja Petrus and Khoja Gregory?two other well known Armenian personalities in Bengal in the eighteenth century? did not mention Khoja Wajid.78 Curiously enough, Seth, who was at pains in

putting together the history of the Armenians in India, did not have much to say about Wajid.79 Repeated reference to him as 'moor' in the records of the Dutch

East India Company, and the silence of Armenian sources about this personal

ity leads one to think, in the light of the history of the Armenians sketched

above, that either Khoja Wajid or his father had embraced Islam at some point of time.80

Armenians seem to have lived in close social contact with Christians of other

denominations. The Jesuit fathers considered all Armenians of northern India to

be under their charge and paid special attention to the conversion of Armenians

to the Catholic Church.81 Though Armenians were initially opposed to the

activity of the fathers, it was possible for the latter to convert some of the

Armenians. It should be noted that Mirza Zu'lqarnain, after his forced conver

sion to Islam, converted to the Catholic Church. Letters written by Jesuit fathers

from Goa attest to the good relationship between Mirza Zu'lkarnain, then gov ernor of the province of Sambhar in Rajasthan and the Jesuits. Zu'lkarnain was

referred to as 'the pillar of Christianity' extending his liberality not only to the

Jesuits, but also to the rest of the Christians. Mirza was a generous supporter of the conversion of the indigenous population by the Jesuits, who spoke of him as 'brother' and procured for him the title of 'Founder of Agra College.'82 Even

76 S. Chaudhury, 'Khwaja Wazid in Bengal Trade and Polities', The Indian Historical

Review, (July 1989-Jan. 1990), v. XVI, no. 1-2: 137-48. 77 R. K. Ray, Polashir Shorojontro o Sekaler Somaj (The Conspiracy of Plassey and the

Contemporary Society) (Calcutta: Ananda Publishers, 1998): 161. 78 I am grateful to Sebouh Aslanian for drawing my attention to this point. 79

Seth refers to Khoja Wajid only in passing, with reference to the question of monopoly in salt. Armenians in India: 364-65.

80 Scholars like Baghdiantz Mccabe, Khachikian and Zekiyan relate that if an Armenian

was converted, he was not considered Armenian any more. Zekiyan adds that as Armenians

did not have a state, nationality was not the issue, while adherence to the church was. This

would also explain why Wajid's grave cannot be found either in Chinsura or in Calcutta. 81

E. Maclagan, The Jesuits and the Great Mogul: 271-72. 82 The Travels of Peter Mundy, 1608-67 in Europe and Asia, 5 vols. (London: Hakluyt

Society, 1907-36), vol. 2: Travels in Asia, 1628-1634, Appendix E; also Seth, Armenians in

India . . ., 22-87.




the Great Mughals were not in a position to (or did not) make a distinction

between Christians of different denominations. Pleased with Captain William

Hawkins, the envoy of King James II, Jahangir wanted him to settle down in

India and offered him all accommodations, including a wife. Extremely embar

rassed, but not daring to refuse the imperial offer, Hawkins replied that as a

Christian he could marry only a Christian woman. But the emperor outwitted

him by finding a match in the daughter of a lately deceased Armenian, and

Hawkins felt obliged to obey the emperor.83 When the Dutch and the English were struggling to initiate commerce in the

western Indian Ocean and Mughal India from their base at Surat, Armenians were thus already established in the field. But the settlement of Armenians in

New Julfa and other places in Persia which coincided with the arrival of the

western European companies in the Indian Ocean, acted as a boost to the first

major eastward surge of Armenian trade. The proximity of India, the main trad

ing partner of Iran,84 prompted an increasing number of Armenian merchants to

frequent India. There is evidence to show that Armenians, together with Persian

merchants continued to use the overland route to India in the seventeenth cen

tury.85 A Dutch source written in 1630 claimed that Armenians and Persians

transported indigo from Byana in huge quantities and textiles from the region around Agra and Delhi to Isfahan via the overland route to Persia and Turkey.86 An estimate made in the 1630s put the ratio of textiles, indigo and sugar

exported overseas to Persia to those taken overland at 70:30. Van Santen main

tains that this list underestimated the overland trade as it did not include the

quantity of indigo from Byana transported overland, especially because the same list also indicated that transporting cotton piece-goods from the area

around Agra and Delhi overland to Isfahan was cheaper (20% of the cost) than

transporting them by caravan to Surat, then to Bandar Abbas by ship, and again to Isfahan by caravan (27% of the cost).This list suggests that it would be more

profitable to send textiles coming from the centres of production in north India

overland.87 It was noted that every year 20- to 25,000 camels, carrying chiefly

83 See Purchas: His Pilgrims (Glasgow: MacLehose, 1905-07), vol. Ill: 15-16. 84 Willem Floor, The Economy of Safavid Persia (Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2000): 245. 85 See Henry Bornford's account of his journey from Agra to Tatta [? March 1639] in

English Factories in India, vol. 6: 134-138. 86

N.A., V.O.C. 1099, Surat-Heeren XVII, 30 July, 1630, 312v. 87 Another estimate put the cost of both the routes at about 50%. H. W. Van Santen, De

VOC in Gujarat en Hindustan, 1620-1660, Ph.D. thesis, Leiden University (Meppel: 1982): 64-65.




piece-goods, arrived at Isfahan from India.88 In 1638 the Dutch factors at Surat

noted that Armenian and Muslim merchants carrrying more than 100 cartloads

of indigo and textiles overland to Persia could not pass the region around

Kandahar due to a war in the region, and were forced to return to Surat for

shipment to Persia on board Dutch and English ships.89 Due to the import of a

large quantity of cotton textiles in Isfahan by a caravan consisting of 6,000 camels in 1644, there was little demand for the textiles carried by the Dutch

Company.90 In 1668 Nicolaes Witsen, the famous burgomaster of Amsterdam

was informed by a certain Armenian merchant of Julfa about the major places

along the overland route connecting Persia and India.

Table. Distance between Isfahan and the major cities in India as calculated by an Armenian

merchant of Julfa, 166891

From To Distance in miles

Isfahan Kandahar via Mashed 375

Isfahan Kandahar via desert route 250

Kandahar Multan 160

Multan Lahore 50 Lahore Agra 110

It has been assumed that the growth of the overseas trade of Surat in the sec

ond half of the seventeenth century did not automatically imply an increase in

the total export from India. Bulk of the commodities that had earlier been taken

overland, was being shipped from Surat at the end of the seventeenth and

the beginning of the eighteenth centuries.92 The rebellion at Kandahar (1709), followed by the Afghan occupation of Persia (1722-30) and then by the inva

sion of India by Nadir Shah made the roads unsafe and had a negative impact on overland trade. The Indo-Gangetic plains and the sub-Himalayan zones,

88 Ibid. 89

Generale Missiven, vol. 1: 725. 90 H. W. Van Santen, De VOC in Gujarat en Hindustan: 65. 91 Nicolaes Witsen, Noord en Oost tartarye, of te bondig ontwerp van eenige dier landen

en volken, welke voormaels bekent zijn geweest. Beneffens verscheidene tot noch onbekende, en meest nooit voorheen be sehr eve Tarter sehe en nabuurige gewesten, landstreken, steden,

rivieren, en plaetzen, in de Noorder en Oosterlyke gedeelten van Asia en Europa enz. 2 vols.

(Amsterdam: Halma, 1705), vol. 1: 426. I am grateful to Rene Bekius for drawing my atten

tion to this work. 92 H. W. Van Santen De VOC in Gujarat en Hindustan: 65; for the question of the con

tinuity of overland trade from India in the seventeenth century see R. J. Barendse, The

Arabean Seas: 154-64; Willem Floor, The Economy of Safavid Persia: 200-10.




however, continued to be connected with Persia and Central Asia through Kabul

and Kandahar during the period that followed.93 Seth found only one tombstone of an Armenian woman at Surat in the six

teenth century (dating from 1579), and the fact that no Armenian woman was

buried at Agra between 1611 and 1777 led him to conclude that no Armenian

ladies travelled to India with their husband in those days.94 This is inaccurate

and simplistic, because Seth was aware of the presence of Armenian women in

India in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.95 Subsequent to their settle ment in New Julfa, Isfahan, the number of Armenian merchants settling in India

with their families seems to have increased. This was particularly so in major

trading settlements like Surat where quite a few Armenian women were to be

found already in the first half of the seventeenth century.96 The relationship between the Armenians and the two northwest European nationalities at Surat was rather close. A Catholic Armenian called Iskandar Beg, the interpreter of

the English lodge at Surat, worked as interpreter for Pieter van den Broecke

who arrived there as director of the Dutch East India Company in 1620.97 When

Delia Valle was in Surat with his Georgian wife, he was touched by the demon

stration of affection on the part of the English president Thomas Rastel, who

often sent Delia Valle his own coach and his interpreter. It was the time when

Jan Pietersz. Coen, the governor-general of the Dutch East Indies, who consid

ered women as a pre-condition for trade, advocated the policy of populating Batavia. After initial attempts of shipping marriageable women or entire fami

lies to Asia had failed, the Dutch decided to follow the Portuguese example.98 Delia Valle noticed that many of the Dutch Company's servants, contrary to

those of the English, were married, and quite a few to Armenian women. He was informed that this pattern was encouraged in order to populate Batavia:

At Batavia Dutchmen settled with their family enjoyed many privileges. That is why many of them are married to women from Syria, Armenia, India and other countries.99

93 Muzaffar Alam, The Crisis of Empire in Mughal India: Awadh and the Punjab 1707-48 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1986): 141-43.

94 M. J. Seth, Armenians in India: 126.

95 Ibid. e.g. 263.

96 The large proportion of women among the Armenians of Surat drew attention of an

Englishman even two centuries later. Anonymous, 'Surat?its past and present' Calcutta

Review, (1848) 9, January-June: 136. 97 See Om Prakash, Dutch Factories in India, 1627-1623, v.l (Delhi: Munshiram Mano

harlal, 1984): 19n. 98 L. Blusse van Oud-Alblas, Strange Company: Chinese Settlers, Mestizo Women and the

Dutch in VOC Batavia (Leiden: KITLV, 1986): 158-62. 99 The travels of Pietro della Valle in India, vol. 1: 29.




At Surat, he lodged at the palatial building owned by the director Van den

Broecke, who sent the young Armenian wife of one of the Dutch factors,

accompanied by a few female servants for the convenience of Mrs. Delia

Valle.100 The way Van den Broeke mentioned the Armenians in his journal leads one to think that in the early stage of settlement in India the Dutch were quite

friendly to the Armenians, who, together with other Europeans, formed part of one Christian society.101 On Christmas Day in 1621 the slave girl of Sebalt

Wonderaar, the senior merchant of the Dutch lodge, was baptised along with

Catherina, the girl child of the well known Armenian Yadgar. As godfather, Van den Broecke was witness to the event.102 On his trip to Ahmedabad, where Armenians were active in the indigo trade, Van den Broecke stayed at their

sarai.m On another occasion in 1626 the baptism of an Italian child by the Dutch priest David Sijmonssen took place in the house of Iskander Beg. This

time, too, Van den Broecke was the godfather and Angela, the wife of Yadgar, was the godmother.104 Next year Yadgar's daughter Marican was married to Issack Scholliers, an assistant in the Dutch lodge. The junior merchant Paulus

Stigel van Neurenberg married the daughter of Khoja Rafael. Van den Broecke, who looked upon the girls as his own daughters, gifted them with 600 and 500

guilders respectively as presents on this occasion.105 The merchant Anthoni Claesz. Visscher was married to Mariam Gomez, an Armenian woman from

Baghdad.106 When in 1621-22 the Dutch Company was facing a shortage of

capital, the Company could borrow money from Mariam at an interest of 1 per cent per month. It has been assumed that before it was shifted to another build

ing, the lodge of the Dutch at Surat was initially set up in the house of Mariam

Gomez.107 Some Armenians informed Van den Broecke that Huijbert Vissnich, the Company chief in Persia, was not performing his duty and was giving pref erence to his own interests above those of the Company.108 Delia Valle, along with the English and other Christians of Surat, was present at the wedding party

100 Ibid. vol. 1, 28. 101 Cf. H. W. van Santen, De V.O.C. in Gujarat en Hindustan: 10. 102 Pieter van den Broecke in Azie, 2 vols. ed. W. Ph. Coolhaas ('s Gravenhage: Martinus

Nijhoff, 1962-63); vol. 1, journaal: 265. 103 Ibid. vol. 2: 268. 104 Ibid. vol. 2: 265, 325. 105 Ibid. 331. 106 The travels of Pietro Della Valle . . ., vol. 1: 120, 123, 124. 107 De Geschriften van Francisco Pelsaert over Mughal Indie, 1627: Kroniek en Remons

trantie, ed. D. H. A. Kolff and H. W. van Santen ('s Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1979): 22, n. 78.

los pieter van den Broecke . . ., vol. 2: 5.




of the assistant Willem Jacobsz. and Mariam, the daughter of an Armenian mer chant from Ahmedabad.109 A critical insight into the situation in Gujarat, Persia and Arabia written in the 1630s suggested that the Dutch could attract the Armenian merchants who were deserting Goa and other Portuguese settlements because of the lack of trade at those places; inviting entire Armenian families with nice promises and civil measures and employing them at the Company's factories at Dabhol and Surat would help the Company to populate those set

tlements.110 The Dutch-Armenian marriages, the attitude of Van den Broecke towards these marriages and the relationship between the English director Thomas Rastel and his Portuguese fiancee, have inspired Kolff and Van Santen to reflect on the homogenous nature of the pluriform Christian 'nation' at

Surat.111 When an Armenian merchant was framed by the Bohra community of Surat in a murder case that actually involved the servant of the Armenian mer

chant, Aga Piri appealed to the chiefs of all the European Companies in the name of Christianity. 'Christians are obliged,' Piri pointed out to the director of the Dutch lodge, 'to stand by and protect each other if need be, as all trees

whether bearing fruit or not deserve dew drops from the heaven.'112 What was the situation like in European settlements like Madras and Cal

cutta? As per the agreement signed between Khoja Panous Kalantar, an eminent merchant of Isfahan and the East India Company in London in 1688, Armenians were to trade and settle at all English ports on the same terms as English freemen, and possess all rights enjoyed by British subjects. Though the agree ment was not put into effect due to the opposition of the Armenian merchants of New Julfa, the spirit of the Company's over-enthusiastic messages about the

utility of the Armenians had set the tone of the day and paved the way for a new phase of Armenian settlement in India.113 Whenever there were forty Arme nians resident in a town under the jurisdiction of the Company, a temporary

109 The travels of Della Valle vol. 1: 120, 123, 124.

110 N. A. Collectie Sweers, inv. no. 9, 'Corte Remonstrantie van de gelegentheijd van Guseratte,

Perzien en Arabien ook eenighe noodwendighe procedures welke in die quartieren dienen

gehouden te worden tot preservatie, versekeringe ende ook verbeteringhe der comptoiren en

negotien van Guseratte ende Persia, als mede tot restauratie van de gelden schade in Mocha, pr consequent tot merkelijke voordeel van honorable Comp. en affbreuke des algemeijnen vijants, addresserende, ff. 119-125. I am grateful to Ms. Natalia Tojo for drawing my atten tion to this document.

111 De Geschriften: 17-25.

112 N. A. Dag Register, Surat, VOC 1549, f.505v, 507; for a description of Surat in the

late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, see Ashin Das Gupta, Indian Merchants and the decline of Surat, c. 1700-1750, Wiesbaden, 1979, ch. 1.

113 See Armenian Merchants e.g. documents 116, 117, 122, 136, 140, 146, 148, 184.




church was to be built for their use, and ground granted them for the erection

of a permanent place of worship, the Company allowing ?50 a year for seven

years for the maintenance of a priest.114 In the 1680s and 1690s, the English East India Company was recommending that its employees attract Armenians to

the English settlements and encourage their trade in every possible way. Armenians were allowed to freight the Company's Europe-bound ships with

commodities like shellac, stick lac, pig-iron and wax. As India goods were very much in demand, the Company was sure it would profit from the freight.115

Experienced Armenians like Aga Piri were entrusted with training freshly arrived factors of the Company in language and the method of trading.116 As the

Armenians were familiar with the centres of production and market places in

India, they were in a position to procure goods at a cheaper rate.117 Moreover,

they would populate the settlements:

It is undoubtedly our interest to make our garrisoned ports in India marts for nations, which will in a few years aggrandize our revenue, and with that our strength 200

Armenian Christians living in Madrass [sic] by whom we get money in every thing they eat or drink or trade for as well as by the ground rents of the houses they live in, and

to whom we pay no wages being as good a security to our garrison and trade as hired

English soldiers . . .118

It should be remembered here that as the central political power in India was

disintegrating towards the end of the seventeenth century and the centre of grav

ity was shifting towards the littoral, the growth of the European settlements pro vided the Asian merchants with alternate bases of operation. Since the English left the port to port trade in Asia to private enterprise already in the late 1660s,

many private Asian merchants serving the Europeans in numerous ways, crowded the English settlements. Because the Dutch Company was a direct par

ticipant in the intra-Asian trade, ship owning merchants often avoided their set

tlements. The tendency to seek support in European settlements was particularly noticeable in Coromandel where the close proximity of the ports made it possi ble for Indian merchants to operate from more than one base at a time.119 The

regulations of the European Companies prohibiting trade with rival establish ments could be avoided through a network based on kinship. As they wanted to

114 H. D. Love, Vestiges of old Madras: 1640-1800: traced from the East India Company's Records preserved at Fort St. George and the India Office and from other sources, 4 vols.

(London: Murray, 1913), v.l: 543. 115 Armenian Merchants, documents 116, 117, 120, 124, 127, 131, and passim. 116

Ibid, document 156. 117

Ibid, e.g. documents 121, 141, 142. 118

Ibid. no. 163, Company in London to Fort St. George, 3 January, 1693/94. 119 B. Bhattacharya, 'The Chulia merchants of southern Coromandel'.




attract local shipping magnates to their ports, Indian merchants could use the

Companies against one another.120 Armenians followed the same pattern. For merchants trying to escape the wrath of indigenous elites, too, the European set tlements were a place of refuge. A case in point was that of the Armenian mer

chant Khwaja Nazar. As there were some proceedings against him in the nawab's (Shuja Khan) darbar in Murshidabad, the English in Calcutta, while

stopping him from sailing for Europe, also made it sure that he did not fall in the hands of the nawab's people. They were determined

not to submit [sic] their merchants being carried off the place which would be of the utmost ill consequence to the Hon'ble Company's affairs as it would be a precedent for the darbar to demand every man of substance out of the place.121

The English were willing to pay as much as Rs. 20,000 to make up the case, but the nawab demanded Rs. 50,000. The case was later settled by Nazar's vakil at the darbar.122

In 1691, Elihu Yale noted that recently 'a few more' Armenians had come to

settle in Fort St. George, while more were expected.123 In 1696, the council noted that though there were a few Armenians constantly residing at Madras,

many of them were annually sailing to Bengal, Manila, Aceh, Persia and other

places, and/or trading with the king's camp, Zulfiqar Khan's camp and Gol conda and thus by the bulk of their trade contributed greatly to the revenues of Fort St. George.124 One year later the council noted that Khoja Gregory's [resi dent of Madras] invitation to his countrymen at Julfa to repair to and reside at

Madras

has mett with a good effect esteeming it our advantage to have Madrass as populous especially with Christians as possible.125

By 1711 Armenians had become 'numerous and opulent' in Madras.126 With the growth of the ports of Bombay, Madras and Calcutta in the eighteenth een

120 Ibid.

121 Bengal Public Consultations, 17 April, 1733, quoted in S. Bhattacharyya, The East

India Company and the Economy of Bengal (from 1704 to 1740), (Calcutta: Graphic Art Press, 1969): 55. Khoja Nazar built the Armenian Apostolic Church (called St. Nazareth after

him) in Calcutta in 1724. In analysing the relationship between the nawab and the English, Bhattacharyya presents other cases as well, ibid. 55-60.

122 Ibid. 59.

123 Armenian Merchants, document 139. 124

RFSG, Despatches to England, vol. 1: 1694-96, 35. 125 Armenian Merchants, document 239. 126

RFSG, Despatches to England, vol. 2: 147.




tury, European, especially English settlements became the major habitat of the

Armenian community in India, though many of them were settled at places like

Surat, Hugh, Saidabad, Patna and Dhaka. Most of the promises made by the

English were geared to securing their own trade and revenue; yet the three

major Armenian churches that were built in India in the course of the eighteenth century were at the three principal English settlements along the coast.127 When the council of Fort St. George wanted to levy a land tax for the construction of a town wall in 1718, the Armenians pleaded exemption from payment on the

ground that they were only six in number.128 The number is misleading, as we

have noted above that there was a constant flow of Armenians in and out of the town. As many Armenians travelled frequently to distant places organizing the

business, the number of permanent residents of a place could have been small. The survey seems to have included only very wealthy Armenian residents own

ing extensive landed property. The eminent Armenian, Khoja Sultan David, owned landed property in Madras.129 The legendary merchant Khoja Petrus Woscan, who constructed the Marmalong bridge and the fifty-six stone staircases leading to the mount of San Thome, owned at least forty-two houses in Madras. Orme noted that north of the White Town in Fort St. George were many good build

ings belonging to Armenian and rich Indian merchants.130 It is possible that such

wealthy merchants, dealing in real estate, provided housing to the lesser mem

bers in the diaspora, albeit against the payment of rent.131 The church also offered lodging to travelling Armenians.132 However, the course of events in the

eighteenth century had changed the situation in Madras. Armenians were sus

pected to have assisted the French when the latter attacked Fort St. George in

127 The church at Saidabad was built in 1758. 128 H. D. Love, Vestiges of old Madras, vol. 2: 162. 129

Khoja Shawmir Sultan's petition on behalf of his father Khoja Sultan David and him self for permission to continue in the White Town was rejected. Their house in Charles Street

was rented by the Company for 'public purposes'. Only Khoja Petrus Woscan was allowed to continue at his Choultry Gate Street redidence. ibid. 405, 426, 494.

130 Robert Orme, Military Transactions, vol. 1: 65.

131 The 'last will of Petrus Uscan'. He expressed the wish that Armenian merchants com

ing to Madras for trade should feel obliged to stay in those buildings. The income from the rent would be invested in the welfare of the town of New Julfa and the Armenians there.

Khoja Petrus Aratoon, the eminent merchant of Bengal and brother of Khoja Gregory owned twelve houses, nine in Calcutta and one each in Serampore, Chinsura and Dacca. Calcutta

High Court, O.W. 2623. Ghulam Husain noted that Khoja Wajid, the Armenian merchant

prince of Bengal, had a harem with 125 women. The information may not be entirely cor

rect, but it is possible that many relatives and other families were housed in the same build

ing, hence many women. Ghulam Husain Khan Seir ul Mutakherin vol. 2, 400 fn. 132

H. M. Nadjarian, Life story of Mr. A. M. Arathoon (Calcutta, 1958): 9.




1746, and by 1750 the English Company ordered the council of Fort St. George to direct the Armenians to leave the White Town, where no Armenian was to

live in future. The chapel and other buildings built by Petrus Woscan at Vepery were transferred to the Danish missionaries.133 Those who possessed landed

property in the White Town, were to sell it to European Protestants. However, as 'very useful people,' Armenians were to be allowed to inhabit the Black

Town.134

Calcutta, the second city in the British colonial empire, also suffered from the

phenomenon of dualism reflected in the Europeans' concern for defence and

security, manifested in the fort and the fence.135 In the colonial period, the fence

gradually fell down. The fort, with its accommodational function, became an

embellishment, the urban area began to grow and spread and the component elements began to interpenetrate, resulting in the development of new areas.136

The Black Town gradually drove wedges into the White Town, especially into

the intermediate zone, or the 'Grey Town' where the Portuguese, Greeks and

Armenians were settled from the pre-colonial times.137 As late as 1758 the Court

of Directors were anxious not to discourage Armenians and other inhabitants of

Calcutta from settling within their bounds, especially the Armenians, as 'no bad

consequences from their residence' were apprehended.138 Many of the mag nificent buildings in the White Town of Calcutta were built by the Armenians.

The Grand Hotel, the Nizam Palace, the Park Mansions?to name only a few?

bear testimony to the zeal of the Armenian pioneers of the real estate business in Calcutta.139 The formation of bigger Armenian settlements around the church

did not reduce social contact between Armenians and western Europeans. As far as Armenian-European marriage is concerned, it is interesting to note that in all

the cases that have come down to us, the brides were Armenian and the bride

grooms European.140

133 H. D. Love, Vestiges of old Madras, vol. 2: 403-404, 467. 134 Ibid. 426. 135 P. Sinha, Calcutta in Urban History (Calcutta: Firma KLM, 1978): 7-8. 136 Ibid. 137

Ibid. 138

J. Long, Selections from Unpublished Records of Government: for the years 1748 to

1767 inclusive. Relating mainly to the Social Condition of Bengal with a map of Calcutta in

1784. Ed. M. Saha (Calcutta: Mukhopadhyay, 1973): 161. 139 I owe this information to P. T. Nair. 140 Records of Fort St. George registered only 9 marriages between Armenian and western

European individuals between 1680-1800. See H. Dodwell ed., List of marriages registered in the Presidency of Fort St. George, 1680-1800 (Madras: Madras Government Press, 1916).

One well-known marriage in Surat in the late eighteenth century was that between Hripsimah,




Whether in the traditional port towns like Surat, or in the 'White,' 'Grey,' or 'Black' town of the European settlements, until at least the middle of the

eighteenth century Armenians provided a major source of strength for the

European presence in India. It should be remembered that the presence of

the Europeans in the Asian waters opened up various possibilities and opportu nities for expanding the existing networks of Asian trade. The English Company

explicitly mentioned how by catering to their trade, Armenians themselves

would also profit.141 A more important element, so far as the intra-Asian trade

was concerned, was the private trade of the Europeans. The next section will

focus on the interaction of Armenians and Europeans in the field of commerce

in India.

Commercial Relationship with Europeans: Competition

or Co-operation?

Considering the relationship between Armenians and Europeans, it should be

pointed out that the potential of conflict was very much present as the

Europeans in the Indian Ocean, while wooing the Armenians, were at the same

time aiming at the commerce which had so far been the mainstay of the liveli

hood of many Armenians.142 Ferrier noted the importance of the Armenians and

other local merchants as suppliers of credit to the European Companies in

Persia.143 Herzig, in his study of the Armenian merchants of New Julfa, has

maintained that Armenian merchants' relationship with their European counter

parts was ambivalent. On the one hand, Armenians were suspicious of the Europeans and often openly hostile towards them. On the other hand, they co-operated with

the European Companies. In the final analysis, 'Julfa Armenians were more

willing to have financial dealing with foreigners than to enter into trading part

nership with them.'144 Baghdiantz Mccabe's position is that it was the Compa nies that solicited co-operation of the Armenians, not the other way round. As

the daughter of the wealthy Armenian merchant Eleazer Woskan, and Robert Henry Leembruggen of the Dutch East India Company. Hripsimah was first married to an old Armenian called

Stephen Agabob. Following the death of the latter she was remarried to Leembruggen. See

M. J. Seth, Armenians in India: 263-66. 141 See Armenian Merchants, no. 245 for the Company's arguments in connection with the

trade in Persia. 142 The tension of the Europeans could be noted in their account of Armenians. See note

2 above; also see documents 5, 23, 79, 107 and passim in Armenian Merchants. . . 143 See his 'The Armenians and the East India Company in Persia in the seventeenth and

early eighteenth centuries', The Economic History Review, 2nd series, 26 (1973): 38-62. 144 E. M. Herzig, The Armenian Merchants of New Julfa, Isfahan: 203-6, 212.




the trade carried on by the European Companies was no match for that of the

Armenians, East India Companies were no competitors of the Armenians, and

consequently, Armenians did not have to enter into any trading partnership with them.145 Bekius has shown, on the other hand, that Armenians both competed and co-operated with Europeans.146

In India, as we have seen, Armenians intermarried with western Europeans and flocked to the European towns.147 What was the role of the Armenians in the networks of European trade in the Indian Ocean? The capital that the Arme nians possessed seems to have gone a long way to rid European trade of its want of ready money in Persia and Mughal India. Kolff and Van Santen have

pointed to the greater relevance of the marriages between Armenians and Europeans in this respect. That so many servants of the Dutch East India Company?much

more than their English counterparts?got married to Armenian women, was, in their opinion, an attempt to get access to the credit and extensive network of trade of the Armenian merchants.148 Marriage relationships often went hand in hand with business interests. It was noted that the married servants of the Dutch

Company bought textiles at a low cost and sold the same to the Company at a

higher price through middlemen.149 This however, does not imply that it was only the Europeans who needed

Armenians, and not the other way round. It is true that Armenians were already established in the trade of the Indian Ocean. Many of them possessed their own

shipping.150 Yet, starting from the procurement of goods at the centres of pro duction, transporting them to the port of embarkation, getting them ready for

shipping, and reaching the ultimate destination, the 'market' where the goods were disposed at a reasonable profit, was a long drawn and extremely intricate

process. In his study of Indonesian trade and society, Van Leur noted that in the primarily agricultural societies of Asia, agricultural surplus was extracted by the state. The trade that was carried on here was small-scale and in luxury goods, by merchants whom he termed peddlers.151 Steensgaard, who studied the

145 I. Baghdiantz Mccabe, Shah's silk: 327-47. 146 R. Bekius, 'Armenian merchants in the textile trade.' 147 Armenian Merchants enumerates 114 cases where Armenians served the English East

India Company in different capacities between 1617 and 1708/09. index 3, 283-84. 148 De Geschriften: 21-22. 149 Ibid. 150 It was part of the policy of the English East India Company to employ small vessels

owned by Armenians for coasting trade, Early Annals of the English in Bengal vol. 3: 141. 151 J. C. Van Leur, Indonesian Trade and Society: Essays in Asian social and economic

history (The Hague: Van Hoeve, 1955): 133. Van Leur's thesis has been criticised by many




caravan trade of the Middle East, upheld Van Leur's characterization of Asian

trade by characterizing Asian merchants as peddlers and the markets as ped dlers' markets.152 Due to limited production, supply in the peddlers' market was

limited and could not be adjusted to the fluctuation in demand. To this was

added the hazards in the transportation of the commodities from the centres of

production to the ports of shipment.153 Not only was overland transport slow; it was exposed to the dangers of the road. Hence the payment of protection cost

to the local rulers of all the territories through which the caravans passed. While

all this pushed up the cost of transport, delay in reaching the port might mean

missing a sailing season. As markets were non-transparent and information

incomplete, prices fluctuated making trading operation extremely insecure.154

Analysing the modus operandi of the merchants in early modern India, Chris

Bayly noted that when operating in a market that was intransparent, and when

supply and demand were unpredictable, a merchant often divided his invest

ments among various partners and pursuits with a view to spreading the risk and

sharing the profit. While many of the Armenian merchants trading on behalf of a principal were peddlers,155 merchants like Zachary Avetik, Khoja Catchick

Khojamal, Khoja Minas,156 Khoja Petrus, and many others like them seem to

have been like those merchants termed by Bayly as 'port-folio capitalists.'157 In

historians. See e. g., M. A. P. Meilink Roelofsz, Asian Trade and European Influence in the

Indonesian Archipelago between 1500 and about 1630 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962); K. N. Chaudhuri, The Trading World of Asia and the East India Company, 1660-1670 (Cam

bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 136-37, 138-39. 152 N. Steensgaard, The Asian Trade Revolution: 22-31. 153 The cost of transporting cloth from Agra to Surat, including the customs duties, could

amount to 40 per cent of the cost price. See R. J. Barendse, The Arabian Seas, 1640-1700

(Leiden: Centre for Non-Western Studies, 1998), 135. 154 Even a very wealthy merchant like Abdul Ghafur of Surat at the beginning of the eight

eenth century was also not free from such insecurity, a reason that inspired Ashin Das Gupta to characterise that merchant prince as peddler. See his Indian Merchants and the decline of Surat, introduction.

155 See e.g. Calcutta High Court, O.W. no. 4926. The merchant Abraham Isaac who passed away in Calcutta on August 18, 1796 had a credit of little over Rs. 1,512. It is possible that he started as an agent of Khoja Petrus Aratoon who was paid Rs. 200 toward the discharge of a bond. The cost of the other transactions made by Isaac varied from Rs. 2 to Rs. 48.

156 See below.

157 C. A. Bayly, 'Indian merchants in a Traditional setting: Varanasi 1780-1830', in C. A.

Dewey and A. G. Hopkins ed., The Imperial Impact: Studies in the Economic History of India

and Africa (London: Athlone Press for the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, 1978): 186; also S. Subrahmanyam, The Political Economy of Commerce in Southern India, c. 1550-1650

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993): 299-300, 327-36; also S. Subrahmanyam and C. A. Bayly, 'Portfolio capitalists and political economy in early modern India', in

S. Subrahmanyam ed. Merchants, Markets and Trade in Early Modern India, 1770-1870: 242-65.




spite of all the elements of tension and conflict involved, Armenians, like many other groups of Asian merchants, co-operated with Europeans because the pres ence of the latter provided Asian merchants with further opportunities of spread

ing the risks.158 This being said, it should be added that Armenian merchants

appear to have acted in different capacities and were dexterous at keeping the

accounts separate. From the reading of their testaments it would appear that the

network based on extended kinship was trusted so far as investment in their own trade was concerned. The actual carrying out of the trade, however, was

part of a broader framework and it is here that the Armenian merchants co

operated with Europeans in numerous other accounts by lending money, acting as agents or suppliers, freighting their ships, sailing as nakhuda on board

European ships, and providing cover when necessary. During 1693-94, follow

ing a ban on the trade of the Europeans, De Keijser, the Dutch director at

Surat, bought 200,000 pounds of indigo and 30,000 pieces of chadar Dariabadi

under the cover of Aga Piri.159 Such cover was indispensable so far as trade to

Manila was concerned. Though wills and testaments do not throw much light on this aspect?except when an unrecovered due was involved?, traces of such

co-operation are to be found in the archives of the European companies. Long before the agreement of 1688, Armenians freighted Asia-bound ships of the

English Company. The Dolphin, which left London on April 29, 1646 and

reached Swally in November of the same year, carried Armenians.160 In the

eighteenth century, Armenians were using Danish company ships for their

Europe trade. Their agents carried piece goods from Bengal and Coromandel to

Europe and took back Dutch and English broad cloth to Tranquebar. This trade was organized by Armenians in Holland, Khoja Baba Sultan, the correspondent of Aga Piri Kalantar of Madras in London, and two Armenians of Madras.161 The Companies, of course, encouraged the procedure as some empty space in

the Asia-bound ship was utilised in this way, and the Armenians had to pay

freight charges. But it also ensured direct shipping of goods and persons and was less hazardous than the route via the Levant and then Middle East. In the

Asian waters the ships belonging to European Companies ensured security

158 The dichotomy in the relationship between the English at different levels of the

Company on the one hand and the Armenian merchants on the other has not escaped the

attention of Baladouni in the introduction to Armenian Merchants . .. XXXII-XXXIII. 159

N.A., De Keijser and the Council at Surat to the Directors, 11 December 1694 (copy) VOC 1548, f.656. 160 See English Factories in India, vol. 8 (1646-1650): 86 and vol. 11 (1661-1664): 328; also Armenian Merchants . . . documents 62, 65, 67, 68, 71 for similar evidence.

161 RFSG, Despatches to England, vol. 3 (1711-14): 18. It is possible that Khoja Zachary,

mentioned above, was one of the Madras Armenians involved in this trade.




against pirates and other dangers at sea.162 Especially in the seventeenth century both the Dutch and English Companies often chartered whole ships to local

merchants for voyages to the Persian Gulf. The Sulleiman, belonging to the

Armenian Khoja Minas of Surat, was hired by the French (in huur bij de

Fransen). In Basra, Muslim merchants freighted their money, and goods and

sailed on board the same ship for Surat.163 The Armenians, with their contacts

in India, took the responsibility for collecting the piece goods and other com

modities and loading them on the company's ships.164 Khoja Minas, who owned

at least five ships himself, freighted English company ships.165 The George that

left Surat for Gombroon in December 1669, was permitted to carry any horse

that would be shipped by the agent of Khoja Minas.166 Minas had purchased two ships from the English who again rented the ships and sent them to

Persia.167 While soliciting the 'favour and assistance' of Khoja Israel Sarhad, the leading Armenian merchant in Bengal, in obtaining a good freight of fine

piece goods in Bengal for the Sedgewick he was planning to send to Persia in

September 1700, Thomas Pitt referred to his acquaintance with Sarhad and his

uncle Khoja Panous Kalantar in London.168 In December 1702 Sarhad offered

the English company Rs. 38,000 for freighting the Colchester for a voyage to

Gombroon and Basra.169 The same year the council of Fort St. George let out

the Phoenix to an Armenian for a voyage to Persia via Bengal.170 The French

ship Pontchartreijn renamed Queen Louise carried freightgoods worth Rs.

300,000 belonging to Armenian merchants.171 All the three ships that arrived in

162 Armenian Merchants, document 209. 163 N.A. Dag Register, Surat, 29 August, 1685, VOC 1409, ff.1616-1617. 164 Armenian Merchants, document 257. The English Company servants in Bengal stated

that Armenians bought textiles 10 to 20 per cent cheaper than them. R.F.S.G., Despatches to

England, v.l, (1694-96): 35. 165 R. Maloni, European Merchant Capital and the Indian Economy: a Historical Recon

struction based on Surat Factory Records, 1630-1638 (Delhi: Manohar, 1992), 367-69. 166

English Factories in India, vol. 13 (1668-69): 204. 167

N.A., Surat-Batavia, 4 March, 1268, VOC 1264, ff. 1275-87. 168 C. R. Wilson, Early Annals of the English in Bengal, 1: 369-71. 169 S. Chaudhuri, 'Bengal merchants and commercial organisation in the second half of the

seventeenth century', Bengal Past and Present, 90 (1971): 182-216. For Armenian merchants

freighting Dutch company ships on the Surat?Bandar Abbas run see R. J. Barendse, The

Arabian Seas . . . 159-60. 170

RFSG, Despatches to England, vol. 2 1701/02?1710/11, 2. Compare: '. . . It is

expected that the Armenians will freight the Little London for Persia', ibid. September 12

and October 9, 1706: 52-53. 171

This was in 1704. The ship could not, however, sail to Persia as it hit the shore near Point Palmyras and had to unload the goods at Tranquebar. Generale Missiven, vol. 6, ed. W. Ph. Coolhaas, (1698-1713): 271, 336.




Tranquebar from Denmark in 1709 were to be freighted by the Armenians to

Persia.172 Again, in 1737 Armenian merchants of Madras freighted the Galatea, under Captain Mylne to Kung and Bushire.173 Similarly, Armenian merchants

taking passage on board European ships in Asia was common.174 In the wake

of troubles in Persia in the early eighteenth century, the agent of the English at

that place proposed that the subjects of the king of Persia and their effects at

Fort St. George be seized. The Council of Fort St. George maintained that such a step would put a stop to the freighting of the Company's ships that year and

drive away all Armenians from their settlements.175 The other routes where Armenian and European interests were intertwined

were the routes to Southeast Asia, Manila and China. When the Dutch East

India Company decided to close their factory at Pegu, one Portuguese and one

Armenian were entrusted with the task of collecting the outstanding debts of the

Company amounting to more than f.30,000.176 Researches of G. B. Souza have

pointed to the involvement of Armenians in the commerce carried on by the

Portuguese of Macao to Manila and India.177 Using European bottoms for con

signing goods to factors, mostly a relative or a member of the community set

tled at ports like Mergui, Pegu and Manila seems to have been common.178

Throughout the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries Armenians assisted

Europeans in their investment in India. At least till the middle of the eighteenth century European merchants needed Asian merchants, including Armenians. It was a relationship of accepting each other for mutual profit.

Armenians as Emissaries

Equally, if not more important aspect of Armenian-European relationship was

the role of the Armenians as emissaries of especially the English to the

Mughals. Sending emissaries to the head of a state is a practice common since

ancient times. In the early modern period, the trading companies sent embassies

172 Ibid.: 689. 173 H. Furber, Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient, 1600-1800 (Minneapolis, Minn.: University

of Minnesota Press, 1976): 285. 174

English Factories in India, vol. 6: 106. 175

RFSG, Despatches to England, vol. 3: 56. 176

Generale Missiven, vol. 4 (1675-1685): 446. 177

'Cinnamon, silver and opium: Foreign shipping and trading activities at Batavia, 1684

1792,' unpublished paper presented to the 11th Annual Conference of the World History Association, Seoul, Korea, August 15-18, 2002.

178 In 1712 the St. Juan that left Madras for Manila carried goods freighted by Armenian

and Indian merchants, RFSG, Despatches to England, vol. 3: 56.




to heads of various countries for trading privileges. The embassy of Sir Thomas

Roe to the court of Jahangir is a well known case. It was a period when many attributes of Persian culture were visibly adopted by the courts in countries in

South and Southeast Asia.179 Familiarity with Persian offered the Armenians

easy access to the Mughal court and made them extremely suitable as emis

saries. We have noted above that Emperor Akbar had employed an Armenian as his interpreter. When the king of Ethiopia sent an embassy to the Mughal emperor, he appointed Khoja Murad, an Armenian, to head the delegation.180 Sir

William Norris, on his embassy to Aurangzeb, had the advantage of gaining information about the court (through his accessory Pedro Pereira) from an Armenian

who had been to the Emperor's camp twice and had lived there some time in

attendance on the Dutch envoy.181 In the late 1690s, the English company wanted to send a delegation to Zabardast Khan, General of the Mughal's forces who was suppressing the revolt of Sobha Singh in Bengal. In order to secure

the rights of the company against the activities of the interlopers, the English company approached Khoja Israel Sarhad, the nephew of Khoja Panous, who was sent to the camp of Zabardast Khan as the 'Political Agent' of the English. Sarhad procured a parwana from the general for the governors of Hugh and

Balasore to prevent the interlopers from taking part in the trade of Bengal.182 In

spite of that, interlopers also were able to secure some trading favours for them

selves from the same general. At this the English decided to send another del

egation, also headed by Khoja Sarhad, who was accompanied by Mr. Walsh. It was this delegation that secured for the English the right to farm the three town

ships of Sutanuti, Govindpur and Calcutta in Bengal in 1698 for the sum of Rs.

16,000.183 At the camp, Sarhad was able to win the friendship of the young

prince Farrukhsiyar. On September 22, 1698 the Sutanuti council noted that Mr. Walsh and Khoja Sarhad went back from the camp having 'finished all

business to our greatest satisfaction.'184 They had promised the young prince three small pieces of brass cannon.185

179 S. Subrahmanyam, 'Persianization and Mercantilism: two themes in the Bay of Bengal History, 1400-1700', in Prakash and Lombard eds., Commerce and Culture. . . .

180 E. J. Van Donzel, Foreign Relations of Ethiopia, 1642-1700: documents related to the

journeys of Khodja Murad (Istanbul: Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut, 1979). I am greatful to Dirk Kolff for drawing my attention to this work.

181 H. Das, The Norris Embassy to Aurangzeb, (1699-1702) (Calcutta: Firma KLM, 1959): 211-12.

182 C. R. Wilson, ed., Old Fort William in Bengal. A Selection of Official Documents deal

ing with its History. Indian Records Series, 2 vols. (London, 1906) vol. 1: 25-27. 183

Ibid., 36-38. 184

Ibid. 185

Ibid.




Khoja Sarhad, who was engaged in sea-borne trade, and acted as vakil or

agent of (his cousin) Aga Piri Kalantar of Fort St. George, seems to have been

less successful in trade and was indebted to Aga Piri for a considerable sum.

Unable to recover his dues, Aga Piri appealed to the English in Bengal to oblige

Khoja Sarhad to adjust his accounts.186 This debt was not recovered as late as

1709.187 The next we hear of Khoja Sarhad is in 1713 when the English intended to send a deputation to Farrukhsiyar, now Emperor at Delhi, for the

renewal of their privilege of trading free of duties in return for a lump sum pay ment of Rs. 3,000.188 At the meeting held on January 27, 1714 the council noted

the reasons for appointing Khoja Sarhad on the mission to the court of the

Great Mughal. By his prudent conduct, Sarhad had been able to procure the

grant of Calcutta for the English. Secondly, Sarhad knew the Emperor person

ally who would be favourably disposed to him as the latter had presented the

Emperor with diverse toys in his youth. More importantly,

It is absolutely necessary that some person who is perfect master of the Persian lan

guage and understands our affairs very well, and what may be useful for us, be sent, and we know no man so qualified in both these respects as Cojah Surhaud. He is there

fore, the fittest man we can send.

The council apprehended that sending Sarhad as vakil, and inferior to the

Englishmen in the embassy would draw the Emperor's attention to the Arme

nian. Therefore, on June 5, 1714, the Calcutta council unanimously agreed that

Cojah Surhaud, whose interest &c. at Court has already had the good effect of procur

ing us the Hasbull-Hukum and several other useful orders from Court be sent to assist

in suing for the King's Phirmaund, and that he sit and vote in the Council along with

the three English gentlemen. . .

Consequently, Mr. John Surmon was appointed the first, Khoja Sarhad sec

ond and Mr. John Pratt third in the embassy to Farrukhsiyar. Sarhad was to try to confirm all the privileges that the English enjoyed in the Mughal's domin

ions to date in a new farman. He was to see that the boundary of the English

territory would be extended towards the south so as to include Kidderpore and

the shore on the other side of the river in Howrah. He was also obliged to try

186 RFSG, Despatches to England, vol. 2: 67.

187 Ibid.

188 The following information on the Surmon Embassy (including the quotations) is based on Early Annals of the English in Bengal, vol. 2: 157-58. The Dutch referred to him as

the 'notorious Armenian bankrupt' (berugten Armeensch banquerottier), Generale Missiven, vol. 7 (1713-1725): 106.




to obtain the island of Diu off Masulipatnam for the council of Fort St. George. A reward of Rs. 50,000 would be given to Sarhad if he was successful in all

these efforts. He would not get anything if he failed. Secondly, Sarhad was to

obtain for the English the privilege to trade free of customs at Surat for which

he would get another Rs. 50,000. Also in this case he was not to receive any

thing if he was not successful. But in any case Sarhad was to try to get the cus

toms duty paid by the English at Surat reduced to 2.5 percent. Mr. Edward

Stephenson was appointed secretary and accountant to the negotiation with the

responsibility to take down the minutes of consultation. Dr. William Hamilton, the company's surgeon, cured Farrukhsiyar from a malignant distemper he had

been suffering from. The farman that Farrukhsiyar granted the English in 1717 was more respected than the old one and made them the most favoured nation in Bengal. The following decades saw the growth of Calcutta, its fleet and the

country trade of the British.189 Even before the formation of the embassy, the

Fort William Council, however, was not unanimous about the inclusion of

Khoja Sarhad in it. It was apprehended that Sarhad, if not well looked after, would play tricks and enrich himself at the cost of the Company.190 His attitude

during the journey evoked suspicion and irritation among the English.191 The success of the Surman Embassy was ascribed to the services of Dr. Hamilton.192

The service of the Armenians was, however, indispensable in all political negotiations of the English in India in the eighteenth century. The council of

Fort St. George often consulted Aga Piri, among others, for their negotiation with the governor of Golconda.193 When it was considered necessary to send

presents to the nawab of Arcot, Khoja Petrus and Hodjee Addy were entrusted

189 M. J. Seth quoted from William Bolts to show that contemporary Englishmen knew the contribution Sarhad made in getting the farman renewed in 1717. See Armenians in India . . . 427. Compare the following statement made by C. R. Wilson about Khoja Sarhad: 'He is said to have been personally known to Prince Farrukhsiyar, the son of Prince

Azimush-shan, from whom he procured permission to rent the three townships. He afterwards

played a conspicuous, but not altogether creditable part in the Surman Embassy to Delhi in

the years 1715 to 1717', Old Fort William: 25, n. 3. 190

Early Annals, vol. 2: 154-55; W. K. Firminger, Historical Introduction to the Bengal Portion of the Fifth Report (Calcutta: Indian Studies Past & Present, 1962): 87.

191 After the sanad from the diwan at Murshidabad was obtained, Sarhad had left for Patna

when the rest of the embassy was still in Murshidabad; when the embassy left Delhi after the imperial firman had been obtained, Sarhad stayed on in Delhi. C. R. Wilson, Early

Annals, vol. 2: 193, 214, 281. 192

W. K. Firminger, Historical Introduction: 87. 193

RFSG, Diary and Consultation Book, 1713: 4, 24, 56, 67, 70, 71.




with the task of procuring items suitable for the occasion.194 Khoja Petrus

Aratoon, popularly known as the Armenian Petrus of Clive, was an Armenian

merchant-diplomat of Saidabad, a town in the silk producing region near the

court at Murshidabad. He appeared on the scene after the siege of Calcutta by

Sirajuddaula in 1756. Together with a Jewish friend, he supplied provisions to

the English at Fulta for six months before the arrival of Robert Clive and

Admiral Watson from Madras. He was employed as confidential agent by Clive

to negotiate with Mir Jafar for overthrowing Siraj-uddaula. Petrus was never

rewarded for his services to the Company.195 He was employed again for nego

tiating with Mir Qasim for deposing Mir Jafar. But the English never com

pletely trusted Khoja Petrus who, in their eyes, was a spy of the nawab in

Calcutta. This was due to the fact that Khoja Gregory, a brother of Petrus, was

the commander-in-chief of the army of Mir Qasim. When war broke out

between the English and Mir Qasim in 1763, Petrus was kept as a hostage by

Major Adams in his camp lest Ellis, the chief of Patna, and English troops suf

fer at the hands of his brother.196 A few members of the council in Calcutta

wanted to have Petrus ousted from the town on the grounds that he was a spy of the nawab. Vansittart, president of the council of Fort William, pointed out

that it would be arbitrary to order a merchant of long standing out of the set

tlement. Petrus was forbidden to act as vakil to the nawab in future.197

The role of Khoja Wajid during the Plassey Conspiracy marked the culmi

nation of the Armenian-European relationship prior to the establishment of colo

nial rule in India. It is well known that Plassey witnessed how the vested inter ests of the officials of the court, indigenous merchants, bankers and foreign

trading companies combined to create a rupture that changed the course of the

history of India. According to Orme, Wajid was 'the principal merchant of the

province' of Bengal.198 He was settled in Hugh and had transactions with the

French and the Dutch through lodges at both Chandernagore and Chinsura. His

194 Ibid. 1743: 55. 195 M. J. Seth, Armenians in India: 328-32. 196

H. Vansittart, A Narrative of the Transactions in Bengal 1760-1764, ed. by A. C.

Banerjee and B. K. Ghosh (Kolkata: K. P. Bagchi, 1976) henceforth Narrative, passim; S. C. Hill, Bengal in 1756-1757, passim. M. J. Seth, The Armenians in India ... for Khoja Petrus; for a recent biography of Khoja Gregory see B. Bhattacharya, "Between Fact and

Fiction: Khoja Gregory alias Gurguin Khan, the 'evil genius' of Mir Qasim", in J. J. L.

Gommans and O. Prakash eds. Circumambulations in South Asian History: essays in honour

of Dirk H. A. Kolff (Leiden: Brill, 2003): 133-58. 197

James Long, Selections from Unpublished Records: 421, document 647 and note. 198 Robert Orme, Military Transactions, vol. 2: 58.




step brother Jubbo lived in Chinsura.199 Through his lodges at Patna and Surat he was engaged in inland trade. Wajid owned five ships and had extensive over seas trade with Mocha and Basra. In 1756, Collet and Watts described Khoja

Wajid as the 'greatest merchant in Bengal' having 'great influence with the

Nabab.'200 He had close contact with the Jagat Seths and other merchants of

Patna.201 He had large stakes in the salt trade of Bengal and the opium trade of

Bihar. Through his contacts in the nawab's darbar, he was able to secure the

salt farm in 1752 and the saltpetre farm in 1753. During the few years before

the battle of Plassey, Wajid enjoyed the monopoly of saltpetre and salt. As the

leader of the Asian merchants, he mediated in conflicts between Asian and European merchants. On behalf of the nawab, he maintained diplomatic negotiations with the Danish, Dutch, English and French Companies. He represented the French in the nawab's darbar and Monsieur Law, the chief of the French factory at

Kashimbazar who kept a watchful eye on the affairs of the court in Murshi

dabad, described him as a 'confidential agent with the Europeans.'202 It appears from the letters Siraj wrote to Wajid that the nawab confided in the latter,

through whom he negotiated with the Europeans.203 When the English plundered

Hugh during the dispute with Siraj, Wajid was in favour of having the dispute settled through the mediation of the French. But as war with the French was

imminent, Clive did not agree to the proposal and wanted Wajid and the banker financier Jagat Seth to settle the dispute.204 As the English attacked Chan

dernagore, Wajid wanted the nawab to assist the French with his troops and

arranged a meeting between Law and the nawab.205 For a long time Wajid wanted to counterbalance the English with the French in the nawab's court. But the growing political and military power of the English manifested in their

activity in Coromandel?as pointed out by Clive in his letter to Wajid?and the

recapture of Calcutta and the plunder of Hugli seems to have persuaded Wajid not to alienate the English and to join in the conspiracy against the nawab. He

199 S. C. Hill, Bengal in 1756-57, vol. 2, no. 167. 200 S. Chaudhuri, 'Merchants, companies and rulers: Bengal in the Eighteenth Century', in

Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, v. XXXI, 93-94. 201

K. Chatterjee, Merchants, politics and society in early modern India: Bihar: 1733-1820: 72.

202 S. C. Hill, Bengal in 1756-57, vol. 3, Appendix III, translation of the first part of a

memoir by Monsieur Jean Law, chief of the French factory at Kashimbazar: 187. 203 S. C. Hill, Bengal in 1756-57, vol. 1: 3-5. 204 Letter from Khoja Wajid to Clive, in S. C. Hill, Bengal in 1756-57, vol. 2: 110 (no.

166) and Clive's letter to Khoja Wajid, ibid. 125-6 (no. 175). 205

Nawabi troops, were, however, not sent.




sent his chief gumastah, Shibbabu, to Clive who informed Pigot in Madras that he was conspiring with powerful persons including Jagat Seth and Khoja

Wajid.206 It was Wajid who told Watts that he had seen the nawab writing to

the French commander Bussy asking him to proceed for Bengal. He again informed the English that Bussy had written the nawab that he would not be able to go to Bengal and that on receiving this news, the nawab had asked Law to leave Patna for Murshidabad. Arriving at Bhagalpur, Law informed Wajid that he was on his way to Murshidabad. This letter also was handed over to the

English by Wajid. Within two years after the battle of Plassey (1757) that

yielded the English political power in Bengal, Wajid was imprisoned on the grounds that he was conspiring with the Dutch and the French.

Conclusion

This paper has sought to examine the relationship between Armenian mer

chants and the increasing European trade that paved the way for creating the colonial empire in India. In doing so, it has been necessary first to understand how the Armenian merchants organized their trade. Mobility and flexibility had

always been characteristics of this ethno-religious network, and these character istics reached their height in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The

deportation of a large number of Armenians to Persia by Shah Abbas in the

beginning of the seventeenth century was instrumental in a major eastward

surge of Armenians. It coincided with the arrival of the European Companies in Asia when Armenians, as neutral Christians, could make use of the increas

ing European?in addition to Asian?shipping in the Indian Ocean region. Familiarity of the Armenians with the trading world of Asia added a different dimension to their relationship with Europeans?the English in particular?and helped the Armenians in further extending their activities. Unlike the modern

joint-stock European Companies, Armenians were part of a pre-modern struc

ture of trade operating on the basis of extended family and other kinship net

works. Both the structures co-existed with each other, but the parameters of the two structures were totally different. Whereas the Companies drew their strength from the state that backed them, private networks of trade maintained by mem

bers of the community remained the source of strength of the Armenians. One cannot compare the two structures; one can only emphasize their differences.

206 Letter from Clive to Pigot, Bengal in 1756-57, 2: 368-69, (no. 371).




The second issue evolved around the relationship between the Armenians and

Europeans. The logic of the growth and development of European trade in Asia was that while from the sixteenth century onwards there had been a section of Asian rulers and merchants who opposed the Europeans, there were places where they received co-operation, exemplified in the classic cases of Calicut and Cochin. The different forms of co-operation between the Asians and the

Europeans in the Asian waters in the early modern period led the American his

torian Holden Furber to term this period as 'the age of partnership.'207 Writing extensively on the Armenians in India M. J. Seth showed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries how the English owed their position in India to

the Armenians. He called Khoja Sarhad Israeli, the merchant who negotiated with the nawab of Bengal and then with the Mughal Emperor to obtain territo ries and privileges that really laid the foundation of British empire in India, as

the 'political stepping stone' of the English. Baghdiantz Mccabe, in her work on the Armenians in Persia, has dismissed the notion of co-operation between Armenians and Europeans stating that co-operation was exception and not a

regular practice. According to her, the position of Seth was politically moti

vated, guided by the idea to attract the attention of the Imperial crown to the state of the Armenians in India and elsewhere.

Our study of the last wills and testaments of Armenian merchants, Company documents and contemporary travel accounts confirms the position of Seth. Armenians in India, and elsewhere in Asia, formed part of the existing struc ture of trade. In that structure, as pointed out by Siraj-uddaula, the nawab of

Bengal, merchants of foreign origin traded side by side with indigenous mer

chants. When the Mughals, and their representatives in different parts of India, welcomed the presence of Europeans, it was in this light. This paper has tried to show that Armenian support for European endeavour went far beyond the horizons of mere trading activities. Indeed, as M. J. Seth noticed, Khoja Sarhad was the political stepping stone for the English in India. But Sarhad himself was

hardly aware of the future implications of the benefits he was securing for the

English. It was only gradually that leading Armenians and indigenous mer

chants would comprehend the difference between the prevalent structure and the new overpowering structure that was being imposed on them. Khoja Wajid, the

207 H. Furber, 'Asia and the West as partners before 'Empire' and After', Journal of Asian

Studies, v. XXVIII, 1969 (4), 711-21; this was the theme of the collection of essays in B. B.

Kiing and M. N. Pearson ed., The Age of Partnership: Europeans in Asia before Dominion

(Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1979). For further discussion on this issue, see

S. Subrahmanyam, Political Economy of Commerce.




merchant prince of Bengal sounds almost helpless when we hear him charging the English during the course of a legal case between the English and the lead

ing merchants Amirchand-Deepchand in 1744:

you have overset the custom of merchants.208

But by that time the die had already been cast. Individual merchants, Armenians and Indians alike, were not able to influence the larger economic

decisions and acting in self interest, they assisted Europeans. When matters came to a head in the middle of the eighteenth century, they had reached a

point of no return.

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