ABSTRACT
Most writers on the early annals of the English trade in Bengal maintain that the Company enjoyed the privilege of duty-free trade on the payment of Rs. 3,000 only per annum. But this theory of customs-free trading privileges of the Company can now be exploded on the discovery of new evidence in the Company’s archives. In fact, the Company had never enjoyed – by virtue of any imperial farman – such privileges in Bengal during the period under study. The English claim of duty-free trade was only a myth, hardly based on any legal or valid imperial sanction behind it.
