The East India Company in Persia: Trade and cultural exchange amid upheaval

The East India Company is perhaps the best known British joint-stock business from the 17-18th century.

Given its royal charter on 31 January 1600, its merchants set out to explore potential trade routes with India, the company would go on to govern India and was a major force in the subcontinent until 1858 when it was dissolved.

A lot of work has been produced on the company’s history in India, but what many do not realise is the East India’s operations extended beyond South Asia.

"The East India Company in Persia provides a much needed intervention into an under-explored topic and will act as a basis for further exploration into the history of the British-Persian relationship"

Iran was a major area of influence for the company and Peter Good’s The East India Company in Persia: Trade and Cultural Exchange in the Eighteenth Century aims to fill in some of the gaps in our knowledge of this section of its history.

The East India Company in Persia opens with the story of Englishman, Danvers Graves, who would enjoy various titles including Agent for Persia for the company.

Sent to the ancient city of Kerman to oversee the company’s operations, he ends up providing an account of one of the most infamous events in the history of that city, Nader Shah’s assault on the city in 1747.

A military commander who seized power and became king, Nader Shah, whose rule was marked by its cruelty, wanted taxation out of Kerman and the city’s residents' refusal to pay up led to the Shah burning the place down.

While many fled, Graves did not. He decided he needed to protect the company’s operations in Kerman and so tried multiple times to meet with the Shah, each official request failed and Graves did something risky.

What we would today call door-stepping, Graves turned up to the Shah’s compound unannounced and while the guards were challenging him, “Graves saw the Shah walking nearby and decided that the only way he was likely to speak to him was by attracting his attention directly. Graves began loudly arguing with the guards and officials.

This had the desired effect; the Shah ordered that the Englishmen be allowed entry and granted him a brief audience.” The meeting had some success, although the Company’s property in Kerman was attacked and some of its Persian servants abducted.

As Good argues, the tale of Graves illustrates the complexity and the multifaceted nature of the company’s operations in Persia which not only included business but diplomacy and close contact between rulers and state officials.

Good offers a fascinating account of how the company lived and worked in eighteenth-century Iran. The aim of the book is to paint a nuanced picture of the company’s activities, which too often falls prey to simplistic accounts of aggressive foreigners stealing a nation.

While not dismissing these takes, Good offers a more complex reading where the Company acts in accordance with local elites. The East India Company was invited into Persia by Shah Abbas I who wanted access to English battleships to fight off the Portuguese and in 1621 a formal treaty was signed between the two. 

The Safavid ruler issued a Farman, or a royal decree from an Islamic ruler allowing for certain rights to an individual or community, to the company.

 "What makes Good’s study delightful to read is the blend of mercantile, political and social history"

These rights initially included assisting in the running of customs in the port city of Bandar Abbas, for shares in the revenues collected at the port and the right to freely trade silk tariff-free in the Shah’s dominions.

Later Farmans issued by later Shahs would include the right of Englishmen to be governed by English rather than Persian law while living in Iran. In 1697, under Shah Soltan Husayn, the Farman also included the right of any child born by an Englishman and local woman, to be treated as English under these provisions. “These concerns reflect how settled the Company had become and that there were clearly pastoral issues that needed addressing as well as those of trade.”

Indeed what makes Good’s study delightful to read is the blend of mercantile, political and social history.

He points out that while Bandar Abbas was an important place to trade from, for the English who settled there life was pretty hard, as accounts from westerners stationed there show, “Le Bruyn took note of the large European graveyards ‘filled with lofty tombs and covered domes.’

He stated that the reader should not be surprised by the great number of graves blaming ‘unhealthy air’, ‘excessive heat’ and ‘burning fevers, which are there more common than in any other place’.” Indeed in the 17th and 18th centuries, Good notes, young men arriving from England could expect to live only 3 years upon their arrival in Asia.

Outbreaks of disease, especially the plague, were something that haunted locals and the Company. The East India Company in Persia provides a much-needed intervention into an under-explored topic and will act as a basis for further exploration into the history of the British-Persian relationship. A real delight to read and based on the East India Company’s records, it offers a fresh perspective on the Company’s history outside of India.

Usman Butt is a multimedia television researcher, filmmaker and writer based in London. Usman read International Relations and Arabic Language at the University of Westminster and completed a Master of Arts in Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter.

Follow him on Twitter: @TheUsmanButt