THE BRITISH MISSION TO KARAIKAL (1624)

 

John Johnson, an English sailor with a Danish ship Christian, marooned on the Bay of Bengal coast, travelled inland to Tanjore and had an audience with the Nayak king.

He wrote back

... the Great Naik demands to know what the reason is that the English do not desire to trade in his land as well as the Portugal, saying they shall have the pepper and anything the land doth afford and likewise buy the commodities that they do bring with them as tin, lead, iron and red cloth is well sold. Little does our nation know how they are expected all this land, thus the Danes do trade under the name English and are marvellous well used.[1]

Upon receiving Johnson's favourable report, the East India Company sent a mission from their factory at  Bantam (in Java), to negotiate with the Nayak king. Initially, the king promised a grant of the port of Karaikal free of duties. The ship Hart anchored at Karaikal on the 23rd of May 1624 and the agents proceeded inland upon receiving an invitation from the Nayak reaching Tanjore on the 8th of June 1624.[2] But by the time the negotiations commenced, the Nayak had changed his mind, reportedly under the influence of the Portuguese and the Danes, and demanded an annual rent of 7,000 pagodas.[3][4] The negotiations were called off and the agents returned to Bantam, disappointed.[5] John Johnson was punished by the East India Company for having misled them. Another diplomatic mission will not visit Tanjore until the Anglo-French wars more than a hundred years later, by which time, a different dynasty, the Mahrattas would be ruling in Tanjore. But to think that the British would have beaten the French to Karaikal and in doing so, gained a far more healthy, safe and prosperous harbour than the pathetic and poverty-stricken town of Madraspatam and one that would have posed a clear heads-up advantage over the latter had it not been for a last minute change of mind by the Nayak king, Raghunatha! Perhaps, the East India Company would have emerged stronger than it eventually did; but it is also possible that the English merchant-soldiers could have gone soft in the comforts of Tanjore's bountiful harvests and salubrious climate. Either could have happened.


[1] Vriddhagirisan (1942), The Nayaks of Tanjore, p 99

[2] For a detailed account of the mission, see The English Factories in India 1624-1629 (1909), edited by William Foster, pages 13-19.

[3] Foster, William (1909), The English Factories in India 1624-1629 , p 19 cited in Vriddhagirisan (1942) The Nayaks of Tanjore, p 99

[4] It appears that the Danes were dead set against the venture from the very beginning. As soon as the ship landed, the English mission received a letter (on May 29, 1624) from the Danes of Tranquebar. From Captain John Bickley’s account: “The princypall of the Danes (sic) sent a letter unto our cheife merchant, Mr. Joseph Cockram, that we were best for too departe, for there was no trade there too bee had for us, because they had formed [farmed] all the seaportes of the Kinges betwene Nagapatan and Pullacatt for the use and bennefit of the Kinge of Denmarke; therefore willed us agayne to bee gone, or else they would send us awaye in haste. Wee badd them doe theire worste, for we would staye in spite of them all, they being three to one.”

[5] The mission was, in reality, a disaster. A band of ten men deserted shortly after the Hart landed in Karaikal followed by another five two days later. A few more deserted on July 15, 1624, Captain Bickley blaming the desertions upon the “enticement of the Danes”. Apart from the high rents demanded by the Nayak king, Cockram and his men found to their chagrin that the kingdom produced very little of the good-quality pepper that they sought.

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