Between Boston and Bombay: Cultural and Commercial Encounters of Yankees and Parsis, 1771–1865

By Jenny Rose

A few years after the American declaration of independence, the first American ships set sail to India. The commercial links that American merchant mariners established with the Parsis of Bombay contributed significantly to the material and intellectual culture of the early Republic in ways that have not been explored until now. This book maps the circulation of goods, capital and ideas between Bombay Parsis and their contemporaries in the northeastern United States, uncovering a surprising range of cultural interaction. Just as goods and gifts from the Zoroastrians of India quickly became an integral part of popular culture along the eastern seaboard of the U.S., so their newly translated religious texts had a considerable impact on American thought. Using a wealth of previously unpublished primary sources, this work presents the narrative of American-Parsi encounters within the broader context of developing global trade and knowledge.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Release date: Nov 6, 2019
• ISBN: 9783030252052

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© The Author(s) 2019

J. RoseBetween Boston and Bombayhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25205-2_1

1. Arrivals: Parsis, Pilgrims and Puritans

Jenny Rose¹  

(1)

Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA, USA

Jenny Rose

Email: [e-mail]

Preamble

This prelude to the designated timeframe of the book (1771–1865) explores some of the perceived parallels between the immigration of English Pilgrim and Puritan groups to the northeastern coast of America in the early decades of the seventeenth century, and that of Zoroastrians from Iran to the northwest Indian coast of Gujarat several centuries earlier, and from there to Bombay under British rule. A study of the founding narratives of each group—which were almost contemporary in their earliest written form—highlights their emphases on the preservation of their respective religion as a motivation for relocation. It is clear that socioeconomic factors were also at play. The early commercial enterprises and infrastructures of each group are introduced as a backdrop to their initial interactions with each other, as goods began to be shipped across the thousands of miles between the two continents (see Maps 1.1 and 1.2).

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Map 1.1

The Parsi journey from Iran to India as outlined in the Qesse-ye Sanjān

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Map 1.2

The Pilgrim journey from England to the Netherlands to America, as described by William Bradford

This is not so much a tale of two cities, as a story of two different cultural histories, which resonate with each other in part, and sometimes interweave. Each claims a centuries-old founding myth that continues to inform its respective worldview. As Norsemen were navigating the Arctic Circle, seeking new lands to settle and eventually arriving on the shores of Newfoundland, in the northwestern Indian Ocean another group of intrepid pioneers also departed by boat across turbulent seas in search of a new homeland. The narrative history of that initial journey of Zoroastrians leaving Iran from the port of Hormuz to a hazardous landing on the coast of Gujarat in northwestern India, underpins Parsi self-perception down to the present. Later European settlers came after Leif Erikson to North America, but the mythologized story of the arrival of one particular boatload of migrants from England remains intrinsic to many of the religious and political values promoted in the United States.

The perceived similarities between the founding myths of the two cultures were highlighted by a Parsi scholar-priest, Jivanji Jamshedji Modi, writing in the last century about his Zoroastrian ancestors’ journey following the incursion of Arab Muslims onto the Iranian plateau. Modi remarked: The movements of these early Parsee emigrants from Persia can well be compared with the movements of the American Pilgrim Fathers, who left their dear country for the sake of their religion, and landed on the foreign shores of America. ¹ Relying on information from a late sixteenth century Persian-language account by a Parsi, alongside the 9th edition of the Encylopaedia Britannica, Modi cited eight instances where the history of the American Pilgrims seemed to resemble that of the Parsi Indian Pilgrim fathers. These similarities included: departure from the homeland for the sake of religion, which was dearer than their land; a multistage emigration, with a period of (self-imposed) exile in an interim land before they finally settled and flourished as a colony; a difficult and dangerous journey due to the weather; agreement to a compact of government before landing; maintenance of the group as a separate colony; and, after struggling through poverty and the rigors of their new location to survive, the founding of other towns apart from the earliest settlements. ²

Indeed, there are certain parallels to be drawn between both the collective memory of, and motivation for, the migration of these Zoroastrians from Iran sometime between the eighth and tenth centuries, and the Pilgrims from Britain who made the difficult sea voyage to the east coast of America some seven or eight hundred years later. The historical mythologizing of both exodus experiences emphasizes their religious impetus, while minimizing reference to any socioeconomic influences. It seems, however, that the desire to make a better living was probably as crucial to any decision to migrate as the quest for religious freedom. In each case, emigration brought new commercial opportunities.

From this perspective, the drive of British colonial expansion from the early seventeenth century to mid-eighteenth century in both the West and the East must be considered as a factor that encouraged English nonconformists to sail to the New World, as well as further Parsi migration from original settlements in the Gujarati hinterland to Bombay. ³ During this period, both groups set off to their new destinations with contractual obligations to British mercantile companies in hand, along with assurances of freedom of religion.

Parsis Arrive in Sanjan

A verse-story by a Parsi high priest named Bahman Kaikobad Sanjana from Navsari, Gujarat, narrates the various reasons for the Zoroastrian emigration from Iran to India shortly after the fall of the Sasanian Persians to the Arab Muslims in the mid-seventh century CE. This Parsi account was first printed in Persian in 1599. Titled Qesse-ye Sanjān, the Story of Sanjan, the text marks Sanjan, on the southernmost coast of Gujarat, as the initial landing place of the behdinān—those of the good religion. The Qesse-ye Sanjān is a rare internal Parsi Zoroastrian source from this early period, providing insight into Parsi self-definition at the time of its composition, and acting as a prototype for subsequent Parsi repositioning as they moved from Gujarat to Bombay, then elsewhere in the Indian subcontinent and to other countries. The story becomes a Parsi national epic, reflecting identity and ethos as understood in the late sixteenth century. ⁴

Modi noted parallels with accounts of the seventeenth-century English Pilgrim migration to America in the Qesse-ye Sanjān’s reminiscences of the wondrous rescue of the good religion. ⁵ The motivation for the departure of the original Zoroastrian boat people on the dangerous journey across the seas is given as the growing religious intolerance on the part of the Arab Muslims who now ruled their Iranian homeland. ⁶ This rationale underpins the Qesse narrative that when the last Sasanian Zoroastrian king, Yazdegerd III (r. 632–651 CE), was killed in Merv, both laity and priests went into hiding in the region of Kuhestan (literally, a mountainous place), leaving all for sake of their Religion. ⁷ The burden of payment of jizya, the annual poll tax due from non-Muslim subjects living under Islamic rule, was certainly oppressive. ⁸ In the late 720s, the Umayyad caliphate had promised to exempt Zoroastrian converts from the jizya, but when this did not happen, many returned to their original faith and rebelled. ⁹

The Qesse does not refer directly to such events, but relates that a hundred years after Yazdegerd’s death, the group from Kuhestan followed a wise and virtuous man to the Iranian port city of Hormuz, where they took the advice of a "wise dastūr" (Zoroastrian priest) and embarked with him on a boat to India. They landed on the island of Diu, tidally separated from the Kathiawar peninsula in Gujarat, and stayed there until the dastūr divined that they must leave for another place. Then, full speed they sailed their boat to Gujarat, being buffeted by a storm, until God gave them succor in their difficulties and the boat arrived in safe port. ¹⁰ The narrative once more emphasizes the refugees’ adherence to their faith when confronted with the local Hindu raja’s ambivalence toward them as they disembarked in Sanjan.

The port of arrival, on the Varoli river in Gujarat, was apparently named after Sanjan in Khorasan (now southeastern Turkmenistan), which had been the putative city of asylum for the Iranian Zoroastrians. ¹¹ The decision to name their new home Sanjan was a geographical link to their past. Such identification is echoed in early European migrants’ penchant for naming their new locations in America after the hometowns or villages they had left behind. Recollection of the original Sanjan, near Merv, would have also called to mind the death of Yazdegerd III. According to the Qesse, that event had resulted in the ruin of the Zoroastrian homeland. ¹²

The term Parsi can be interpreted differently, according to the context of its usage. In some of the early references, such as in the early fourteenth century Sanskrit colophon to the Avestan codex K5, Parsi can refer to either geographic origin or genealogical descent (from Pars, or Persia), or to a specific religious community. Administrative documents from the late Delhi Sultanate and early Mughal period use Parsi in reference to the Zoroastrians living in the west of India. ¹³ This seems to be the understanding of the term in European accounts written in this early modern period, such as those by Henry Lord, chaplain to the English East India Company (EIC) in Surat from 1625 to 1629, and Wollebrandt Geleynssen (Geleijnsz) de Jongh, Factor (senior merchant) for the Dutch East India Company in Bharuch from 1625 to 1632. De Jongh refers to Parsis or Persians, preferring the latter, which presumably reflects the community’s own awareness of its geographical and cultural origins.

These two Europeans, living in coastal Gujarat in the early seventeenth century, were familiar with the Parsis as leading agent-brokers for their respective East India companies. Their reports show that both knew the basic narrative preserved in the Qesse-ye Sanjān, but were also familiar with extra details, probably derived from oral versions of the story that continued to circulate. Lord’s account includes the telling comment—which must reflect information provided by contemporary Parsis—that the original Parsi refugees obtained a fleet of seven ships to convey them and theirs as Merchantmen bound for the shoares of India, in course of Trade and Merchandize, and that they made it to the land of St. Johns [Sanjan]…at or neere the port of Swaley [Suvali], where they made a treaty with the local raja before being admitted onto land. ¹⁴ De Jongh’s Dutch report from a short time later has a similar perspective, noting that seven of the 15 ships landed in Cambaya (Khambhat, Gujarat) and eight in Sindgan (Sanjan), where the Parsis were granted leave to live, and gradually spread all over the land, but chiefly near the sea…occupying themselves with commerce and labour, each according to his state and abilities. ¹⁵

These European commentaries lend weight to the assertion that, for the Zoroastrians on board these nameless ships and those who followed a land route from Iran, departure for the sake of religion involved more than the preservation of a set of beliefs or rituals. Religion (Pers. din), in the context of the Qesse, refers to a way of life, the social and economic norms of which had been threatened. ¹⁶ The Zoroastrians who migrated would have held the vision of better prospects for economic survival and social standing in a new land—a vision that had been realized by the time the Dutch and English arrived. The Parsis encountered by these Europeans attributed their survival and success in Gujarat to the commercial and practical skills of their forebears who had arrived with a dastūr . This perspective promoted a close connection between status and religion.

Finds excavated at Sanjan indicate that its Iranian Zoroastrian settlers were probably familiar with the area due to commercial activity along an established sea trade route used in Sasanian times. Ceramics, including West Asian glazed wares and Chinese pottery, as well as coins, indigenous pots, and glassware—beads from West Asia and the Red Sea, and fragments of glass vessels from Mesopotamia—provide a tentative chronological date for the development of Sanjan into a thriving urban settlement with wide-ranging trading contacts to both east and west, from the eighth or ninth centuries to the thirteenth century CE. ¹⁷ These material goods, along with the discovery of a dakhma —a site of exposure of the dead—to the northeast of the port, dating to between the tenth and twelfth centuries CE, suggest that adherence to the Zoroastrian religion was an integral component of the community from the outset. ¹⁸ This combination of purpose—religious preservation and commercial enterprise—resonates with the experience of the early English migrants to America several centuries later. The difference was that the Parsis did not arrive en masse as colonizers. There is no hint in any account that the Parsis sought to acquire rule of the land from the predominantly Hindu population, nor to proselytize.

The Qesse’s depiction of the Parsis is as staunch preservers of their faith in its original, pure state, and reveals much about the late sixteenth to early seventeenth-century Parsi sense of identity and perceptions of religiosity. Its author, Bahman Kaikobad Sanjana, speaks of God (Persian, izad) as a refuge and protector, an everlasting guide, and problem-solver, and implores the deity to make his heart flourish with Good Religion. ¹⁹

Pilgrims and Puritans Arrive in the Massachusetts Bay

William Bradford’s firsthand account of the earliest Pilgrim arrival in Massachusetts uses rhetoric that often seems similar in tone and intention to the almost-contemporary Qesse-ye Sanjān. His history, Of Plimoth Plantation, was written largely between 1630 and 1646 during Bradford’s tenure as governor of the Plimoth (Plymouth) colony. The narrative begins with a description of the religious persecutions by antichristian courts and canons that drove Bradford and other Separatists to the Netherlands, then charts the travails of their time in Amsterdam then Leiden, their difficult weighty voyage across the Atlantic to Cape Cod, and, finally, to Plymouth Bay, and their attempts to establish a model colony there. ²⁰

The Separatists were one of several English nonconformist groups that took refuge in the northern, largely Calvinist, provinces of the Netherlands which were not under Spanish control and which permitted freedom of religion. So called because they wanted to separate from the Church of England, the Separatists denied the authority of that established Church —a position that was at odds with the Puritan view that the Church, although flawed, could be reformed. ²¹ Bradford was one of around 40 passengers from Leiden, who joined the Mayflower in Plymouth, England, when their sister ship the Speedwell proved unsafe to make the transatlantic voyage. It was he who coined the term Pilgrim for those Separatists who chose to leave the Netherlands for the New World. ²² Bradford was originally from Yorkshire, but his wife, Dorothy, who accompanied him to Leiden in 1608 and then to America, was from Cambridge in East Anglia. The region of East Anglia traditionally incorporated the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, and, more loosely, Cambridge and Essex. By the middle of the seventeenth century, almost 25% of emigrants to America were from those eastern counties, with the majority settling in the earliest successful colonies around Massachusetts Bay. ²³

The impetus for East Anglian nonconformists to emigrate had accelerated after the accession of Charles I to the throne in 1625 and his appointment of William Laud, first as Bishop of London (1628–1633), then as Archbishop of Canterbury (1633–1645). ²⁴ Laud spoke of the large, unruly diocese of Norwich in Norfolk as the throbbing heart of heresy in England, and chose Matthew Wren (Christopher Wren’s older brother) as his Bishop of Norwich (1635–1638). ²⁵ Wren antagonized nonconformists throughout the diocese in his attempts to implement Archbishop Laud’s instruction that altars must be returned to the east wall of each church and fenced with rails. Deprived of their livings for not following such regulations, dozens of clergymen migrated to America, often with many of their congregants. ²⁶ Added motivation to leave came when the Ecclesiastical Courts fined lay parishioners for refusing to pay tithes to support the very institution with which they were so unhappy. ²⁷ The large family of Edward Lincoln in Hingham, Norfolk, would have found it difficult to make ends meet, let alone pay a tithe, and at least three of his sons, Thomas, Daniel, and Samuel made their way across the Atlantic to southern New England in the 1630s. ²⁸ The youngest brother, Samuel, was a teenage apprentice weaver when he made the journey in 1637 with his Master, Frances Lawes, a Worsted Weaver and Freeman of Norwich. ²⁹ We assume that Samuel Lincoln lived in Salem with the family of Francis Lawes until he had finished his apprenticeship, and that he then established himself as a journeyman near to his brother Thomas in Hingham, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. ³⁰ Samuel was the great-great-great-great grandfather of Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States (1861–1865). ³¹

Embedding the Narratives in Cultural History

The respective early seventeenth century Parsi, Pilgrim and Puritan narratives of arrival, depict their protagonists as exemplifying a religious ethos that promoted the sound values and hard work required to make their adopted home prosperous and good.

According to the Qesse-ye Sanjān, after reassuring the local raja as to their intentions, the first religious act of the Parsis upon settlement in Sanjan was the ceremonial installment of a sacred fire , using ritual objects that they had brought with them: this fire was named Irān Shāh—the King of Iran. ³² Traditionally, the fire itself was said to have accompanied the original emigrants from Iran, although there is no mention of this in the text of the Qesse. ³³ The Parsi Zoroastrian installation and elevation of the fire as king could be considered to be the physical counterpart to John Winthrop’s Sermon on the Mount-inspired image of the establishment of the new Christian plantation community in Boston as a city upon a hill, the light of which is seen by all. ³⁴ Although the light of the Irān Shāh fire would have been visible only to Zoroastrians, their sense of communal purpose is enshrined within the apocryphal story—often appended to the Qesse narrative of the initial encounter with the raja—that, like sugar within a bowl of milk, they would sweeten their new land without any adverse effect. This trope is frequently referenced to highlight the beneficial impact that Zoroastrians offer to a receptive majority community.

The text of Qesse-ye Sanjān is preserved at the end of a collection of instructions in Persian from priests in Iran, in answer to questions from their coreligionists in India. These summaries of praxis (revāyats), composed between the last quarter of the fifteenth century and the late eighteenth century, make no mention of Sanjan, perhaps reflecting the demise of the city by that time. They present other Parsi communities in Gujarat as seeking guidance from religious authorities in their original Iranian homeland, particularly those in Yazd, while establishing their own religious institutions in India. ³⁵

The Qesse-ye Sanjān continued as a compelling founding story for Parsis even as they moved away from their initial place of settlement. Modi, writing over 300 years after the initial publication of the narrative, reiterates its significance to his coreligionists throughout that time:

All students of Parsee history know that …it was a band of some Zoroastrians, who, after a pretty long stay in the mountainous tracts of that country [Iran], finding their stay was made unbearably hot, emigrated to India via the sea-port town of Hormuz in Persia. We all know the result, that from the descendants of those hundreds of thousands, nay millions, who remained in Persia, there are only about 10,000 Parsees there at present, and that from the few thousands who came to the hospitable shores of India, we have, according to the last census of 1911, a flourishing population of about a hundred thousand in various parts of this country. ³⁶

In a similar vein, William Bradford had earlier extolled the impact of his own colony: as one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone unto many, yea in some sort to our whole nation. ³⁷

Bradford’s vision of the Pilgrim experiment, which shaped America’s concept of the Founding Fathers, is presented in an account that is replete with Biblical language and the author’s unwavering faith that God had called him and his fellow believers from [their] native place and guided them to the shores of America to enjoy the means of grace. ³⁸ His manuscript was taken from the library in Boston’s Old South Church by the British during the Revolutionary War and only rediscovered in 1855, in the Library of the Bishop of London at Fulham Palace. A handwritten copy was sent to Boston, where it was published in 1856. ³⁹ Within a decade, this account had been accepted as enshrining the foundational vision of America. ⁴⁰

Bradford’s hope that a new Jerusalem (a spiritual community on earth) would be established in the New World had not come to fruition, but one of the oldest buildings in Massachusetts to survive from that early period is a church. Constructed in 1681 as a meetinghouse for the congregation of the new Hingham, the Old Ship Church is the only surviving Puritan place of prayer in North America. ⁴¹ It is also the only genuine example of seventeenth-century English Gothic architecture in the United States. There are, however, many examples of the impact of East Anglian architecture, civic organization, and local folkways on the development of New England settlement patterns, which are marked by compact villages. ⁴²

Expansion and Commerce

Parsi Expansion in Gujarat

As noted earlier, it is probable that the migrating Zoroastrians chose the coast of Gujarat as a place to relocate because their Sasanian ancestors had established trading centers there. These entrepôts would have offered both commercial opportunity and a safe haven for those able to escape the limitations of their situation in Iran. The refugees would have arrived with their extended families, including servants, and established themselves as local craftsmen.

The settlement at Sanjan grew into a large port city, which became important in the spice trade of the early medieval period. Marco Polo did not, apparently, travel through Sanjan, but visited Khambhat further up the coast, and remarked: In this province of Gozurat there grows much pepper , and ginger, and indigo. ⁴³ The original city of Sanjan seems to have become defunct sometime in the thirteenth century, which may relate to the Qesse account of the dispersal of the Parsis from there after several centuries of repelling Muslim invaders, and a defeat at the hands of the troops of one Sultan Mahmud. ⁴⁴

By the time the Qesse-ye Sanjān was composed at the turn of the sixteenth century, there were well-established Parsi communities along the coast of Gujarat and further inland. One of these was at Bharuch, the Barygaza mentioned in the first century CE Greco-Roman text, Periplus of the Erithrean Sea as a predominant trading port. ⁴⁵ Bharuch is thought to have been settled by Parsis in the early tenth century, as attested by a fire temple on the banks of the Narmada River dating to around that time. An early brick dakhma at Bharuch is dated to the twelfth century, with a second dakhma constructed early in the fourteenth century. ⁴⁶ When European colonizers arrived in numbers in the early seventeenth century, the Parsis of Bharuch were engaged in building ships and participating in the spice and textile trades. ⁴⁷ Although by then Surat had superseded Bharuch in status, Parsi brokers were active in both ports, negotiating between European traders, including the English EIC, and the Mughal court, for goods produced throughout the Indian subcontinent, particularly textiles. ⁴⁸ Surat’s importance grew as commerce developed between the Mughals, the Safavids in Iran, and the Ottoman Turks. ⁴⁹

There are several records of a Mughal emperor issuing a jāgīr, or land grant, to a member of the Parsi community in Gujarat: such practice has echoes in the English colonial land patents along the northeastern seaboard of North America that were supported by a royal charter. The Meherji Rana Library, named after a late sixteenth century dastūr who lived in Surat, holds in its archives a versified Persian biography entitled the Māhyārnāma, which was composed in 1825 by one of the descendants of Dastur Meherji Rana (c.1514–1591). This manuscript, MS F-81, claims that, in 1578, the dastūr was selected by the Mughal governor of Surat to attend the court of the Emperor Akbar, where, as a priestly representative of the Zoroastrians, he took part in interreligious debates. Not only did Meherji Rana impress the emperor with his erudition and upright character, but he is said to have foiled the sorcery of a Hindu tantrik (holy man). Akbar subsequently awarded a land grant to Meherji Rana consisting of about eight acres of property near modern Navsari. ⁵⁰ Navsari was a region particularly amenable to growing both cash and subsistence crops, including the palmyra palm (Borassus flabellifer), which the Parsis tapped for toddy, to make alcohol of the same name. ⁵¹

By the late 1630s, Parsis were moving from villages to the port of Surat, as well as to smaller ports and market towns in Gujarat. Parsi settlements grew inland, along the caravan route that led from Surat toward Burhanpur, the capital of Khandesh, one of the most important Mughal provinces. Europeans in Gujarat at that time remarked on the fact that the Parsis included craftsmen of all trades. Geleynssen de Jongh noted, however, that they live according to their religion, which allowed them to make, sell and drink toddy, but which restricted them in terms of working as smiths because of the prohibition on extinguishing fire with water. ⁵² Such Parsi religious stipulations, which also included the practices of endogamy (marriage within the group), served to forge a strong sense of community, while their pragmatic adaptation to a new societal situation (as documented in the Qesse-ye Sanjān) enabled them to survive as a minority group in India. Since the Parsis were not bound to any particular profession, they were able to develop and consolidate the occupational expertise needed to flourish within a commercially competitive environment.

British Colonial Expansion

The late sixteenth to early seventeenth centuries brought Europeans—the Portuguese, Dutch, English and French—to the shores of both the Indian subcontinent and the Americas. ⁵³ The following 150 years, to the last quarter of the eighteenth century, were marked by significant navigational discoveries and technological advances, by political and industrial revolutions, and by scientific and ideological challenges to accepted religious tradition throughout Europe, which then impacted the European colonies. During this time of material and social change, although individual Parsis worked with competing European companies, their economic alliance favored the British, which gave them an advantage as the latter rose to power in the region. ⁵⁴ It is within the framework of British colonial expansion in India that the earliest real life encounters between Parsis and Yankees took place.

Before that occurred, some of the goods that arrived in Britain from both the English and Dutch East Indies trade, particularly spices and textiles, were being shipped to the American colonies along the eastern Atlantic seaboard. One of the earliest settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the Rev. Francis Higginson, who arrived with most of his congregation in June 1629, published a list of provisions for future immigrants that included pepper , cloves , mace, cinnamon and nutmegs. ⁵⁵

The relationship that developed between America and India in the seventeenth century has been described as that of odd step-siblings, brought together by the colonial ambitions of Great Britain, beginning in the 1630s, when the Massachusetts Bay Company settled Boston under royal charter, and the English EIC founded Madras as a trading port. ⁵⁶ In fact, the stories of the two children of another mother (or father) start to coincide a few years earlier, beginning in 1608, when the EIC ship, the Hector, commanded by William Hawkins, was the first Company vessel to moor at Surat. ⁵⁷ This was the same year that the Separatists left Britain for the Netherlands.

By 1613, following the defeat of the Portuguese in the naval battle of Suvali the previous year, the EIC had established a permanent factory, or trading post, in Surat. From Surat, the fine white cotton of Gujarat called serribaf or shirinbaf (Pers., sweet wool), often skillfully painted with patterns, known in Portuguese as pintado, was transported to the wider world. ⁵⁸ Although only a couple of Company merchants were stationed in Surat as Factors in 1614, they planned to invest over £2800 to purchase around 12,500 pieces of these calicoes. ⁵⁹ The establishment of the EIC factory stimulated production of cotton in the region. By 1630 the number of pieces purchased by the British from local dealers (generically referred to as banias by the Europeans), had increased a hundredfold. ⁶⁰ Following the impetus of the Portuguese, cotton from Gujarat formed a sizeable segment of goods brought from India by EIC ships to East Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. ⁶¹ The influx of Indian textiles, supplying a demand for cheap, washable fabrics for clothing and furnishings , was increasing just as the nonconformist clothiers were leaving England. So began a long-lasting political debate concerning the importation of cotton from India to Britain. ⁶²

The commercial potential relating to the rich trade of the East, in particular of the northwestern Indian coastline, is the focus of a pamphlet, written by an early EIC merchant mariner and printed in London around 1641. The author’s true narration of divers ports in East-India encompasses the Indian subcontinent, the Indochinese peninsula and the Malay archipelago. ⁶³ After summarizing the growth of European engagement in the East India trade, first under the Moores of Cambaya, then the great Mogull’s dominion, the author discusses the various ports along the Gujarati coast to about sixty miles south of Bombay:

Whereas Suratte and the Countries adjacent may very well afford trade for the investment of all the stocke of England;… Cambaya alone is a place of farre greater Trade than by all our Shipping could be managed; and hath sometimes a hundred Frigats in a Cassila or Fleet, from Goa and other places upon the Coast of India, bound to that Port. Sindu [a port on the Indus], Diu, Goga [Ghogha], Damon, Baçaim [Vasai] and Chaul are Ports of great Trade to all ports of India: so that it may confidently be believed that the Moguls Country may afford sufficient employment for all the shipping of ENGLAND. ⁶⁴

Later seventeenth-century European accounts highlight the centrality of the textile trade for Parsis in Gujarat, who had honed their skills in cotton farming, spinning, weaving, and dying to meet the increased demand. John Ovington, an EIC chaplain who spent three years in Surat from 1689, noted the craftsmanship of its Parsi weavers : They are the principal Men at the Loom in all the Country, and most of the Silks and Stuffs at Suratt, are made by their Hands. ⁶⁵ By then, Surat was the metropolitan market of three small weaving towns within a distance radius of 20 miles—Bardoli, Navsari and Gandevi—but the port was also supplied from urban textile centers, such as Anklesvar, Bharuch, Baroda and Ahmedabad, located along the trade road to the north leading toward Delhi and Agra.

Local Gujarati contractors working with the Europeans developed commercial relationships with the farmers and weavers who lived and worked inland from the coast where the factories were established. They fulfilled orders placed in advance by the foreign Factors, listing the price, designs, type and quality of cloth, then delivered the goods to them at the agreed date. ⁶⁶ The Indian agents advanced cash to intermediaries, who would travel around the villages, making contracts with individual weavers for the finished product. ⁶⁷ This system continued until the early nineteenth century, well after the international port for cotton export had moved from Surat to Bombay , which the EIC had acquired from Charles II in 1668. Although English factories were established in Bengal, beginning in 1633, culminating with the establishment of a factory in Calcutta in 1690, the ports of Gujarat, particularly Surat, remained important centers of commerce for European trading companies until the mid-eighteenth century.

Parsi Migration to Bombay

When Gerald Aungier (1640–1677) became both the President of the English factory at Surat, and the second Governor of Bombay in 1669, he introduced a scheme of planned migration to the city, which by God’s assistance is intended to be built. ⁶⁸ Aungier’s plan for Bombay was a contemporary echo of John Winthrop’s pursuit of a similarly divinely mandated experiment in Boston: both were underpinned by the (then) Protestant Christian British monarchy and government. The movement from Gujarat to Bombay of artisans and craftsmen—particularly those engaged in the shipbuilding and textile industries—encouraged by financial contracts, land allotments or housing, and freedom of religion, reiterates many of the elements of the simultaneous Puritan migrations to New England. Records indicate that by 1673, the different ethno-religious communities in the emergent city of Bombay were sizable enough for discussion of the formation of a panchayat, a local council of five representatives, for each group. The numerous Hindu communities and the Parsis are thought not to have formed such an organization in the city until at least 50 years later. ⁶⁹

The British military defeat of a French-supported local insurgency in 1757 at Plassey (Palashi), Bengal, furthered its control of the region. The victory vastly weakened the commercial power of the French and Dutch in India, at the same time that the EIC was developing Bombay through land reclamation into the primary regional port in the west of the country. This expansion stimulated a thriving internal trade in the subcontinent. Surat remained competitive, despite the efforts of the EIC to transfer the technical expertise and commerce associated with the Gujarati ports to Bombay. In the early eighteenth century, Alexander Hamilton, a Scottish sea captain, who had been a private trader in Surat, before taking control of the Bombay Marine, noted that the numerous Parsis of Surat and its adjacent regions were good Carpenters or Ship builders… They work well in Ivory and Agate and are excellent Cabinet makers. ⁷⁰ This reiterates John Ovington’s earlier remark that the ship carpenters of Suratt could take the model of any English vessel, in all the Curiosity of its Building… as exactly as if they had been the first Contrivers. ⁷¹

One Parsi from Surat who had such skill in making ships according to a European model, was Lowji Nusserwanji (1702–1774). Lowji was contracted by the Government of the Bombay Presidency as the construction foreman on a ship to be built in the Surat shipyard. His work impressed Mr. Dudley, the British Master-Attendant who managed the EIC ships. ⁷² In 1735, Lowji obtained release from his obligations to the Parsi master builder in Surat, named Dhunjibhoy, and moved to Bombay with a team of Parsi shipwrights, under commission to establish a working dockyard there. ⁷³ The following year, he was sent back to Gujarat to set up a supply of timber for the ships, and returned with his whole family to settle in Bombay. Lowji and his successors were known by the professional descriptor "vadia, meaning shipbuilder" in Gujarati, which became the family surname Wadia. ⁷⁴

The Parsi population of Bombay at this time included 46 other individuals, predominantly descendants of Rustom Maneck (1635–1721), who had been a banker and guarantee broker to Dutch, Portuguese, and English trading companies in Surat, particularly in the conveyance of broadcloth from Gujarat to Bengal. ⁷⁵ Rustom Maneck is attributed the title of Seth or Sett, a Hindi word meaning chief, which came to refer to a wealthy merchant, and, by association an urban notable. ⁷⁶ Seths (also knows as Shetias) were from all communities, not just Parsi. The Rustomji Sett family had established itself in Bombay in the 1720s as the chief agents for the EIC, which relied on indigenous credit sources. Also in the burgeoning port city were farmers and petty traders selling food, tobacco and toddy. ⁷⁷ Weavers were also encouraged by the EIC to move from Surat to Bombay, largely in an attempt to bypass Indian middlemen in the sale and distribution of woven goods, and so oversee the process more closely. ⁷⁸ In 1672, a Parsi named Manna (Manackji) was the chief weaver in Bombay. ⁷⁹ 60 years later, in 1737, a Parsi community leader (davar) in Surat named Boman Patel recruited 48 Parsi weavers to move to Bombay with their families. He negotiated a good monthly wage for the weavers, free house rentals for a year, an agreed price for each piece of woven cloth, and a salary of 500 rupees per annum for himself. ⁸⁰

Parsi cotton contractors for the EIC, including Nasserwanjee Bomanjee and Muncherjee Bomanjee of Bombay and Edulljee Cowjee, broker at Cambay continued to supply yarn from Surat and other Gujarati production centers, some to be woven in Bombay, and some as piece goods from Surat, Bharuch and other Gujarat towns, delivered directly to the EIC Factory in Surat. A letter from Bombay on March 15, 1755, notes that the preference of the EIC is to make an agreement with the Bomanjees rather than the current contractor, Mahomed Jafferbhoy, since the former have made good investment, and they have a great number of weavers at present employed. ⁸¹ This foresight meant that the Parsi suppliers were in advance by six weeks to two months of any other merchant in procuring the goods for the next year’s Dispatch. ⁸² For both Parsi weavers and brokers, migration to Bombay