THE DUTCH EAST INDIA COMPANY ON THE COROMANDEL COAST, 1740-1780: A STUDY OF
ITS DECLINE

By Bhaswati Bhattacharya

The proposed research plan is a continuation of my PhD thesis in the light of
which the text of the thesis will be expanded and re-edited. Two problems that
have already been dealt with in the thesis, will be investigated in more
detail.
If there was an overall decline of trade in Coromandel in the 18th century.
Though it seems that the total volume of textile trade declined during the
period covered in the work, it would be wrong to say that all trade and
commerce came to a standstill. Some branches of the trade were hit, but some
other branches continued. "The Board's Collections" (Board of Revenue Series,
IOLR, London), for instance, contain detailed reports on the condition of
trade in the Northern Circars. A study of these records, which is a part of
the research-plan, will throw more light on the condition of trade in the
region.
Decline of indigenous ship-owning merchants. No doubt there was a decline in
this regard, but there were some pockets where indigenous merchants continued
to trade. The trade of Chulia Muslim merchants of Coromandel to ports in
Southeast Asia can be mentioned as example. Though it has been possible to
show that the Chulias continued to trade to ports in the Malayo-Indonesian
waters, our knowledge about their relationship with the growing network of
British private trade is almost nil. Understanding of this problem is
necessary in order to provide the missing link in the history of the Indian
Ocean trade. For this purpose, the research-plan also includes a study of the
"Straits Settlement Records" and the "Sumatra Factory Records" at the IOLR,
London.
Finally, for data on the trade of the Dutch East India Company on the coast,
the thesis has depended mostly on the "Overgekomen Brieven en Papieren" from
Coromandel, the reports of the "Boekhouder-Generaal te Batavia", and the
records of the "Hoge Regering te Batavia". There are some gaps in the
information gathered for the thesis in relation to the import of gold and
silver by the Dutch East India Company to the coast. The present plan intends
to fill these gaps by checking those figures and at the same time to see some
new material on the trade in the Bay of Bengal in general.

B. Bhattacharya (1958) studied Modern History at the Visva Bharat University
in Santiniketan were she received her M.A. in 1982. From 1985 to 1987 she
collected material in the Dutch State Archives in The Hague in the framework
of a Netherlands Government Reciprocal Fellowship. From 1987 to 1989 she
worked on a bibliography of the Indian Ocean, a projevct of the Indian Council
of Historical Research. In 1992 she obtained her PhD for a thesis entitled:
'The Dutch East India Company on the Coromandel Coast 1740-1780: a story of
its decline', from the Visva Bharat University.