CHAPTER VI
EARLY HISTORY; SURAT, PERSIA, BOMBAY, AND THE WEST
" Once, two hundred years ago, the trader came Meek and tame."
Kipling, Departmental Ditties, A Tale of two Cities.
The E.I. Co.'s first factory in Western India was that founded at Surat in Jan., 1612/13, by Best and Aldworth. By the end of 1617, they had five factories in the Mogul's dominions— Surat, Broach, Barhanpur, Ahmadabad, and Agra.* Half a century later Bombay was added to the list. Douglas, in Glimpses of Old Bombay and Western India, pp. 249, 250, states—
" In 1538, ten years after its acquisition by the Portuguese, Bombay was rented in perpetuity to Garcia d'Orta, a physician and professor of Lisbon, who lived in India from 1534 to 1572. Garcia paid a yearly quit rent of about £85 (1432 J pardaos). In 1563 he wrote a work Dialogues on Simples and Drugs, in which he mentions the island under the names of Bombaim and Mombaim. He was a friend of Camoens, author of the Lusiad, who was in India at the same time."
In Malabari's Bombay in the Making, pp. 21, 22, the date of the grant to d'Orta is given as 1541. Had the descendants of the Portuguese physician been able to retain their property till the present day, they would have been rich men. The island of Bombay was ceded by Portugal to England, as part of the dowry of Katharine of Braganza, wife of Charles II., by the treaty of marriage, dated 23rd June, 1661, and ratified two months later. In 1668 Charles II. handed over the island to the Company.
Surat was a Presidency of the E.I. Co. from 1613 to 1678, and again from 1681 to 1686. From 1629 to 1635 Surat was the chief seat of all the Company's possessions in the East. In 1678
- Foster, English Factories in India, 1618-21, p. v.
