In
1498, Vasco da Gama made a daring
journey. He sailed around the Cape of Good Hope to India and
back home to Portugal – an astounding feat for several
reasons, but his overall goal was twofold. He wanted
to acquire a greater volume of luxury items to sell at
home, and to bring these items directly to market,
rather than through middlemen via long-established
trade routes at exorbitant prices. His success gave
rise to more such journeys by others, but these
ventures involved significant outlays of cash with
high risks attached. For example, a journey to Asia
had to be taken in large ships, which were the most
expensive to build and outfit. They also required the
greatest number of men to work the vessel. And travel
by sea was fraught with hazards: accidental fire,
water leaks, hidden shoals, gale-force winds or
mind-numbing doldrums, and terrifying tempests. A
devastating example of the last was the hurricane that
wrecked eleven of twelve treasure ships that set sail
from Havana, Cuba in July 1715. Miguel de Lima y Melo,
who owned the Urca de Lima,
detailed what happened.
The sun disappeared and the
wind increased in velocity coming from the east
and east northeast. The seas became very giant in
size, the wind continued blowing us toward shore,
pushing us into shallow water. It soon happened
that we were unable to use any sail at all, making
bare our yards, mostly due to the wind carrying
away our sails and rigging, and we were at the
mercy of the wind and water, always driven closer
to the shore. Having then lost all of our masts,
all of the ships wrecked on the shore, and with
the exception of mine, broke to pieces. We lost
only thirty seamen and marines, who were carried
away by waves while in the waist of the ship. (Urca de Lima)
To minimize such costs and
risks, private merchants formed trading companies.
These were set up as joint-stock ventures, where each
person bought however many shares he (or she) could
afford with the knowledge that should the worst
happen, all would be lost. The more people who bought
into the company, the less risk each person might have
to absorb. If the venture was successful, the return
on their investment would make a tidy profit for their
coffers.
Once sufficient funds were
amassed, these trading companies often sought royal
approval, so that the company might acquire a monopoly
that allowed it to be the only company to trade with a
particular country or region of the world in which
they wished to set up trading posts (also known as
factories). In addition to the ships and crews, these
companies also required men to act as their agents in
the country where they traded. The agents, themselves,
were Europeans – although they did hire local people
to assist in their work – and they were responsible
for acquiring exports, selling imports, and obtaining
the best prices possible to assure maximum profits for
the company. The most senior agent often acted as an
emissary on behalf of his homeland to secure trading
rights and negotiate treaties with local rulers.
The English were the first to create a
joint-stock company. Founded in 1551, the Merchant Adventurers – or more
formally, the “Mystery and Company of Merchant
Adventurers for the Discovery of Regions, Dominions,
Islands, and Places unknown” – was organized to fund
an expedition to the White Sea (part of the Barents
Sea) in hopes of finding a northeast passage to China.
Other sixteenth-century ventures included the Muscovy Company (1555, initially
set up to trade with Russia and later explored the
Arctic); the Company of Merchants of the East (also
known as the Eastland North Sea Company,
established in 1579 to trade with independent
Scandinavian and Baltic countries); and the Levant Company (1581).
Colloquially known as the
Turkey Company, but more properly called the Governor
and Company of Merchants of the Levant, this company
conducted trade with the Ottoman Empire. Later, its
reach expanded to include Venice and the Middle East.
The Levant began operating with fourteen ships with a
cargo capacity of 200 to 350 tons, and two years after
the granting of its charter, the first voyage departed
England. Its agent (called “consul”) established an
embassy in Constantinople, and set up trading posts in
Smryna and Aleppo. Carpets, cotton, currants, oils,
silks, and wines were the Company’s principal imports.
The Mediterranean Sea was the
prime hunting ground for the corsairs of North Africa
(Algiers, Morocco, Tunis, and Tripoli). These
marauders caused sufficient problems to gain William
Shakespeare’s attention. In Act 1, Scene 3 of Macbeth
three witches are conversing when the first warnings
of the danger of sailing to the Levant Company’s
factory in Aleppo.
Her husband’s to Aleppo
gone, master o’ the Tiger:
But in a sieve I’ll thither
sail,
And, like a rat without a
tail,
I’ll do, I’ll do, and I’ll
do.
Between 1609 and 1616, pirates
seized 466 of the Levant’s vessels. After the Dey of
Algiers imprisoned the Levant’s consul, the Company
moved out of North Africa and established a trading
post in Leghorn (Livorno) where their consuls often
found cargo stolen from their ships for sale in the
shops and markets of Italy.
The English Civil War caused the
Company to suffer a recession, but after a new charter
was granted in 1661, the Levant Company experienced
renewed prosperity. Sixty vessels sailed each year,
and their encounters with pirates lessened. It
continued to operate until 1825.
The earliest chartered company
with ties to Asia, the Portuguese East India Company,
came into existence in 1628, but failed five years
later because it lacked sufficient investments and
outlays exceeded returns. It also preferred not to
modernize since its competitors – the Dutch, the
English, and the French – proved more adept at trading
there. Instead,
it established a more successful venture by going in
the opposite direction. The Portuguese Company (1649)
set up operations in Brazil, focusing on commodities
of wine, olive oil, grain, codfish, sugar, tobacco,
hides, and cotton. It did well until King João IV died
in 1656. Two other Brazilian ventures, also
established in the seventeenth century, proved more
successful: the General Company for the Trade of
Grão-Pará and Maranhâo, and the General Company for
the Trade of Pernambuco and Paraíbo.
The Dutch began trading with
Asian countries in the last decade of the sixteenth
century. The first voyage, comprised of four ships,
left Texel in April 1595. Three years passed before
the fleet returned, minus one ship and with only
one-fourth of the men who originally left the
Netherlands. By 1601, fourteen separate entities were
competing with each other for Asian trade. Such
rivalry proved less than ideal, so the States-General
of the United Provinces of the Netherlands intervened.
The result was the establishment of a single entity, Vereenigde Oostindische
Compagnie (VOC, or the United Netherlands
Chartered East India Company), the following year. The
shareholders elected seventeen directors, known as the
“Council of 17,” to oversee all operations of the
trade monopoly, the charter of which granted the VOC powers that in essence made
it a mini-state. It did not have to pay customs on the
goods it imported. It could raise its own army and
navy; wage armed conflict; build forts; print its own
currency; and conduct diplomatic negotiations. In only
thirty years, its success surpassed that of the
Portuguese, and eventually became the most successful
and largest of the East India companies.
Oldest known stock certificate, dated 9
September 1606 and payments of dividend of the VOC.
Issued to Pieter Hermanszoon Boode.
(Source: Wikimedia Commons)
The VOC’s ships, which were
often referred to as “East Indiamen,” were built at
the Company’s Amsterdam shipyard, where 1,500
employees produced an average of three vessels each
year. At the peak of its power, the VOC maintained an
armed force of 10,000 soldiers and a fleet of forty
warships and 150 merchantmen. In 1625, 4,500 people
worked for the VOC. Seventy-five years later,
that number increased to 18,117, and in 1753, the
Company employed 24,879. During its 200 years of
operation, the VOC made 4,789 trips to Asia and 3,401
return passages to the Dutch Republic. In that time,
the Company lost 105 outbound and 141 inbound ships
out of a total of 1,770 vessels.
Left: Duyfkin,
replica of a VOC East Indiaman; Right: Oostindisch
Huis, VOC's headquarters in Amsterdam
(Sources: Rupert Gerritsen at Wikimedia Commons & Eriksw
at Wikimedia Commons)
The VOC’s early entry into Asia
permitted the Dutch to establish key bases on
Indonesian islands, with their capital situated on
Batavia (Jakarta). To keep their sea trade route open,
the Company also erected a fortified trading post at
the Cape of Good Hope. Primary imports were pepper and
spices, but as time passed, coffee from Java became
equally important.
Reproduction of Map of Batavia in 1627
(Source: Tropenmuseum, part of the National
Museum of World Cultures at Wikimedia Commons)
The beginning of the end came
during the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War
(1780-1784) when Company finances plummeted.
Mismanagement, corruption, high mortality rates among
workers in Batavia, increasing expenditures, and
France’s invasion during the Napoleonic War led to the
dissolution of the VOC in December 1799.
Never one to let other nations reap all
the benefits, the English entered the fray two years
before the Dutch. Queen Elizabeth I granted a royal
charter to the Company of Merchants of London trading
to the East Indies in 1600, giving it the exclusive
right to all trade conducted between the Cape of Good
Hope and the Strait of Magellan (South Africa to
Chile). In more formal circles the venture became
known as the East India Company (EIC) or the
Honorourable East India Company
(HEIC) and informally as “John Company.” Run by an
elected board of directors, the Company’s first
governor or chairman was Sir Thomas Smythe, who at
various times in his career also served as governor of
the French Levant Company, the Muscovy Company, the
North-West Passage Company, and the Virginia Company. Such
cross-hiring wasn’t uncommon. A number of the EIC’s
original investors and organizers had ties to the
Levant Company, and many senior factors had previously
worked for that Company.
The EIC’s first voyage to Asia,
which cost a total of £68,000, departed London in
February 1601, and consisted of four ships. The
vessels returned in September 1603. Initial journeys
were funded by individual shareholders, who also
reaped the profits. This changed in 1612 when the
Company itself sent out ships as far as Japan, and
established two factories in India. Between its
inception in 1600 and the end of its monopoly in 1833,
Company ships made about 4,600 voyages. These vessels
were the largest merchant ships available because the
outbound journey alone could take six months or more
and, with shareholders waiting a minimum of two years
to see a return on their investment, the ships needed
to carry as much cargo as possible.
Initially, the EIC hired ships
to transport their exports and imports. This changed
in 1609 once the Company established its own dockyards in Deptford, England.
Here, some of the grandest and most lavish vessels of
the day were built. The EIC also armed these ships
with an array of guns to fight pirates, particularly
prevalent around Malay (Malaysia) and the Indian
Ocean, and to protect against rival companies and
nations. In 1681, the Company owned around thirty-five
ships of 100 to 775 tons. During the following seven
years, its shipyard constructed sixteen East Indiamen
with the smallest having a capacity of 900 tons and
the largest, 1,300 tons. When the Somerset was
launched in 1738, she had a length of 100 feet, could
carry 948 tons, and was armed with eight 9-pound guns
and twenty-two 6-pounders.
In 1653, Oliver Cromwell opted not to
renew the EIC’s charter, which allowed other merchants
to enter this lucrative market. This venture into free
trade eventually demonstrated to the government that a
joint-stock company that was well regulated and held a
monopoly was a better means of organizing overseas
trade, and Cromwell restored the Company’s monopoly
four years later. During the Restoration, King Charles II expanded the
EIC’s charter, empowering the Company to acquire and
govern territories, negotiate treaties, oversee its
own military, wage armed conflict, and print its own
currency.
By 1708 there were actually two
East India companies trading with Asia – the Old East
India Company and the New East India Company. That
year, they merged into a single entity known as the
United Company of Merchants of England Trading to the
East Indies. In 1813, the EIC ceased to be the sole
importer of Asian goods to England, with the exception
of tea from China. That product remained its exclusive
domain until 1833. Thereafter, the Company
administered India for the British government until
the Crown assumed that responsibility in 1858
following an uprising. The official end for the EIC
came sixteen years later.
East India House by Thomas Malton the
Younger, c. 1800
In the early years of trading
in Asia, the VOC and EIC were opponents in a virtual
war. They did reach an agreement to bring an end to
their disputes in 1619, but peace lasted a total of
sixty minutes. The animosity reached its peak four
years later on Ambon in the Spice Islands (Maluku
Islands or Moluccas). Initially, the Portuguese used
the island, but the Dutch took control and erected a
fortress there in 1605. Eighteen years later, during a
truce, VOC agents massacred English merchants at
Ambon. Thereafter, the British focused on their trade
with India, establishing factories in Surat, Chennai
(Madras), Calcutta (Kolkata), and Bombay (Mumbai). In
addition to pepper, the Company imported large
quantities of cotton cloth and silk. Later, they
dominated the lucrative tea trade of China. Aside from
these imports, another benefit that rose out of the
EIC’s voyages was the compilation of early coastal sea
charts.
France entered the Asian trade
much later than the English and the Dutch. La
Compagnie française des Indes orientales (French East India Company) was
founded in 1664 and lasted only until 1719 because it
lacked sufficient capital and wasn’t well run. Its
successor was the Compagnie perpétuelle des Indes,
established that same year. In time, it became a
dominant player, remaining in existence until 1769.
The Compagnie’s Indian headquarters was in
Pondicherry (Puducherry, located near Madras), and comptoirs
(trading posts) were established in Chandernagore
(Chandannagore), Karikal, and Machilipatnum (Bandar).
In France, the Compagnie was based in
Lorient, a port in Brittany, where its naval officers
trained, imports were auctioned, affairs were
administered, and ships were built. Seventy percent of
the officers staffing these vessels came from
Brittany, particularly Saint Malo. These men often
came from a core group of wealthy families, most of
which were involved in merchant trade rather than the
navy. On the other hand, the Compagnie could
conscript seamen from the reserves of France’s Royal
Navy. In 1723, the Compagnie owned seventy-six
ships, each capable of carrying more than 100 tons of
cargo. All were armed, some having more than forty
guns, to fight pirates or defend the country in times
of war. Ten lesser ships carried between thirty and
forty cannons, while twenty-one others had sixteen to
thirty. Twenty-five years later, the Compagnie’s fleet
was downsized to only twenty-six vessels, although
that number increased again by the mid-1750s. The
cargo capacity of vessels traveling to and from China
or India was between 450 and 600 tons. During a
fourteen-year period, beginning in 1756, a Compagnie
captain earned an average of 33,000 livres
(roughly £2,475) in a single voyage.
Shops the the French East India
Company, the admiralty and governor's house at
Pondicherry prior to 1761
(Source: Artist unknown, Wikimedia Commons)
Other countries also entered
the fray: the Scottish East India Company (1618), the
Ostend Company of the Austrian
Netherlands (1715-1732), the Swedish East India Company
(1731-1813), the Prussian East India Company
(1754-1765), and the Danish East India Company
(1616-1807). The Swedish EIC made only 132 voyages
during its eighty-two years, but almost all of their
ships were built in Sweden. What distinguished these
players from the more successful ones was their
reliance on the expertise and money of people who once
worked for or funded the Dutch and English companies.
Spain had its own companies,
whose focus was centered more on trade with their
colonies. For example, in 1714, Spaniards established
the Honduras Company, although not much else is known
about this venture. Fourteen years later, the Spanish
Caracas Company was founded by Basques who primarily
imported cocoa. Other commodities of interest to them
were gold, silver, tobacco, and hides. When Charles
III imposed “free trade” regulations in 1778, the
company went into decline. Similar ventures included
the Company of the Philippines (1733); the Company of
Buenos Aries, Tucumán, and Paraguay; the Royal Trading
Company of Havana (1740); and the Royal Trading
Company of Barcelona (1755).
In addition to trade, these
joint-stock companies were also involved in efforts to
explore and colonize lands beyond Europe. Four such
English companies were the Virginia Company of London
(1606), the Plymouth Company of London (1606), the
Somers Isles Company (1615, Bermuda), and the
Massachusetts Bay Company (1629). A later company,
established in 1670, was chartered as the Gentlemen
Adventurers Trading into Hudson Bay. Its primary goal
was to find a Northwest Passage, but its trade
involved the importation of furs. But England wasn’t
the only country with companies who ventured to the
New World.
A
number of companies were founded to conduct trade in
the West Indies, although that wasn’t always their
primary directive. Nor were these occidental companies
as successful or lucrative as their oriental
counterparts. A lesser-known company was the Svenska
Västindiska Kompaniet, or the Swedish West India
Company. Its royal charter was to manage
Saint-Barthélemy, after Louis XVI of France traded the
Caribbean island to Sweden in 1784. Nya Sverige
Kompanie or New Sweden Company (1638-1655)
settled along the Delaware River in what was then
called New Sweden (Delaware). Cardinal Richelieu founded La
Compagnie des Îles de l’Amérique (French Company
of the American Islands) in 1631, which ceased to
operate circa 1650. It founded and/or administered the
Caribbean islands of Guadaloupe, Martinique, Saint
Lucia, and Saint Christopher (Saint Kitts).
Established in 1664, la Compagnie d’Occident merged
with la Compagnie française des Indes orientales
to become la Compagnie perpétuelle des Indes.
While the latter half focused on the Far East, the
former half explored and settled Louisiana, earning
the nickname “Mississippi Company.” The united company
existed until 1720. Two companies that failed
spectacularly were the Company of Scotland (1695) and
the South Sea Company (1711-1720).
The Scots tried to set up a trading colony on the
Isthmus of Darien (Isthmus of Panama), while the
British focused on South America.
The trading companies with the
most notorious reputation, however, were those
established along the west coast of Africa. The
primary commodity in which they dealt was the
exportation of slaves, although gold and ivory were
also desirable. The Scots established the Scottish
Guinea Company circa 1634. Swedes took over a company
originally founded by the Dutch and renamed it the Afrikanska
Kompaniet or Guinea Kompaniet, (Swedish
Africa Company, 1649-1658). Prussia’s Brandenburgisch-Africanische
Compagnie (Brandenburg African Company) was
founded in what is Ghana today and operated between
1682-1717. The more widely known venture, however,
started as the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading to
Africa.
King Charles II granted the
Company a charter in 1660, with the understanding that
his brother James, Duke of York, would govern it. Its
initial purpose was to seek gold around the Gambia
River, but three years later another commodity was
added to the charter – slaves. Even so, increasing
debt led to the Company’s collapse in 1671. It
reemerged a year later under a new charter as the Royal African Company (RAC).
This time around, the focus was solely on slavery and
the infrastructure necessary to support such trade.
Aside from erecting forts for protection, the RAC
built factories in which its agents conducted
business. Once the RAC lost its monopoly in 1698, it
ignored its infrastructure, allowing these structures
to slowly crumble and become more susceptible to
attack. The RAC continued its involvement in the slave
trade until 1731, after which, it returned to the
buying and selling of gold and ivory.
This introduction to
joint-stock trading companies merely skims the surface
of these ventures. Upcoming articles will focus on
specific companies and their interaction with pirates,
as well as the impact these interactions had on both
the companies and the pirates.
For additional information, I
recommend the following resources:
Antunes, Cátia. “Chartered
Companies: Iberian World,” The Oxford
Encyclopedia of Maritime History edited by
John B. Hattendorf. Oxford University, 2007,
391-392.
Appleby, John C. Women
and English Piracy 1540-1720: Partners and Victims
of Crime. Boydell, 2013.
Atsuski, Ota. “The Business
of Violence: Piracy around Riau, Lingga, and
Singapore, 1820-40,” Elusive Pirates, Pervasive
Smugglers: Violence and Clandestine Trade in the
Greater China Seas edited by Robert J. Antony.
Hong Kong University, 2010, 127-141.
Bicheno, Hugh. Elizabeth’s
Sea Dogs: How the English Became the Scourge of
the Seas. Conway, 2012.
Bosscher, Philip. “Shipping
Economics and Trade,” The Heyday of Sail: The
Merchant Sailing Ship 1650-1830. Chartwell
Books, unk,133-151.
Bowen, H. V., John McAleer,
and Robert J. Blyth. Monsoon Traders: The
Maritime World of the East India Company.
Scala, 2011.
Bruijn, Jaap R. Commanders
of Dutch East India Ships in the Eighteenth
Century. Boydell, 2011.
Cederlund, Carl Olaf. “The
Ships of Scandinavia and the Baltic,” The Heyday
of Sail: The Merchant Sailing Ship 1650-1830.
Chartwell Books, unk, 55-76.
Chet, Guy. The Ocean Is a
Wilderness: Atlantic Piracy and the Limits of
State Authority, 1688-1856. University of
Massachusetts, 2014.
“East India Company,” The
Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea edited
by Peter Kemp. Oxford University, 1976, 279-281.
French, Christopher.
“Merchant Shipping of the British Empire,” The
Heyday of Sail: The Merchant Sailing Ship
1650-1830. Chartwell Books, unk, 10-33.
Friel, Ian. Maritime
History of Britain and Ireland c. 400-2001.
The British Museum, 2003.
Gaastra, Femme S. “Dutch East
India Company,” The Oxford Encyclopedia of
Maritime History edited by John B. Hattendorf.
Oxford University, 2007, 608-611.
Graham, Eric J. A
Maritime History of Scotland, 1650-1790.
Tuckwell, 2002.
The Great Trade Routes: A
History of Cargoes and Commerce over Land and Sea edited by Philip Parker.
Naval Institute, 2012.
Hanna, Mark G. Pirate
Nests and the Rise of the British Empire,
1570-1740. University of North Carolina, 2015.
Hattendorf, John B.
“Chartered Companies: Northern Europe,” The
Oxford Encyclopedia of Maritime History edited
by John B. Hattendorf. Oxford University, 2007,
392-394.
Hoving, A. J. “Seagoing Ships
of the Netherlands,” The Heyday of Sail: The
Merchant Sailing Ship 1650-1830. Chartwell
Books, unk, 34-54.
Hughes, Ben. Apocalypse
1692: Empire, Slavery, and the Great Port Royal
Earthquake. Westholme, 2017.
Keay, John. The
Honourable Company: A History of the English
East India Company. HarperCollins, 1993.
Lloyd, Christopher. English
Corsairs on the Barbary Coast. Collins,
1981.
Marshall,
Peter J. “East India Companies,” The Oxford
Encyclopedia of Maritime History edited by
John B. Hattendorf. Oxford University, 2007,
605-608.
Rediker, Marcus. Between
the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchants Seamen,
Pirates, and the Anglo-American Maritime World,
1700-1750. Cambridge University, 1999.
Rogoziński, Jan. Honor
Among Thieves: Captain Kidd, Henry Every, and the
Pirate Democracy in the Indian Ocean.
Stackpole Books, 2000.
Sutton, Jean. “English East
India Company,” The Oxford Encyclopedia of
Maritime History edited by John B. Hattendorf.
Oxford University, 2007, 611-613.
Sutton, Jean. Lords of
the East: The East India Company and Its Ships
(1600-1874). Conway, 2000.
Thowsen, Atle. “Bergen,” The
Oxford Encyclopedia of Maritime History edited
by John B. Hattendorf. Oxford University, 2007,
279-280.
Tuck, Patrick. “French East
India Company,” The Oxford Encyclopedia of
Maritime History edited by John B. Hattendorf.
Oxford University, 2007, 613-615.
Van Royen, P.
C. “Seamen and the Merchant Service, 1650-1830,” The
Heyday of Sail: The Merchant Sailing Ship
1650-1830. Chartwell Books, unk, 152-159.
Pirates and
Privateers
