A Resume

Abstract

In the early years of the seventeenth century, the Dutch came to the Coromandel coast in quest of cloth, a necessary medium for the purchase of spices in the East Indies. Within a decade, this side line of the Company’s trade became sufficiently important to warrant the creation of a separate ‘government’ for the coast. The importance of the Coromandel factories increased as the policy of making the Asian trade pay for itself found acceptance in Batavia and Holland. If Dutch trade in the East was to be supported chiefly by its own profits with the least possible assistance from Europe, Coromandel cloth, a commodity universally in demand throughout Asia, would naturally feature more and more prominently in the pattern of the Company’s commerce. During the period of Coen’s governor-generalship, fresh demands, — for slaves and victuals, — were made on the coast to support the new policy of colonisation, and, for a while, the demand for coast cloth was reduced in theory to a position of comparative unimportance. But the earlier pattern, with its emphasis on cloth, soon reasserted itself.