In 1614, Thomas Mitford wrote to Sir Thomas Smith, the first governor of the English East India Company, that “the Percian [Persian] country is so cold that for six months in the year they wear [woolen] cloth; and also there is divers commodities of India [that] will give great profit there.”Footnote 1 At the time, Mitford was embarked on an exploratory mission to Safavid Iran to observe the state of commercial affairs and the potential for English trade there. For over a century, Europeans had established a direct link to the Far East, but until the seventeenth century the Portuguese had a monopoly on European trade in the Indian Ocean. In the sixteenth century, the English Muscovy Company attempted to bypass the Levant trade and gain direct access into Iran via the Volga River, but the renewal of the Ottoman–Safavid conflict in the 1580s ended the short-lived venture.Footnote 2 By the turn of the century, however, the English (1601) and Dutch East India (1602) companies broke the monopoly and ventured into the India Ocean to challenge the Portuguese. Mediterranean trade routes remained commercially vibrant and important for the English Levant Company, but a significant shift to the Indian Ocean, and likewise the Persian Gulf, created new commercial opportunities for English and Dutch merchants who pursued opportunities for direct trade with the East. Expensive spices, such as pepper, enticed the English and Dutch companies to venture around the cape route and into the Indian Ocean.Footnote 3
In 1601, the English East India Company sent its inaugural voyage to the East Indies towards the Indonesian Archipelago (Spice Islands). The Company’s directors focused their resources on the Spice Islands, where they expected to overthrow the Portuguese monopoly over the spice trade while competing with the Dutch for control. Shortly after the inaugural voyage departed London, the English discovered that Asia’s wealth was not limited to exquisite spices and thus revealed a new opportunity. In 1601, Sir James Lancaster intercepted a straggling Portuguese vessel laden with luxurious Indian cloth. The merchants in Lancaster’s fleet agreed that an opportunity to distribute some of the Company’s resources in western India could be lucrative.Footnote 4 In 1607, a local ruler in Pariaman refused to offer “letters for our proceedings” unless the English agreed to ship calicoes from western India.Footnote 5 The Company decided to proceed with seeking places to establish trade on the western coast of India at Surat in 1608. Its venture in India, however, started slowly and forced the English merchants to entertain alternative outlets for their goods. Safavid Iran offered them such an opportunity: “this present quantity of cloth which neither will vent in this place [India], to the southward [Bantam, etc.], nor to our knowledge elsewhere, makes us embolden on this hopeful trade with so much the more resolution.”Footnote 6
The outbreak of the Ottoman–Safavid Wars and Celali rebellions early in Shah Abbas I’s reign (1585–1603) disrupted trade routes from Iran, and in response the Safavids moved silk into Europe through the Tabriz–Izmir route instead of the traditional Aleppo route.Footnote 7 Much of the silk departed Iran in Armenian caravans for the Mediterranean. Fariba Zarinebaf wrote that Armenian merchants gained a monopoly over the silk trade due to the “abuses of the shi’i merchants” and their captivity throughout the Ottoman–Safavid wars.Footnote 8 As middlemen, they dominated the caravan routes from as early as the thirteenth century. By the seventeenth century Armenian merchants emerged as the single most important group in the silk trade, which also involved fulfilling an important role as interpreters for the English merchants in Iran.Footnote 9 While the Armenians were well established in the east–west route, there was potential to shift some of the silk trade into the hands of western European merchants while the border continued to pose a danger to merchant caravans. In a paper from 1973, Roger Ferrier cautioned that the English, as well as the Portuguese and Dutch, were not interested in seizing the entire silk trade, mostly because the English and Dutch traders had established extensive commercial interests in the Ottoman Empire and were unwilling to interfere with Safavid–Ottoman disputes.Footnote 10 Ferrier’s view was that the Dutch and English had modest goals for the silk trade and were not motivated to encroach upon their Levantine colleagues’ business, many of whom were directors in the East India Company.Footnote 11
The tenuous conditions along the Ottoman–Safavid border opened the door for European diplomats and merchants to persuade Shah Abbas to ship a portion of his silk by alternative routes. The Sherley brothers, Anthony and Robert, hoped to take advantage of the interruption to the traditional silk road and move Safavid silk into Spanish hands.Footnote 12 In return Sherley assured Shah Abbas that the Spanish would set a blockade in the Red Sea to frustrate the Ottoman forces in the region, but the Safavid–Ottoman peace in 1612 ended Sherley’s immediate plans.Footnote 13 While the Sherley brothers anticipated the Safavid–Spanish strategy to move forward, King James I’s son, Prince Charles, commanded Henry Thyme to travel to Iran in 1613 to negotiate trade with the Safavids for rugs, silk, and other goods.Footnote 14 Isfahan, it seemed, was not short of suitors for Safavid silk. Word eventually reached the English in Surat that an opportunity had opened in Iran to expand their trade. Hoping to reverse their lack of fortune in India, where they remained committed, the Company leaders in Surat welcomed Robert Sherley’s enthusiasm to enter the Iranian silk trade as a promising alternative. Sherley’s attempt to persuade the Company to allocate a portion of their resources to Iran did not resonate well with some English contemporaries, such as Sir Thomas Roe, who thought the brothers were possibly unreliable due to their staunch Catholic leanings and open ties to Spain.Footnote 15 Sherley was convinced that the Company could acquire a considerable share of the silk trade in exchange for English cloth and other cargo and redirect the flow of Safavid silk through Iran’s southern ports; and from those ports to London where English merchants could import it directly into Europe.Footnote 16 But Sherley’s strategy was exceedingly optimistic, primarily because, as one historian has argued, the Persian Gulf was little more than a trading backwater.Footnote 17 Had the circumstances improved in India, the English merchants might have dismissed Sherley, especially under Sir Thomas Roe’s direction, but the Company was in a difficult position and desperately needed an outlet. Its experience in India had been nothing short of sobering, and in 1616 Thomas Kerridge equipped the Company’s first voyage from Surat to the Persian Gulf.
The history of the Company in the Persian Gulf began in 1616; however, it has not received much attention from historians of the English East India Company. The English experience in Safavid Iran through the early seventeenth century is mostly unexplored and the Company’s effort to enter the silk trade in Iran is often simplified. Ben Coates commented that the English attempt to seize the silk trade was a calculated response to the Company’s failure in the Spice Islands. This view misses the English struggle in India and instead focuses on the Dutch aggression in the Spice Islands.Footnote 18 On the other hand, Ferrier remarked that the Company reallocated its resources after poor cloth sales in Surat forced it to move to Iran, from which he ascribed five key phases to the English trade in Iran. The first phase is central to this paper—Ferrier’s second phase began with the outbreak of the Anglo-Dutch Wars in 1652, which is outside the scope of this paper—whereas the first phase, according to Ferrier, was defined by a combined effort from the Portuguese and Spanish to oppose the English.Footnote 19 He noted the vital role the English navy played in securing the silk trade, but this is as far as Ferrier takes it before directing his attention to the Armenian traders and the Company’s lack of dispensable wealth in precious metals and spices. Moreover, Ferrier’s demarcation of the period is problematic, suggesting that the first phase started around 1617 and lasted until 1637, it does not account for the transition in Anglo-Portuguese relations that began to develop as early as 1633.Footnote 20 It also does not consider how the English factory, or merchant community, in Iran had a significant influence in its own downfall.Footnote 21
Historians interested in economic history have acknowledged the lucrative potential of Iranian silk to boost the Company’s trade, but they have not explored the social history of the English factory in Safavid Iran. The narrative as a consequence is limited to describing how Iran and Iranian silk functioned within the Company’s inter-port trade.Footnote 22 The ports in Safavid Iran were among many ports in an expanding network of interconnected English factories that saw a steady stream of goods from other regions brought into Iran in exchange for silk and other commodities.Footnote 23 English factories were essentially living quarters with an adjoining warehouse in which English merchants, surgeons, notaries, ministers, and other skilled craftsmen resided. In Safavid Iran, the English factory system primarily consisted of a house in Gombroon and in Isfahan, although they inhabited a house in Shiraz “too soaked and falling downe” and of little importance.Footnote 24 Historians have explained the failure of the Company in Iran in commercial terms, with little attention given to the non-commercial interactions that played an equal, or greater, role in the Company’s demise in Iran. The perspective yields important data to describe various financial aspects of English trade, but a closer look at the community of Englishmen in Iran reveals a complex environment where English merchants were involved in local politics and society which impacted the Company’s trade in silk.
This paper will shed light on the English Company’s participation in Safavid international politics, both directly and indirectly, in its effort to open trade in Iran, and it will argue that its failure to thrive in Iran was in part a consequence of local and state politics combined with environmental difficulties. The case of Iran is an important example of the Company’s dependency on the ruling elite for trade, and how the failure to facilitate and nurture lasting relations could, and did, lead to the collapse of mercantile relations. This is a critical point for understanding the Company’s willingness to temporarily use its shipping as vehicles of war in lieu of trade, but it is equally important to understanding the Company’s downfall in Safavid Iran. Historians of the English East India Company have previously emphasized its broad economic trends and commercial activity, but this paper will begin to show that the English traders were involved in much more than the exchange of commodities; they participated in local society, established their own form of internal governance, and at times their navy satisfied a specific military and civil role.Footnote 25 Few Englishmen in the Company’s service resided in Iran compared to India, and the merchant community typically consisted of the chief of trade—typically selected in Surat during a consultation between the president of trade and his councilors—three or four subordinate merchants, a minister, a surgeon, and perhaps a few men from the fleet to assist at the warehouse in Gombroon. It was, at best, an underwhelming English merchant population. Yet they were entangled, both directly and indirectly, in local and state struggles, which constantly threatened the Company’s mercantile activity in the Indian Ocean (most notably in India). In Iran, the primary concern was the Portuguese intrusion into the Persian Gulf, but political upheaval in the 1620s created unique scenarios in both Safavid Iran and Mughal India. By looking at the social features of the English merchant community in Iran—a ground zero approach of sorts—we can begin to present a wider narrative of the Company’s trade in the Indian Ocean throughout the early period.
The sources for this paper are entirely from English archives and are mostly drawn from the extensive collection of the English East India Company’s papers found in the India Office Records (IOR) collection. I have used only those letters (correspondence), court minutes, and state papers relating to Iran, although I have also included the correspondence from Surat that is relevant to the traders in Iran. I have only used European sources where English editions exist due to the painstaking labor of contemporary English printers who translated, printed, and circulated various travelogues in London.Footnote 26 The historical record for the Company’s branch in Iran is unreliable at times. Some of the Company’s actions, or those of its agents, are well documented while other key moments are poorly recorded or entirely unaccounted for. In some cases we learn of critical events through the lens of a single source, which makes it difficult to weigh the author’s credibility. The English record is rich, but it is important to be aware of the limitations that exist and any biases the author might express towards other Europeans and non-Europeans.
Silk and the Anglo-Safavid Assault on the Persian Gulf, 1616–c.1623
In the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, two broad approaches seemed to characterize European trade in the East Indies. The first method aggressively aimed to acquire territory for the purpose of establishing a string of forts, or repurposed existing structures, to create a system of coastal defense for shipping and maritime control over the coastal trade routes. As an example, the Portuguese and Spanish traders acquired territorial possessions in the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf. The Portuguese attained several port towns and fortifications stretching from Muscat to the Far East. They, as one scholar wrote, ravaged the Persian Gulf and the Iranian coastline, subjecting its people to the harshness of a Catholic militancy that asserted control through forced conversions and the destruction and degradation of synagogues and mosques.Footnote 27 One English factor, Edward Pettus, commented that “they [Portuguese] are generally hated here; the reason they have been so perfidious and base lying people.”Footnote 28
The second approach to trade was generally non-aggressive and typical of the English and Dutch companies. Both companies adopted non-aggressive policies to establish trade with native merchants, and they relied on diplomacy to acquire buildings for their living quarters and warehouses from local officials and merchants.Footnote 29 These structures were unfortified, but they provided adequate spaces for storage and living quarters. There were exceptions to this trend, as the English acquired Fort St. George in Madras, India—a fort they constructed under Strensham Master’s supervision—and the port of Bombay in 1661. There were isolated moments when the Dutch and English felt compelled to use force. In one example the English detained several Mughal ships in response to Malik Ambar’s capture of an English caravan passing through Burhanpur in 1621, but as a rule these incidents were uncommon in the early seventeenth century. To the Safavid officials in the south who endured decades of Portuguese aggression, the English Company was certainly welcomed, or so Connock implied concerning Meere Tasside’s (governor of Jask) and Zulfikar Sultan’s (governor of province encompassing Hormuz and Minab) reception of the English.Footnote 30 Non-aggression had its limitations, however, and between European traders the rule did not apply as confrontations erupted with some regularity (i.e. Hormuz, 1622) throughout the period.
The arrival of the English in 1616 furnished Shah Abbas I (1587–1629) with an opportunity to contest the Portuguese at sea. In many ways the narrative of the English silk trade is woven into the story of Shah Abbas I’s re-conquest of the Persian Gulf. Despite Shah Abbas’ many military accomplishments, he did not possess a navy that was capable of mounting regular resistance against the Portuguese. The difficulties of managing two regions is the subject of one piece in this volume, and the Persian Gulf—effectively a third zone—promised to be quite difficult to manage without a formal navy to legitimately challenge an experienced maritime power in the Portuguese. Giovanni Botero claimed that the Safavids were “neuer [never] owners of any warlike shipping,” which ostensibly caused a fair amount of grief among Shah Abbas’ southern officials who struggled to protect the coastline against Portuguese raids.Footnote 31 The Persian Gulf was an important venue in Shah Abbas’ design to consolidate a Safavid state, but landed troops formed the bulk of the shah’s forces which delayed immediate operations to reclaim the Persian Gulf. The Portuguese were incapable of posing a threat to the budding Safavid state, but nor could Shah Abbas defeat the Portuguese at sea without naval support. The English, however, had earned several important victories against the Portuguese off the coast of India near Surat from 1608 to 1612, effectively challenging Portuguese hegemony in the Indian Ocean. If there ever was an opportunity for Shah Abbas to take control of the Persian Gulf, the English arrival was it.
The Company’s agents in India, however, were divided over the decision to move some of its assets to Iran. The English ambassador to the Mughal court (1615–19), Sir Thomas Roe, opposed sending resources to Safavid Iran and was unconvinced that Iran was the answer to their problems. A direct trade with Iran posed certain challenges. Shah Abbas controlled the silk industry which required merchants to buy directly from the shah’s royal merchant in Isfahan.Footnote 32 Roe mostly thought the trade did not favor the English and the logistics of travel would be costlier in human life than it would benefit the Company. He doubted that the silk trade would produce the wealth that Thomas Kerridge—chief of English trade in India (1616–21)—and his supporters predicted.Footnote 33 Roe cautioned that Sherley’s dubious plan to redirect Iranian silk through the southern ports was mostly fantasy, and warned that once the Safavids and the Ottomans agreed to peace “this trade will be again diverted” back through the Ottoman Empire “with the liberty of the free and ancient intercourse of trade” for all.Footnote 34 Kerridge dismissed Roe’s advice and considered his involvement as an infringement upon his status as chief of trade, and he dispatched his fleet before Roe could react.Footnote 35 Sherley’s penchant for Catholicism certainly did not earn favor with Roe, but logistically Sherley’s vision was problematic.Footnote 36 A letter from the Company arrived in Surat in February 1617, which granted Roe the authority “to instruct, direct and order all the factors” in India regarding all matters of the Company’s “affairs and business.”Footnote 37 After some consideration, and perhaps the realization that the merchants were unlikely to recall their agents from Iran, Roe conceded to Kerridge but he recommended the merchants abandon the trade if the Safavids refused to ship their silk to port. One of Roe’s supporters, Joseph Salbank, argued that the trade would be the “hazard of their lives and to the ruin of the goods,” but Kerridge and his faction were desperate to find a market for English broadcloth.Footnote 38 At the very least, John Crowther thought Kerridge ought not “to have run ourselves rashly into his [Shah Abbas’] hands.”Footnote 39
The English who supported the silk trade understood its potential, but their understanding of its capacity was practical where the volume of the silk trade was concerned. While the thought of capturing the bulk of the Iranian silk market was appealing, the English traders were primarily concerned with the stabilization of the Company’s business. Any indication that would suggest they thought it possible to overthrow the Anatolian route was certainly not divulged in their correspondence. The sources tell us very little about the English merchants’ expectations for the silk trade, but they hoped to exchange a combination of eastern spices and English commodities, such as, tin, lead, iron, and cloth for raw silk.Footnote 40 The enterprise was poorly planned and the English arrived in Jask with an uninspiring selection of goods to transport to Isfahan; which included several bales of English broadcloth that were regrettably “not in quantity nor quality,” hoping, though unlikely, to satisfy Shah Abbas’ curiosity.Footnote 41 The unimpressive demonstration of English goods was an embarrassment to the Company and its chief merchant, Edward Connock, admitted that it was an unfortunate mistake, but not one that was unredeemable. Connock’s gaffe certainly landed a blow to the Company’s integrity, but its agents stayed on in Isfahan eager to convince Shah Abbas to establish trade with them. The Ottoman–Safavid wars required Shah Abbas’ immediate attention, which left the Persian Gulf uncontested and in Portuguese hands. Shah Abbas planned to retake Hormuz and ultimately wrest control of the Persian Gulf away from the Portuguese, and, at least for the immediate future, the English still held some value as a potential commercial partner. Appeasing Shah Abbas was not the only issue that troubled the Company, and from its first journey from Jask to Isfahan it learned just how difficult it would be to transport cargo across Iran’s diverse topography.
The climate and geography posed a significant difficulty for the English, and—combined with the issue of delivering quality goods—geographic constraints gave credibility to the logistic nightmare that Roe envisioned and hoped to avoid. The backdoor to the silk trade was not an easy road, and their long arduous trek from the fishing town of Jask, and later Bandar Abbas, through Shiraz and onto Isfahan proved to be challenging. Ben Slot introduced the phrase “the backdoor” in his article “At the Backdoor of the Levant: Anglo-Dutch Competition in the Persian Gulf, 1623–1766.” Unlike its English counterparts in the Levant who purchased silk from cloth vendors (Armenian merchants) in Izmir, Aleppo, and other trading centers, the East India Company’s road through the backdoor was disadvantageous and forced them to travel to Isfahan and deal directly for silk.Footnote 42 One of the difficulties of overseas trade in early modern Iran was accessing the major commercial centers in an unfamiliar territory through unknown routes that were dangerous, difficult, and costly to traverse. Iran is a geographically diverse country which featured a northern border “so cold that for six months in the year” the Iranians wore heavier clothing. Travelers from the sixteenth century described the interior as mountainous while the coastline along the Caspian Sea was “plaine and full of pasture.”Footnote 43 To the south, an entirely different and perilous climate and terrain awaited the Englishmen. Much to Roe’s chagrin, the journey from southern Iran, chiefly from Gombroon (Bandar Abbas) to Isfahan, took anywhere between 32 and 42 days or up to two months in the worst cases.Footnote 44 The journey was treacherous for those who were unaccustomed to the Iranian climate. John Albert de Mandelslo remarked that it was “the most horrid way in the world,” with “steep mountains on the one side, and dreadful precipices on the other.”Footnote 45 The climate in the south, especially at Gombroon, was harsh due to “excessive heat.” European travelers stated, “there cannot be a more dangerous Air than that of Comoron [Gombroon]” during the summer months.Footnote 46 Edward Monox, chief factor in Persia (1619–22), complained that “the contagious heat hath begun to come in, many of our men have beene cast downe in soe much that unless God shew the greater mercy, wee feare greate mortality.”Footnote 47 Roger Gifford later wrote that the high temperatures “proved not to the health of our people.”Footnote 48
Over the course of this period the English merchant community struggled to thrive as a staggering 69 percent of Englishmen perished from the hot climate, contagion, and perhaps an excessive reliance on beer, wine, and spirits (arrack). William Fremlen appropriately remarked that “the Gulfe of Persia devours all.”Footnote 49 English commenters often attributed alcohol as the primary culprit, in combination with the weather, for the high mortality rate among Englishmen. Although excessive consumption of alcohol can cause dehydration, it is also possible that the heat led many Englishmen to consume water before it was properly boiled. The sources do not lend much assistance, but the historical record makes it possible to produce an estimate of the Englishmen who arrived in Iran and those who died. Of approximately a hundred men who resided in Persia over the period, roughly sixty-nine of them perished there and many within the first couple of years.Footnote 50 How they died is difficult to say with any certainty, but consistent complaints of fever and profuse sweating suggest that alcohol was not the only source of their demise. If the English expected to attain any share of the silk trade, they would have to endure the long, arduous southern road to Isfahan and the extreme temperatures. For these reasons, Roe stressed in his letters to Kerridge and Connock that such a journey should be avoided at all costs.Footnote 51 The English never established an alternative route to Isfahan, and as a stark consequence the English factory was often undermanned.
The long journey and initial failures tested the Company’s confidence in the trade as the merchants endured a commercial stalemate (1616–19) in Iran that frustrated their effort to move the Company’s broadcloth. The Safavids were unwilling to ship silk to their gulf ports and the English failed to persuade Shah Abbas to take their cloth, tin, and other goods and trinkets. Successive attempts to deliver quality gifts to Safavid officials ended in failure, an issue that also beleaguered the Company in Mughal India. Assef Ashraf has recently explored the art of gifting in Qajar Iran, defining it as “the backbone of the Qajar state and society,” but he remarked that the political importance of gifting found its origins in pre-modern Iran.Footnote 52 Shah Abbas was unimpressed with the exhibition of English gifts in their initial meeting, but their failure to whet his appetite was not entirely from ignorance of “local mores and practices” as the English were quite familiar with the role of patronage and gifting in England, but also from their experience in the Levant trade with Ottoman leaders.Footnote 53 Certainly the English merchants struggled to grasp the sorts of items that local and central leaders valued as well as the significance behind the act of gifting that some Englishmen misinterpreted as “greed,” but their failure was partly logistical.Footnote 54 The English struggled to protect their woolen cloth from the time it left London to its landing in India and Iran, and unlike the Armenian traders—and later the Dutch—they lacked expendable capital to offer Shah Abbas a substantial cash gift to complement their material items. It was a vital aspect of Safavid society that the English struggled to satisfy, and just three years after their arrival Edward Monox (merchant) complained that “our business tooke no better effect.”Footnote 55 The venture, it seemed, was a dismal failure.
By the end of 1619 their fortune changed as the English found an opportunity to remedy their previous mistakes. A feast was held in 1618, according to the English merchant Thomas Barker, to commemorate Shah Abbas’ success against the Ottomans. The feast, as Barker described it, overflowed with “Royall entertainments intermixt with divers extravagant and pleasant discourses.” He insisted that Shah Abbas applauded “the valour of our nation” and persisted in “extolling us above the Portugalls.” It is difficult to discern in what status the English arrived at the banquet, and Barker is similarly ambiguous regarding their access to Shah Abbas and his leading officers including his capacity to communicate with them. Was there a private audience or something less formal? Here we are unfortunately at the mercy of our sources, and much about the banquet is vague. Barker nonetheless aspired to secure the future of the Company’s trade in Iran and to attain Abbas’ assurance for their safety in traveling between Jask and Isfahan. He was concerned that the officials in the south (Persian Gulf) and their men, especially in Gombroon, “were not acquainted with his [Shah Abbas] princlye pleasure.”Footnote 56 It was only recently that Shah Abbas had reclaimed the south and brought it under his control, and Barker questioned Shah Abbas’ political influence in the south. The English meeting with Shah Abbas was nonetheless a success and a trade settlement was resolved. There does not appear to be a copy of a formal commercial agreement in the Company records, and aside from a letter to King James I (c. 1625) from Shah Abbas declaring Iran’s willingness to trade with the Company, Barker only hints that a formal discussion occurred between the merchants and Shah Abbas in his letter.Footnote 57 Thomas Kerridge sent a letter home around 1623, which appears to be a copy of some form of an agreement; but it is difficult to determine if this was merely Kerridge’s transcription of a verbal conversation or a copy of a translated capitulation or ahdname.Footnote 58 It is probable that the two parties came to some formal agreement, which can be inferred from the Mughal example where the English labored to obtain formal articles of trade. The circumstances were similar in Ottoman territories where merchants received official capitulations from Ottoman officials.Footnote 59 Regardless of its formality, the English finally concluded an arrangement for silk in late 1619.
There was a certain element of peculiarity to the terms of the commercial arrangement, yet it was a remarkable piece that offers important insight into the Company’s relations with the Safavids. The details are murky, and we only have Barker’s word, but he highlighted several important provisions for trade that were presumably settled during the feast in Isfahan. First, Shah Abbas promised to “make a tewe fould [two-fold penalty] restitution” if any governor or state official interfered in any conflict between the English and Portuguese, and should they confiscate any spoils from the English they were to immediately return them. In addition, he was prepared to deliver a certain amount of raw silk to the English annually, and in return the English were expected to lend assistance for a broad campaign against the Portuguese in the Persian Gulf. In October 1619, Thomas Barker wrote to London about the meeting and Shah Abbas’ proposal to turn over Hormuz to the English in exchange for naval support against the Portuguese. He noted that Shah Abbas expected the English to maintain “secricie untill it were effected,” and once the island was safely in their hands, the Safavids would “deliver it [Castle Hormuz] unto the English.”Footnote 60 Shah Abbas declared free passage to the English traders throughout his dominions and barred his chief officers from exacting bribes and impeding English caravans bound from the Gulf to Isfahan. He also promised the English traders immunity from certain customs fees and the right to establish an unfortified factory in Gombroon.Footnote 61 A factory was essentially their living quarters with additional space that functioned as a warehouse; it was not, as one might think, a grotesque structure identical to those that which dotted the English landscape during the English Industrial Revolution. In addition to providing a residence along with free and protected movement throughout Iran, according to an English council (consultation) in Minab, he dispatched a group of Qizilbash to escort an English caravan to Jask in 1620.Footnote 62 Thomas Barker and his fellow Englishmen were sympathetic to Shah Abbas’ plight in the gulf, but the alliance was also practical and important both strategically and economically. If the Portuguese continued to occupy Hormuz, Muscat, and other Gulf settlements, the English factories between Surat and Gombroon were vulnerable, including ships returning from the Far East fully laden, “a thing we much feared this past year.”Footnote 63
Set amidst the Ottoman–Safavid wars, and to a lesser extent the Safavid–Mughal conflict, the Persian Gulf emerged as somewhat of a third region that Shah Abbas was ill equipped to deal with. The Portuguese were a declining power in the east, but they raised havoc along the coastline, affecting the commerce, life, and society of coastal settlements and towns. The Safavids were at times divided between two regions: one to the east against the Mughals at Qandahar (1595 and 1622) and another to the west against the Ottomans.Footnote 64 The Company’s shipping offered a potential solution to Portuguese aggression—which in truth increased as the English expanded into the Gulf—but it relieved some of the pressure from Shah Abbas to expand military defenses to a third region.Footnote 65 Shah Abbas had larger matters to contend with, and the Persian Gulf, although it was commercially and strategically important, was not necessarily a top priority. The Portuguese, on the other hand, were unwilling to suffer further English advances into their commercial territory (oceanic). Reinforcements arrived from Europe, and Ruy Freire de Andrade’s arrival opened a series of harsh attacks targeting numerous port towns along the Persian Gulf. Freire commanded the Portuguese fleet out of Lisbon, and one of his objectives was to cripple the English Company’s shipping in the Indian Ocean. The English were effectively caught between Freire’s armada in the gulf and Goa, where Portuguese officers oversaw plans for the construction of ships armed with 200 guns intended to join the Portuguese armada in the Persian Gulf.Footnote 66 On 20 December 1620, a small Portuguese fleet surrounded the English near Jask. Ruy Freire had hoped the assault would crush the English, but one account reported that “being bountifull with bullets,” the English fleet repelled the first attack and forced the Portuguese to retreat by nightfall.Footnote 67
Historians wrote of the engagement as a turning point for the English and the decline of the Portuguese power in the east, but they overlooked the considerable influence the assault had on the English traders as they considered Shah Abbas’ proposal.Footnote 68 One scholar carefully acknowledged, in light of intense Portuguese offensive against the southern coast of Iran, that “the attack upon Hormuz was perhaps unavoidable, unless our countrymen were prepared to relinquish all attempts to open trade with Persia.”Footnote 69 Sir William Foster was not wrong, and under increased pressure from Shah Abbas to act against the looming Portuguese threat to the Iranian coast and English trade, the leading English merchants in Iran looked to their superiors in Surat for assistance.Footnote 70 Thomas Kerridge agreed that the Company could not protect its interests throughout the Indian Ocean if the Portuguese remained in control of important ports in the Persian Gulf, giving them a strategic advantage over the English.
For a moment, silk became a distant incentive for the commercial alliance while the English and Safavids aimed to resolve a mutual problem. In January 1622, the English affirmed Shah Abbas’ terms and notified Imām-qulī Khān (provincial ruler over Fars and the Garmsir) of their intent to assist the Safavids in taking Hormuz and other key ports or strongholds in the Persian Gulf.Footnote 71 The terms established that plunder should be divided equally between both parties, and that “the duties and benefit of the Custome house and shipping in like manner shall bee equally divided provided the English doe without default ayde and assist in the taking of the cities, townes, and castles.”Footnote 72 The ultimate prize, however, was the fortress of Hormuz, which the English had hoped “his Maiestie doe graciously grant the Castle to the English by his [farmān].”Footnote 73 As for the question of captives, the Safavids expected the English to leave the Muslim inhabitants to them, but “if Xpian [Christian] captives the English shall have them.”Footnote 74 The budding relationship with the Safavids had progressed steadily by 1622, and the English anticipated a generous return for their efforts in the gulf. Hormuz was not the endpoint, though, and Shah Abbas expected the English to lend naval support at Muscat, which “shall hereafter be conquered by us and the English together [and] equally converted to the use and behoove of both.” In addition to the Persian Gulf, the agreement suggested that if the English planned to take “any place or castle in India,” the Safavids would supply “men and other assistance” necessary for the victory.Footnote 75
A naval alliance was fundamental to the English trade agreement with the Safavids, and the English were perhaps far too eager, even desperate, to conclude terms. The agreement reads as a thinly veiled attempt to draw the English into the broader Ottoman–Safavid wars as an ally on Shah Abbas’ southern border, which may have included plans for Mughal India. They ignored, even misunderstood, the long-term consequences of such a union. The English fleet, for example, was small and the Company expected regular shipments to London, which made it impossible to carry out extensive naval campaigns in the Persian Gulf or in the Indian Ocean. Even if the English had wanted to provide regular support in the Gulf, the Company simply lacked the manpower and equipment necessary to sustain a broad naval offensive and defensive operation against the Portuguese. Nonetheless, in February 1622 the English moved forward with their plans to purge the Persian Gulf of the Portuguese, and on 5 February an English force took the island Qishm.Footnote 76 The English sacked the fort with relative ease and lost few men, but their primary target lay southwards at the town and castle of Hormuz.Footnote 77
On 10 February, the English transported and landed 3,000 Safavid troops about two miles from the town, while the English remained at sea to provide artillery support from their ships—the London (800t), the Dolphin (500t), the Jonas (700t), the Whale (700t), and the Star (300t) along with several smaller boats. By the beginning of March, Hormuz fell to the Anglo-Safavid force.Footnote 78 When the battle was all but over the Portuguese reached out to the English for protection, fearing the Safavids would seek harsh reprisals. The English entertained their plea: “which we out of a Christian feeling [and] commiseration of their present misery [and] imminent danger” protected them from falling into “the hands of their merciless enemy to your cost we have furnished [and] given them” assistance.Footnote 79 They ferried away a number of Portuguese under the cover of dark, many of whom were troops charged with defending the fort. After the battle, the Safavids and the English scoured the island of Hormuz for plunder, munitions, and anything of value.Footnote 80 The English Company had established relations with a major power in the east and the siege gave some credence to it, but the union was fragile and would begin to unravel shortly after.
The assault on Hormuz placed the Company in an awkward position, and to a certain extent it overstepped its authority. It was an impressive blow to the Portuguese, but it was not without consequences as complications developed in the immediate aftermath. King James I and the Duke of Buckingham were displeased with the siege, especially as the English and Spanish (including the Portuguese) were officially at peace and the raid, K. N. Chaudhuri thought, disrupted the Anglo-Iberian truce.Footnote 81 James I’s displeasure with the Company, however, was in part because the merchants “hath taken in value £100,000 in severall partes of the Indies” from the Portuguese yet failed to share the spoils with the English Crown.Footnote 82 With few options available, the Company eventually settled on paying a £20,000 fine to the Crown while enduring the duke of Buckingham’s bitter criticism of “the Company” as an organization of “piratts.”Footnote 83 The matter was eventually resolved, but it emphasized the limited extent to which James I would tolerate aggression towards the Iberians; small-scale raids or sacking lone ships were disregarded, but a larger, organized offensive troubled King James I who, among other things, expected a cut of the Company’s spoils. The attack created pressure in Madrid where Lord Digby, the English ambassador to Spain, faced intense questioning from Spanish officials regarding their involvement. Lord Digby denied any collusion from the English government in the matter.Footnote 84 The developments in London and Madrid threatened to strain the newly minted commercial alliance. Yet for its troubles, the swift string of victories in the Persian Gulf freed up the region for English shipping and placed the Company in a better position to defend its interests abroad.
From an international perspective, individual interests, or those of the Company, did not necessarily complement the state’s interests. The Company had effectively driven itself into a corner. If it continued to press against the Portuguese, it risked upsetting London and Madrid. But conceding to a ceasefire would all but end the alliance with the Safavids. The union, however, began to erode after several misunderstandings relating to the division of spoils and the rights to Hormuz threatened the alliance. The sources unfortunately leave much to the imagination, but the English probably did not benefit their position by transporting the surviving Portuguese from Hormuz. Yet the Company merchants, having already suffered a fine for its efforts against the Portuguese, were bitter when the Safavids failed to honor the agreement. Edward Monox, the chief of English trade in Iran from 1619 to 1622, believed the Safavids deliberately kept their portion of the spoils, including the Portuguese ordinance in the castle. The Portuguese surrendered roughly 200 pieces of ordinance, but Monox reported that Imām-qulī Beg (the officer in charge of distributing the spoils) reserved the entire cache to employ at Hormuz and elsewhere. Clearly upset, Monox protested that “theire actions are such that giveth us no small cause of suspicion.”Footnote 85 European observers at the time recounted that Shah Abbas intended to use the captured artillery at Hormuz and disperse some of it between Lar and Isfahan, but some reports contradict Monox and claim that that Imām-qulī Beg distributed a portion of the artillery to the English.Footnote 86 Three years later, during a meeting in Gombroon, Thomas Barker (the younger) complained that, aside from the artillery, the Safavids took roughly 60,000 tumans (approximately £378,000) of plunder while the English collected approximately 6,000 tumans (£37,800).Footnote 87 Barker’s report is interesting, but noteworthy is the growing contempt of the English merchant community which points to the existence of deeper issues between the English and Safavids. They were disappointed with the circumstances following Hormuz, but Shah Abbas nonetheless honored several provisions in the agreement: the English acquired a dwelling in Gombroon from which their trade was based for the next two decades, they were allowed to stay in Hormuz—though the fort was not handed over to the English—and Shah Abbas permitted the English to collect a percentage of the customs from incoming ships.Footnote 88
Trade in the early years (1616–23) developed gradually and precariously, although it was promising compared to their experience in India before Sir Thomas Roe’s arrival. The English never saw themselves as contributing to a broader regional conflict, but the Company was indeed a player in the Safavids’ struggle against the Portuguese and the Ottomans. While most of the fighting occurred at the front gate, the English guarded the back door as a contingency for access to the Safavid silk trade. Eager to expand the Company’s trade, and in effect their own wealth, they agreed to assist Shah Abbas, but their plans were spoiled due to various complications that tested the fragile partnership. For the English, the victory at Hormuz illustrated a major maritime triumph for the English navy and established additional protection for the Company’s ships between London and the Far East, but it did not have the financial and commercial outcome the Company had hoped for. Unable and unwilling to maintain the naval offensive in the Persian Gulf, the second half of the decade marked a rapid decline of the Company in Iran.
Rising Tension and the End of the Anglo-Safavid Silk Trade, 1625–40
The Company’s activity in Iran is not well documented from the end of the 1620s to the early 1630s, making it difficult to reconstruct the Company’s activity and trade in Iran. It is clear, however, that the Company’s position in Safavid Iran steadily declined. Shah Abbas expected precious metals (gold and silver) for silk in lieu of pepper returning from the East and English cloth shipped from London. This was partially the consequence of a surplus of pepper and the saturation of English cloth imported from the Mediterranean into Iran which Shah Abbas relied on to pay his soldiers.Footnote 89 The Company’s dwindling support in Iran was met with a greater obstacle once the Dutch arrived by the end of the decade. The Dutch VOC (Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie) brought an ample supply of gold and silver, and, perhaps most significantly, they were willing to challenge the Portuguese.Footnote 90
Historians have long argued that the Company’s failure to wrest the silk trade away from the Levant trade and the Dutch traders—an idealistic ambition to begin with—was the direct consequence of its failure to produce, or accumulate, a significant means of purchasing power (either marketable goods or precious metals).Footnote 91 Since their arrival in the Persia Gulf, the English had struggled to deliver quality, unspoiled broadcloth to Isfahan. Improperly packaged bales of broadcloth were vulnerable to damp and humid conditions within the ship’s hold, and in southern Iran the exposure to hot conditions in the warehouses increased the likelihood that the cloth would deteriorate. Mold, rot, discoloration, and vermin ruined the quality of English cloth and reduced its value. It was virtually impossible in these environmental conditions to imitate their colleagues in the Mediterranean who used broadcloth as a currency to purchase other goods.Footnote 92 The English failed to deliver the quality of cloth that English merchants were known for in England, and Safavid interest in the Company’s cloth sharply declined. Mulayim Beg complained that “your cloth both of the last yeare [1630] and this now come is so course and bad” and if not amended “you [will] be forced to keepe itt, or sell itt att some base rates.”Footnote 93 If the cloth did not arrive damaged, it was either too coarse or “bad in collour.”Footnote 94 The English were reminded of Roe’s warning that the trade was unsustainable, and while the Iranians traded for pepper, tin, and other eastern imports, English cloth, aside from gold and silver, was the company’s chief form of currency.
Thomas Kerridge (President of Trade 1625–28) was not prepared to relinquish the silk trade, although he warned the Company that “eyther you must resolve to follow that Trade; or Absolutly to give it over.”Footnote 95 Kerridge understood that the silk trade required the Company’s full commitment, as well as the willingness to compromise with the Safavids. The arrival of the Dutch compelled Kerridge to reconsider the Company’s position in the Persian Gulf despite the complications with London after Hormuz. He convened a consultation in Surat in 1625 as a result to discuss the defense of the Persian Gulf and potentially lending assistance at Muscat. He certainly did not relish the idea of the Dutch supplanting the English in Iran, but the English commanders, mostly Captain John Weddell, were unwilling to risk the fleet and men to defend the gulf for the Safavids who “had greately failed in performance of the sayd Articles” of trade.Footnote 96 Kerridge carefully considered that the ramifications of refusing to provide aid would “induce its [Hormuz] delyverie unto the Dutch.”Footnote 97 As Imām-qulī Khān turned his attention to Basra to confront the encroaching Ottoman forces, the strike against Muscat was temporarily postponed. In Gombroon, the Sultan thought to convince the English to provide immediate aid in the northern gulf on the grounds that the “ayde should not be against the Turks, But against certaine friggotts of the Portingalls, which kept nere about Ballsora [Basra].”Footnote 98 Weddell and Kerridge were not interested in sending the fleet deep into the Gulf and they refused aid.
The Safavids were compelled to delay the enterprise to Muscat as Shah Abbas renewed his war with the Ottomans in 1623, which led to the conquest of Baghdad and a planned assault on Basra, but several Portuguese raids along the Iranian coastline left villages burnt, plundered, and in dire need of aid.Footnote 99 Writing to Thomas Barker in October 1625, John Benthall reported that the Portuguese “tooke many of the poore people with their cattle” during a series of raids.Footnote 100 The sultan of Gombroon was frustrated with the English for leaving the coastline defenseless against Portuguese raids, and he responded by detaining the English fleet in Gombroon, where he planned to coerce Captain Weddell to lend assistance.Footnote 101 Under some pressure from the sultan, Weddell and Kerridge agreed to provide assistance and instructed the Royal James, the Jonas, the Star, and the Eagle to ride off the coast of Gombroon.Footnote 102 Captain John Johnson and Charles Clevenger opposed the effort, “considering the perfidious dealing of the Persians” at Hormuz, but their protest was in vain.Footnote 103 Shortly after, the Portuguese arrived off the coast near Gombroon with a sizable naval force of eight galleons and approximately three frigates; the English had to engage.Footnote 104 The Dutch, under Albert Becker’s command, were nearby and sent the Zuid Holland, the Bantam, the Maagd van Dort, and the Wesp to join the English. The Anglo-Dutch force soundly defeated the Portuguese, but until the Portuguese could be routed and chased from the Persian Gulf, the Iranian coastline, and by extension the English factory, was vulnerable. In 1627, the English petitioned Shah Abbas for permission to build a fort in Gombroon to protect their estate, but he denied the English “with such farther addiction of distrust.”Footnote 105 The Portuguese left a legacy of violence and destruction behind them, and Shah Abbas was unlikely to accommodate the construction of fortified dwellings from other European powers. In 1629, however, the English received terrible news; Shah Abbas had died.
Shah Abbas’ untimely death in 1629 was a significant turning point in the Company’s history in the Persian Gulf, which led to the destabilization of Anglo-Safavid relations. Although he cast a wary eye towards the English, he maintained amicable relations and provided protection, but now that luxury was gone and with it the English saw the fall of their closest sympathizers at court. Scholars from various disciplines have examined the role of friendship networks and patronage in early modern Europe, and it was equally important, if not completely necessary, on the fringes of the English world to establish connections within certain social groups.Footnote 106 State officials and well-to-do merchants offered significant advantages. In Mughal India the English overcame early setbacks and facilitated working relationships in Mughal society. In Safavid Iran, the state monopoly on silk made this task an absolute necessity, without which the English would not have enjoyed much support for trade. Shah Safi ended the Safavid monopoly on Iranian silk, and the open policy gave the Armenians with a significant advantage.Footnote 107 But that did not diminish the importance of establishing trusted friends at court who could, if nothing else, provide and impose measures to protect the English and their goods. After several years of tenuous relations following the siege of Hormuz, the English had to rebuild their image and restore their significance within the structure of the new ruling elite who were generally much less sympathetic to the Company’s business than Shah Abbas had been, especially following their reluctance to lend naval support in the second half of the decade. Their brief endeavor in Iran had brought the English to rely on two leading figures—Imām-qulī Khān and Mulayim Beg (royal factor)—for assistance. The new regime’s purges left the Company devoid of any support from the ruling elite of Safavid society. Three years after Shah Abbas’ death Shah Safi I stripped Mulayim Beg of his former title and promoted Mīrzā Muhammad “Saru” Taqi, silk official in Gilan, who became the Company’s principal nemesis in Iran. This was an important setback for the English, who considered Mulayim Beg to be the “greatest friend wee have in Courte, and one that wee must cherish by all meanes possible.”Footnote 108 Then in 1633 Shah Safi ordered his officers to execute Imām-qulī Khān, who had provided vital assistance to the Company for customs disputes and other issues. Their loss would be felt soon as Shah Safi I’s preoccupation with the Ottomans made him less interested in renewing commercial contracts with foreign merchants.Footnote 109
While the English struggled to cope with the new elite, violent storms disrupted the wider region, particularly in India, which saw massive devastation in the Gujarati providence that produced widespread famine. Those who survived migrated to eastern India where the country flourished, leaving the Gujarati and Sind markets depleted of both its workforce and commodities, chiefly indigo and Indian cloth.Footnote 110 In Iran at roughly the same time, inclement weather decimated the silkworm population in the Gilan and Shirvan Provinces, directly affecting the supply and costs of silk in the early 1630s.Footnote 111 Inflated prices, and the shah’s expectations for gold and silver specie in lieu of English cloth and other regional commodities, created a steady rise in tension between the English merchants and Safavid officials. The Safavids responded to poor shipments of English goods with their own foul shipments of sugar candy and silk to parallel a steady decline in English customs by the end of the decade.Footnote 112 The response merely fueled resentment between the English merchants and the Safavids. William Gibson (chief factor in the 1630s) blamed Shah Safi for the customs problem and suggested that “he is soe besoted with his weomen and other his damnable pleasures within doares” that his chief officers “doe what they will.”Footnote 113 The Company’s lethargic response to the Portuguese problem opened the door for raids along the Iranian coast; and unlike the early 1620s when it appeared the English had something to offer the Safavid state, they lost the advantage and fell rapidly from grace.
It was only the beginning, however, and in 1635 events in India brought the English silk trade to a screeching halt. After his arrival in October 1633, William Methwold—president of trade (1633–39) and stationed in Surat, India—began brokering a peace with the Portuguese viceroy in Goa, Dom Miguel, in 1634, which they concluded the following year in late January.Footnote 114 The peace troubled Gibson, who expected the “mallicious practizes of the Hollanders” to turn the chief officials of Safavid Iran against the English.Footnote 115 News of the peace reached Taqi at some point in 1635 and Gibson accused him of acting deceitfully in that “you will force us to take rotten silke for our mony too.”Footnote 116 William Fremlen later remarked that Gibson’s “uncivill, haughty, and disrespectful behavior” towards Taqi delayed the Company’s silk exports and aggravated Anglo-Safavid relations; Gibson was, quite simply, a “fawneing parasite.”Footnote 117 The peace upset the delicate balance, but Gibson’s foul behavior only fueled the flames of dissension between the two sides, which by the end of the decade culminated in violence. One merchant commented that Gibson was an “inveterate enimye” to Taqi, and the belligerence shown towards the Safavid official was hardly beneficial; yet his ongoing dispute with Taqi illustrates unmistakably the increasing division between the English and the Safavids.Footnote 118
Following the peace, suspicions regarding the Company’s intentions in Gombroon caused the bubble to burst. The first incident erupted when William Hall brought men ashore from the fleet to guard the Company’s warehouse. The sultan sent troops to investigate and the guards were “extreamly beaten” for preventing the sultan’s men from entering the warehouse.Footnote 119 Later the following year, Thomas Wheeler requested assistance from John Allison, captain of the Discovery. Allison sent several men ashore to once again protect the customs house from thieves. Similarly the sultan responded with force and his troops left “5 or 6” Englishmen physically maimed, or, as Captain Allison described, they were “rather monsters then men.”Footnote 120 Since their arrival in 1616, the English had not suffered such an attack by the local authorities against themselves and their goods. Thieves and brigands along the routes were a nuisance, but the English were treated cordially by their Safavid hosts under Abbas. Hall reported that Mīrzā Taqi hoped to rid Persia of the English and thought “that wee brought noe benifitt att all to the Kingdome, but lived here as his unprofitable guests,” or so he informed Shah Safi.Footnote 121
These attacks were a rapid departure from the friendly relations that had characterized Shah Abbas’ reign. They highlight what one scholar has suggested was the fading glory of Hormuz (1622/23).Footnote 122 A transition in the attitude of the Safavid ruling elite took place that was not favorable towards the English, as Taqi noted. The English were unable to maintain the prestige they earned after their assault on the Persian Gulf, and as a consequence their ability to sustain favor within the Safavid state waned. This was particularly true as the English were unable to quench the shah’s need for gold and silver specie. The English failure to guard the Iranian coastline while the Safavids were preoccupied with the Ottomans ultimately formed the principal obstacle to Anglo-Safavid trade, and peace with the Portuguese all but sealed their fate in Iran. The English, to an extent, became expendable for the Safavids.
Conclusion: An Act of Preservation or Folly?
The Company made a significant effort to capture part of the Safavid silk trade, but it failed before the English could stabilize their position in Safavid Iran. They were never able to overcome the parameters of the articles of trade, or, at the very least, they misunderstood the degree of Shah Abbas’ expectations for English naval support in the Persian Gulf. It was difficult to establish relations across cultural and linguistic barriers, but it was virtually impossible to establish enduring relations with the rapid turnover of new merchants entering Iran to replace their fallen colleagues. It put the English traders at a significant disadvantage in their effort to seize control of the silk trade from their competitors.
In addition, the English commentators in Iran and India perhaps underestimated the importance and stability of the well-established route from Iran to Ottoman Anatolia and into Europe. Armenian merchants from Iran dominated the silk trade, especially during Shah Abbas’ reign. It was unlikely that a handful of Englishmen could undermine this route or upset the Armenian silk trade. Ferrier suggests that over time Armenian merchants had established important connections throughout an extensive commercial network spanning Europe, the Middle East, and Eastern Asia. Their familiarity with the old route through Anatolia, their relations with the caravansaries, and their reliability as skilled merchants and silk distributors made them virtually untouchable. They provided stability and reliability, whereas the English traders failed to stabilize their trade and maintain a consistent community of merchants. Despite Sherley’s enthusiasm, the Safavids were not likely to divert shipments from the traditional Ottoman route to Europe through a risky network of English merchants.
Roe’s suspicions about the success of the Company indeed became a reality, but Kerridge’s decision in 1616 to pursue the silk trade was born out of necessity. K. N. Chaudhuri produced statistics that suggest that the trade was lucrative and could have produced fruitful returns under the right conditions. But the Anglo-Safavid trade agreement depended on regular English naval support in the Gulf. Still, he estimated that three investments in Iran in the period 1628–30 saw returns of roughly 60 percent.Footnote 123 English trade had potential to succeed in Iran but ultimately the enterprise failed. Roe predicted the trade would fail, but even he had reserved some optimism for the trade if the English could convince the Safavids to send shipments of silk to port; Edward Connock and his successors could not. The English continued to trade in Safavid Iran after 1640, although their business was limited to rugs, horses, and other commodities. Ferrier wrote that the English attempted to reestablish their trade for silk twice more, once in 1682 and again in 1722, but both attempts ended in failure.Footnote 124
If this paper has achieved anything, it has hopefully shed light on the complexities of establishing trade in unfamiliar circumstances. Despite its limitations, the record provides valuable insight into the English community’s way of life, how they traded, and who they created relationships with, and how those relationships affected the English community’s commercial strategies. In the attempt to dismiss the old Victorian narratives that often saw the Indian Ocean as merely a battleground for European powers to flex their muscles and vie for commercial supremacy, we must carefully avoid a paradigm reversal that excludes the inter-European power struggle. In this context, the shift in Anglo-Portuguese affairs had a profound impact on the English silk trade and Anglo-Safavid interactions. The circumstances were complex, in which the English maneuvered around old European rivalries (confessional and economic) and navigated around news ones (Dutch VOC) while they simultaneously attempted to cultivate relations with the local ruling elite. Political and diplomatic change often threw this delicate framework into flux, creating rifts and realignments, which forced the English to regularly amend their mercantile arrangements. Shah Abbas I’s death in 1629 and the Portuguese Peace in 1635 are two critical examples of this. The English failure in Iran therefore was equally a consequence of their inability to cope in this complex environment in which they also struggled to employ valuable commodities and capital for trade. By comparison, the Armenians offered bullion, commodities, and information in exchange for silk and a favored status.Footnote 125 The English could not compete, and in 1640 the English East India Company’s silk trade in Iran was finished.
