ABSTRACT
In the second half of the 17th century, saltpetre was an important item in the export list of the European Companies trading in Bengal. As an essential ingredient of gunpowder it was in great demand in the West. Besides as it could be used as saleable ballast, its export was of additional advantage to the Companies which otherwise hid to take the uneconomic method of using iron as ballast to make the deep sea ships sailworthy, It was only in the early ’twenties of the seventeenth century that the shortage of saltpetre in England and the increasing difficulty in obtaining supplies of gunpowder had turned the attention of the English Company to the possibility of importing this chemical from India. The first supply however reached England only in 1626.1 And once established the saltpetre trade displayed a consistent growth, though the real expansion did not take place till after the Civil War commenced.
