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5.3  Regional changes

For just over one hundred years the Portuguese had dominated the trade routes upon which their merchants sailed. The advent of the seventeenth century brought with it more English, Dutch and French merchants keen to participate in this profitable trade with the East Indies. Whereas the East India Company of England initially received a charter to trade, the VOC (The United Dutch East India Company) began operations backed by the state.

 

The incorporation of all Dutch enterprise in Asia within the VOC was, thus, essentially the work of the Dutch state. And, as an arm of the state, as well as trading operation, the VOC was to prove astoundingly successful within a short space of time. Within three years the pre-1602 ‘trade only’ policy of the old companies had been transformed into a full-scale strategic offensive, involving dozens of warships and many hundreds of troops. In 1605, the Dutch achieved a major breakthrough in the East Indies, conquering Amboina, Tidore, and Ternate, the legendary ‘Spice Islands’, from the Portuguese. Fortified bases, manned by fixed garrisons, were established on the islands. The Dutch now had a near monopoly of the world’s supply of nutmeg, mace, and cloves. The Dutch literally conquered their supremacy in the spice trade.^[1]

 

There was little if any common thread in the manner in which trade was conducted. The Portuguese merchants were supported by a Portuguese navy which from the beginning had been conquering lands in the East Indies. The English were merchants and operated as such. Any beligerence on their part required a ‘letter of marque’ from their government or at least an explicit order from their head office in London that permission had been granted. The Dutch did not have a navy as such but were supported by the state to such an extent that they acted as one. About 1650, the Dutch captured four English ships in the Persian Gulf and practically shut out English and Portuguese trade in the area. The English factors reported an imperiousness “almost past beliefe”^[2] but were unable to do anything more at the time. Portuguese influence in India and south east Asia was now being replaced by British, French and Dutch expansion. By 1609 the Dutch had pushed the Portuguese out of Ceylon. The British through the East India Company developed Madras (1639), Bombay (1661) and Calcutta (1696). Unlike the British which initially were concentrated within small trading areas or towns, the French company Compagnie des Indes Orientales established by Colbert had successfully established themselves almost the whole length of the east coast of India  with influence over a good part of the Indian interior and had like the Portuguese before them established Fort Dauphin on Madagascar (1643-72) and the Isle de Bourbon (Réunion 1654) to protect their sea route from France to India. From 1746 the British and French struggled over their colonies in India and in 1793 when France declared war on Britain and Holland, Britain seized the French settlements in India. The period 1793-1815 coming as it did after the French revolution set off a chain of events that ultimately bore down and affected events in the Persian Gulf.

The world wide expansionist plans of the French under Napoleon were often matched by the British particularly in their strive for hegemony in India. The British East India Company had been subject to change and to quote  John Keay, author of The Honourable Company, it is difficult to determine the exact date when British affairs in India were the responsibility of the East India Company or that of the British government:

 

It is then difficult to fix a precise date for the demise of the Company. If by demise is meant its supersession by the state, any number of dates could be suggested ranging from the infiltration of the Directorate in the 1760s to the 1773 Regulating Act, the 1784 India Act, the 1813 Charter Act (which finally claimed for the Crown the sovereignty of all the Company's possessions), or the 1858 dissolution.

 

In 1773 Warren Hastings had been appointed the first British governor-general of India and the Indian Secret and Political Department Diaries, known as the Bombay Diaries, for 1778-1808 provide an insight to the main concerns of the British: the progress of the war in Egypt against the French invaders; British efforts to exert influence in the Red Sea area; the progress of Naval and Military expeditions to the Red Sea and Egypt, and to the Persian Gulf, to combat French designs and piracy. Napoleons expansionist plans which were not secret included India and Australia and his success in July 1798 in taking Egypt would have had a profound effect on those in India. The French presence at Mauritius (Isle de France) and its use as a base for French privateers in the Indian Ocean and in the Bay of Bengal may have contributed to the feeling that the French threat had to be taken seriously.

In June 1807 the government of Bombay was warned by the British political agent at Bushire that the French were trying to persuade the Shah to turn over the port of Bandar Abbas to them which would provide a more effective forward base than Mauritius. If this was to be countered it would mean diverting vessels from other duties to the east. The government of Bombay asked the flag officer in command, Vice-Admiral Sir Edward Pellew, to send a squadron to patrol the Strait of Hormuz and on the 4 July he refused. In September 1807 the political agent confirmed what had been suspected earlier that year that the Shah:

 

had absolutely entered into a treaty of alliance with the French, one article of which was that the king had ceded to them the islands of Kharg and Hormuz and the port of Gombroon ... and in return for this French had agreed to supply the king of Persia with a train of artillery... to be brought from the Isle of France landed at Gombroon.^[3]

 

Pellew disagreed with the government of India that this was the intention of the French but made the arrangements the governor-general of Bengal, Lord Minto, had requested for a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz commanded by one of his senior captains, Captain John Ferrier in HMS Albion (74). HMS Fox (32) was already in the Persian Gulf and would be joined by HMS Pitt (36) and three more frigates. Ferrier arrived in Bombay on 20 December 1807 and without further orders from Minto or Pellew began to make arrangements urged on by the governor of Bombay^[4]. On 4 February 1808 Ferrier sailed for Bandar Abbas in HMS Albion, an armed Indiaman HCS Royal George (36), four frigates, Fox, Pitt, Phaeton (38), Dedaigneuse (36) and two Bombay Marine cruisers, Mornington (14) and Ternate (14). He had also summoned HMS Russell (74) and the frigate San Fiorenzo (36) from the Bay of Bengal to increase his strength sufficient to meet any fleet that the French were rumoured to be sending. Pellew returning from the East Indies to find that French privateers had been active in the Bay of Bengal cancelled Ferrier’s orders to Russell and San Fiorenzo and summoned back the Royal George before proceeding to Bombay himself. Minto had decided to send a British mission to Persia and Pellew offered to transport Malcolm as far as Bombay where they arrived in the first week of April. Pellew then found out that Minto had hoped to send 4,000 troops to the Persian Gulf to drive out any French and set up a base on the island of Kishm and promptly forbade this. Then he learnt that Ferrier, who had arrived back in Bombay from his patrols between Muscat and Bandar Abbas just before Pellew, had been accompanied by the British Resident in Muscat who had used the presence of the Navy to coerce the Imam of Muscat, a matter also denounced by Minto. Despite Pellew’s disagreement with the government of Bombay when he left for Madras at the end of May 1808 he left Ferrier at Bombay with a force sufficient to meet any emergency. Two frigates HMS Doris (36) and HMS Psyche (32) were in the Persian Gulf with Malcolm and they could be reinforced by HMS Albion and HMS Powerful (74). However if there was an emergency Pellew had instructed that the squadron would take up their position to defend India off the Malabar or west coast of India and not at the Strait of Hormuz. Pellew whose command stretched from Basrah to Macao took the steps he did in order to assuage the  government of India concerned as they were with preventing any foothold by the French. Pellew did not believe the reports and Minto explained that whether or not the reports were true it was necessary to act upon them.^[5]

As indicated earlier there are no exact dates on which one can fix the transfer of responsibilities from the East India Company to the government of India and that of the home government in England. In 1799?^[6] Harford Jones, an officer of the East India Company, had established a Residency in Baghdad. Returning to England and created a baronet he was appointed Envoy Extraordinaire and Minister Plenipotentiary to Persia by the home government in London in order to open direct negotiations with the Shah. Jones arrived in Bombay on the H.M.S. Sapphire in April 1808 but delayed his departure because Malcolm had just been despatched by the Governor-General of India, Lord Minto, to Persia to counter growing French interests. Malcolm reached Persia on board the Psyche in May 1808 and on 12 July departed for India. On the 12 September, Jones left Bombay on board H.M.S. Nereide, accompanied by H.M.S. Sapphire and the cruiser Sylph; arrived at Bushire in the Persian Gulf  on the 14 October.^[7] Jones secured a treaty with the Shah in 1809 but it is worth mentioning the situation that occurred the following year when the Shah was confronted with two opposing British plenipotentaries, Jones and Malcolm representing the Home Government and the Government of India, a problem resolved when Malcolm withdrew.^[8]

At the end of the eighteenth century when the British were concerned with the French and their plans on India,there was a revival in French privateering not only in European waters but in those of the Caribbean, North America and the Indian Ocean. Robert Surcouf won fame in the Indian Ocean as the captain of the Emilie in 1796. On the 29 January Surcouf and his sixteen man crew captured the East Indiaman Triton even though this British ship had a complement of 150 men. Based on the Ile de France (Mauritius) he practically blockaded Calcutta in 1799 whilst captain of the Clarisse. When the Clarisse underwent a refit he took over the Confiance. In this ship Surcouf was able to out sail all the British warships in sight and captured over a dozen merchant ships. On his second voyage Robert Surcouf attacked the 820 ton Indiaman Kent outward bound for Bengal. The East Indiaman was well defended by a crew of between ninety and one hundred and some of the forty one passengers on board. The Kent was captured after the Kent’s captain and twenty one men were killed and another thirty five injured. It was a magnificent prize. He returned to France in 1802 but reappeared again in 1808 having evaded the British blockade off Ile Bourbon on the 18 gun corsair Revenant. He cruised with the frigate Piémontaise and harried the rice trade between Bengal and Madras for two years before returning to St Malo in 1809.

In the early autumn of 1801 Balguerie jeune and Bergeret sent the 600 ton Psyché [later to become the British frigate HMS Psyche (32 guns)] which had been fitted out at Nantes by Chaurand to the Ile de France. She was there when the Napoleonic War broke out and remained in the Indian Ocean until her capture in 1805.

Jacques Conte and Audibert Frères fitted out the Bellonne which under the command of Jacques Perraud took three prizes in the Indian Ocean. When the Napoleonic War broke out the Bellonne cruised off Ireland. However having taken the Lord Nelson he was chased by the brig HM Seagull and abandoned his prize. Having taken on a new crew at Passagès, the Bellonne returned to the Indian Ocean where there were fewer warships.

British naval power gradually weakened the privateers and more overseas possessions of France fell into British hands. At the end of the war British power was extended in India by the Wellesley brothers. After the renewal of war in 1803 many possessions relinquished in the