ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a period that was pivotal in the evolution of Anglo-Indian commercial relationships: the 1680s. It explains an overall review of the developments affecting the East India Company (EIC) and its trade with India. Om Prakash observed that the 1680s marked the start of a qualitative improvement in the trade of the EIC as well as the Dutch East India Company. Escalating taxes and growing demand for silver within the empire increased the importance of Western trade, especially trade with the EIC. In the case of the EIC, its exports of silver were seen as a substitute for the export of English manufactured goods, especially woollen cloth. An act of Parliament in 1698 that prohibited EIC stockholders from engaging in private trade in diamonds limited the expansion of Jewish influence within the EIC because the one area of Anglo-Indian commerce where Jews were dominant in the late seventeenth century was the importation of diamonds.
