English com The Massachusetts Company may be taken as the type of Other the bodies of adventurers who during the early part of the trading seventeenth century were trading and settling in the newly panies. discovered continent of the West. It may be worth while to glance at the associations of English merchants who, at the date of the foundation of the East India Company, were trading towards the East. Of these the most important were the Russia or Muscovy Company and the Levant or Turkey Company.1 The foundations of the Russia Company 2 were laid by the Russia Company. discoveries of Richard Chancellor. In 1553-4 they were incorporated by charter of Philip and Mary under the name of the Merchants and Adventurers for the discovery of lands not before known or frequented by any English.' They were to be governed by a court consisting of one governor (the first to be Sebastian Cabot) and twenty-eight of the most sad, discreet, and learned of the fellowships, of whom four were to be called consuls, and the others assistants. They were to have liberty to resort, not only to all parts of the dominions of our cousin and brother, Lord John Bazilowitz, Emperor of all Russia, but to all other parts not known to our subjects.' And none but such as were free of or licensed by the Company were to frequent the parts aforesaid, under forfeiture of ships and merchandise-a comprehensive monopoly. In 1566 the adventurers were again incorporated, not by charter, but by Act of Parliament, under the name of the fellowship of English Merchants for discovery of new trade,' 3 with a monopoly of trade in Russia, and in the countries 1 A good account of the great trading companies is given by Bonnassieux, Les Grandes Compagnies de Commerce (Paris, 1892). See also Causton and Keene, The Early Chartered Companies (1896); the article on 'Colonies, Government of, by Companies' in the Dictionary of Political Economy; the article on 'Chartered Companies' in the Encyclopaedia of the Laws of England ; and Egerton, Origin and Growth of English Colonies (1903). 2 As to the Russia Company, see the Introduction to Early Voyages to Russia in the publications of the Hakluyt Society. * This is said to have been the first English statute which established an exclusive mercantile corporation. Levant of Armenia, Media, Hyrcania, Persia, and the Caspian Sea. In the seventeenth century they were compelled by the Czar of the time to share with the Dutch their trading privileges from the Russian Government, and by an Act of 1698, which reduced their admission fine to £5,1 their doors were thrown open. After this they sank into insignificance. A faint legal trace of their ancient privileges survives in the extra-territorial character belonging for marriage purposes to the churches and chapels formerly attached to their factories in Russia. Some years ago they existed-perhaps they still exist as a dining club.2 The Levant Company 3 was founded by Queen Elizabeth for the purpose of developing the trade with Turkey under the concessions then recently granted by the Ottoman Porte. Under arrangements made with various Christian powers and known as the Capitulations, foreigners trading or residing in Turkey were withdrawn from Turkish jurisdiction for most civil and criminal purposes. The first of the Capitulations granted to England bears date in the year 1579, and the first charter of the Levant Company was granted two years afterwards, in 1581. This charter was extended in 1593, renewed by James I, confirmed by Charles II, and, like the East India Company's charters, recognized and modified by various Acts of Parliament. The Levant Company attempted to open an overland trade to the East Indies, and sent merchants from Aleppo to Bagdad and thence down the Persian Gulf. These merchants obtained articles at Lahore and Agra, in Bengal, and at Malacca, and on their return to England brought information of the profits to be acquired by a trade to the East Indies. In 1593 the Levant Company obtained a new charter, empowering them to trade to India overland through the terri 1 10 & 11 Will. III, c. 6. 2 MacCulloch, Dictionary of Commerce, 1871 edition. As to the Levant Company and the Capitulations, see below, p. 383. tories of the Grand Signor. Under these circumstances it is not surprising to find members of the Levant Company taking an active part in the promotion of the East India Company. Indeed the latter Company was in a sense the outgrowth of the former. Alderman Thomas Smith, the first Governor of the East India Company, was at the same time Governor of the Levant Company, and the adventures of the two Companies were at the outset intimately connected with each other. At the end of the first volume of court minutes of the East India Company are copies of several letters sent to Constantinople by the Levant Company. Had history taken a different course, the Levant Company might have founded on the shores of the Mediterranean an empire built up of fragments of the dominions of the Ottoman Porte, as the East India Company founded on the shores of the Bay of Bengal an empire built up of fragments of the dominions of the Great Mogul. But England was not a Mediterranean power, trade with the East had been deflected from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, and the causes which had destroyed the Italian merchant states were fatal to the Levant Company. As the East India Company grew, the Levant Company dwindled, and in 1825 it was formally dissolved. To return to the East India Company. voyages. During the first twelve years of its existence, the Company The traded on the principle of each subscriber contributing separate separately to the expense of each voyage, and reaping the whole profits of his subscription. The voyages during these years are therefore known in the annals of the Company as the separate voyages.' But after 1612 the subscribers threw their contributions into a 'joint stock,' and thus converted themselves from a regulated company into a joint-stock company, which, however, differed widely in its constitution from the joint-stock companies of the present day. charter of In the meantime James I had in 1609 renewed the charter James I's of Elizabeth, and made it perpetual, subject to determination 1609. Beginning of martial cisable by Com pany. after three years' notice on proof of injury to the nation. The provisions of this charter do not, except with regard to its duration, differ in any material respect from those of the charter of Elizabeth. It has been seen that under the charter of Elizabeth the law exer- Company had power to make laws and ordinances for the government of factors, masters, mariners, and other officers employed on their voyages, and to punish offenders by fine or imprisonment. This power was, however, insufficient for the punishment of grosser offences and for the maintenance of discipline on long voyages. Accordingly, the Company were in the habit of procuring for each voyage a commission to the 'general' in command, empowering him to inflict punishments for non-capital offences, such as murder or mutiny, and to put in execution our law called martial.'1 Grant of 1615. Grant of 1623. This course was followed until 1615, when, by a Royal grant of December 16, the power of issuing commissions embodying this authority was given to the Company, subject to a proviso requiring the verdict of a jury in the case of capital offences. By 1623 the increase in the number of the Company's settle ments, and the disorderliness of their servants, had drawn attention to the need for further coercive powers. Accordingly King James I, by a grant of February 4, 16232, gave the Company the power of issuing similar commissions to their presidents and other chief officers, authorizing them to punish in like manner offences committed by the Company's servants on land, subject to the like proviso as to the submission of capital cases to the verdict of a jury. 1 For an example of a sentence of capital punishment under one of these commissions, see Kaye, Administration of East India Company, p. 66. In transactions with natives the Company's servants were nominally subject to the native courts. Rights of extra-mural jurisdiction had not yet been claimed. 2 The double date here and elsewhere indicates a reference to the three months, January, February, March, which according to the Old Style closed the old year, while under the New Style, introduced in 1751 by the Act 24 Geo. II, c. 23, they begin the new year. with The history of the Company during the reigns of the first Contests two Stuarts and the period of the Commonwealth is mainly Dutch and occupied with their contests with Dutch competitors and English English rivals. rivals. of Am The massacre of Amboyna (February 16, 1623) is the Massacre turning-point in the rivalry with the Dutch. On the one boyna. hand it enlisted the patriotic sympathies of Englishmen at home on behalf of their countrymen in the East. On the other hand it compelled the Company to retire from the Eastern Archipelago, and concentrate their efforts on the peninsula of India. Associa Under Charles I the extensive trading privileges of the Courten's Company were seriously limited. Sir William Courten, tion. through the influence of Endymion Porter, a gentleman of the bedchamber, obtained from the king a licence to trade to the East Indies independently of the East India Company. His association, which, from a settlement established by it at Assada, in Madagascar, was often spoken of as the Assada Company, was a thorn in the side of the East India Company for many years. well's Under the Commonwealth the intervention of the Protector Cromwas obtained for the settlement of the Company's differences relations both with their Dutch and with their English competitors. to the Company. By the Treaty of Westminster in 1654, Cromwell obtained from the Dutch payment of a sum of £85,000 as compensation for the massacre of Amboyna and for the exclusion of the Company from trade with the Spice Islands. Difficulties arose, however, as to the apportionment of this sum among the several joint stocks of which the Company's capital was then composed, and, pending their settlement, Cromwell borrowed £50,000 of the sum for the expenses of the State. He thus anticipated the policy subsequently adopted by Montagu and his successors of compelling the Company to grant public loans as a price for their privileges. Crom charter of Ultimately the Company obtained from Cromwell in 1657 well's a charter under which the rump of Courten's Association 1657. |