From Clyde to Calcutta: How Scottish merchants forced open the gates of India's trade (From the Archives)

Santosh Kumar Verma

New Delhi, Dec 14 (IANS) The Scottish mercantile class, gathered in the bustling chambers of Glasgow and the ports of Greenock in 1812, was not merely asking for a larger share of global commerce; they were demanding a radical reordering of the British Empire's financial hierarchy. Their enemy was not a foreign power, but a fellow British institution: the United Company of Merchants of England Trading to the East Indies—the East India Company (EIC).

Yet, for the millions of Indian subjects who furnished the revenues that made this entire debate possible, this Scottish cry for "free trade" was the ultimate colonial cynicism. It was a struggle between two powerful segments of the British ruling class over who got to profit from the systematic exploitation of Hindustan, transforming the subcontinent's misery into metropolitan economic salvation. The Scottish merchants demanded freedom, citing fundamental rights and national necessity; the Indian people, whose very lives sustained the £26 million debt burdening the EIC, were denied even the right to discuss their own fate under a "perfectly fettered" press.

This is the story of the petitions of Glasgow and Greenock, a powerful articulation of British self-interest dressed in the rhetoric of universal commercial liberty, and what that fight revealed about the "despotism" that truly governed India.

I. The Crisis of Commerce: Seeking Salvation in the East

The backdrop to the Scottish demands was widespread commercial catastrophe engulfing Britain. The year 1812 marked a nadir for British manufacturers and traders. Napoleon Bonaparte, the "inveterate enemy", had tightened his anti-commercial system across Europe, closing off massive continental markets. This, compounded by an "unfortunate misunderstanding with the United States of America", left manufacturers in distress, factories idle, and working families sinking into poverty and unemployment.

The city of Glasgow, a burgeoning industrial powerhouse, felt this pain acutely. The directors of its Chamber of Commerce and Manufacturers, along with the city council and Merchants House, began submitting petitions with increasing urgency. Their plea was simple: the expiring EIC Charter, which granted the EIC the "whole sole and exclusive trade" eastward of the Cape of Good Hope, was an anachronism that needed to be terminated immediately.

The expiration of the Charter, they argued, presented a providential opportunity. The vast, populous regions of the East, secured by British military might, offered a desperately needed "vital substitute for lost European commerce". The merchants of Glasgow and Greenock insisted that opening the trade would "afford an extensive field for the employment of mercantile talents and capital beyond the tyrannical grasp of the enemy". They saw the East not just as a financial lifeline, but as a strategic weapon to counteract France's commercial warfare.

The prosperity of the nation, they declared, depended on seizing this chance to ensure "full employment to the operative classes of the community", thereby strengthening and securing the "vital interests" of the British empire.

II. The Unjust Arrangement: Foreigners Over Fellow Subjects

The cornerstone of the Scottish argument, a grievance repeated endlessly across every petition from Glasgow, Greenock, Paisley, and the Convention of Royal Burghs in Scotland, was the profound injustice of the monopoly itself: British subjects were denied a right that was freely granted to foreigners.

The petitions frequently cited the Act of 37 Geo. 3, c. 57, which, while restricting British merchants, permitted "foreign nations in amity with his Majesty" to trade in the very territories claimed by the EIC.

The Glasgow merchants pointed directly to the success of American traders:

"The merchants of the United States of America, availing themselves of the liberty which they have been allowed to enjoy, at the expense of our own people, have prosecuted the East India trade in a manner and to a degree which has enriched the individuals, increased the national wealth of that country, and supplied... not only the continent of Europe, but South America, the West Indies... and even Malta, with East Indian commodities".

The successful American private trade was offered as incontrovertible "proof that these expectations of advantage, from the exertions of private individuals, are not unfounded". American merchants were shown to have "carried away a great part of the China trade formerly enjoyed by the East India Company, and have been able to undersell them in many of the European markets".

For Scottish merchants, this arrangement was a "hardship, bordering on injustice". They felt it was "unnatural and extremely hard, if not an unjust arrangement" that the "India trade is open to all the world except the British merchant, the monopoly thereby operating directly in favour of foreign nations". It was "degrading to the national character, and humiliating to individuals".

The irony inherent in this exclusion was massive: British subjects were "burdened, to a certain degree, with the expense of the naval and military establishments for defending those possessions, while they are deprived of that free commercial intercourse which is enjoyed by foreigners". They were paying the military costs of empire while watching foreigners reap the economic rewards. They appealed to the House to protect their "birth-right" to free commerce.

III. The Impolitic Policy: Inefficiency and Insolvency

The Scottish critique went beyond injustice; it targeted the EIC’s demonstrated incompetence, arguing that the monopoly was "impolitic". Merchants asserted that commerce confined under a monopoly "never can prove beneficial to a country in the degree that the same trade would, if left open to the exertion of individual enterprise".

The petitions argued that the EIC was an incapable trading entity:

- Inadequate Capital: Glasgow merchants noted "strong reason to believe that the capital of the East India Company is not adequate to the trade".

- Prodigality vs. Economy: The American success demonstrated that private traders succeeded through "industry, economy, and dispatch," while the EIC was characterised by "prodigality and negligence of a joint stock company".

- Failure to Exploit Markets: The EIC had "never traded" to many of the extensive countries comprehended under its exclusive charter, a task its limited capital could not permit.

Behind these complaints of inefficiency lay the financial devastation revealed in Parliament. The EIC’s inability to trade profitably stemmed from its massive territorial debt. The Company, which was criticised as being possibly "15 millions worse than nothing", had seen its trade profits (over £6 million since 1793) "absorbed by debts and expenses incurred in respect of the territorial acquisitions in India".

The EIC's financial obligations depended "most essentially upon the trade". Yet, critics charged that the Company was a "constant burden and grievance to the nation". The Scottish argument—that open trade would augment national wealth and revenue—was effectively a promise to manage the Indian financial complex better than the bankrupt EIC could.

IV. The Ultimate Irony: Freedom for the Exploiter

From the Indian perspective, the passionate Scottish call for free trade was merely a sophisticated demand for expanded, decentralised exploitation. They sought to open "new markets" for British manufactures by forcing them upon India's "immense and populous" regions.

This commercial goal stood in direct continuity with the established colonial economic model:

1. Systematic De-industrialisation: The British Empire was already engaged in a "systematically engineered process of colonial underdevelopment". Protectionist policies, including high tariffs in Britain, restricted Indian textiles, while the EIC "forced open the large Indian market to British goods". The Scottish desire for "new and extensive markets" was a request to accelerate this process, ensuring that Scottish manufacturing could permanently replace India’s indigenous industries.

2. The Denial of Native Rights: While Glasgow merchants pleaded for their "natural right" and "birthright" to free trade, the Indian population, whose taxes funded the whole system, were denied fundamental rights and justice. The system of governance was one of "ruler and ruled"—a despotism where free discussion was avoided because the government was "founded upon blood and supported by injustice".

3. Prioritising London Over India: The Scottish protests unintentionally illuminated the EIC's neglect of Indian welfare. For example, while the merchants of Port Glasgow lamented the "present pressure upon the trade" in Europe, Indian creditors of the Rajah of Tanjore had been waiting "for over 14 years" to be paid legitimate claims by the EIC, having been reduced from affluence to "the greatest distress".

4. Suppression of Indian Industry: Even when native industry offered a competitive advantage, British interests intervened. London ship-owners vehemently opposed the use of India-built ships. This was openly framed as an act of "injustice and oppression" that denied India the "reward of his industry, and support of his family," and forced the Indian to watch their trade "conveyed under every flag, but that of their natural and legitimate protector".

In essence, the Glasgow petitions argued that they, as British subjects, deserved the right to exploit India more efficiently than the monopolistic EIC.

V. The Fear of Unrestrained Europeans

The EIC, in its defence against the petitioners, articulated the profound political risk posed by the very "free trade" demanded by the Scottish mercantile class. The EIC, though rapacious, operated under a centralised authority that could manage the interaction between British subjects and the native population.

The Company warned that India’s "tranquillity is not maintained by a physical force, but chiefly by moral influence, and in a great degree even by prejudice". Any change would "alarm them, and their submission to British authority would be greatly endangered by an unrestrained resort of Europeans in search of wealth, either by commerce or other means". The EIC feared that thousands of new, aggressive European private merchants, free from the Company’s direct control, would destabilise the delicate imperial balance.

The need to control information was paramount; the press was "perfectly fettered", justified by concerns that unrestrained publication would "inform (natives) of the peculiar tenure by which the British government held their power". The EIC feared that new settlers might encourage native plots for "exterminating the whole European population of Bengal".

The Scottish merchants, in demanding the right to penetrate India’s vast markets from "every port of the United Kingdom", were demanding the right to destabilise the very political order that guaranteed their access. They were so blinded by the financial necessity of finding new markets to counter the French system that they discounted the political risk of provoking a native reaction against an oppressive colonial regime.

Conclusion: The New Mortgage on Indian Soil

The flood of petitions from Scottish mercantile hubs like Greenock and Glasgow in 1812 was a defining moment in the history of the British Empire. Their demands, founded on the "common birthright of all his Majesty's subjects" and the perceived necessity of combating the "tyrannical policy" of France, ultimately prevailed. The 1813 Charter Act effectively dismantled the EIC’s commercial monopoly over India (though reserving the China trade), opening the gates to private traders from the outports like Glasgow and Liverpool.

This victory for "free trade" in Britain was a deepening of colonial servitude for India. The Scottish petitioners explicitly stated their disinterest in India’s political fate, "disclaiming all interference with territorial rights and political privileges of the company". They sought only the right to unleash their capital, skill, and industry onto the immense, populous regions of the East.

The result was the formalisation of the Drain of Wealth under a new, broader set of financial actors. The Indian economy, already crippled by debt and de-industrialisation, was now exposed to a flood of inexpensive British manufactures and the rapacious energy of countless competing private merchants, all seeking to extract maximum value from the subject territories that had been reduced to a mere financial asset.

The freedom won by the merchants of Glasgow was purchased not with British capital, but with the Indian peasant's ceaseless labour. The debate proved that the imperial system operated like a perpetually leveraged corporation: when the existing management (the EIC) proved too inefficient to maximise shareholder return (British national welfare), a new management (private traders) was installed, guaranteeing the continuance of the mortgage on India's soil and sovereignty.

(The author is a researcher specialising in Indian History and Contemporary Geopolitical Affairs)

--IANS

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