ABSTRACT
The term ‘private trade’ refers to the commerce conducted by the traders on their own account, independent of the EIC business. They were a motley group generally larger in number than those of the EIC. ‘Private trade’ is a term that covers several different non-EIC commercial systems and channels of trade, incorporating the activities of all private interests including ‘interlopers’ as well as some EIC employees. Private trade was conducted in theory as purely private trade and also as personal trade. Private trade by private English traders and the EIC servants had been there in one form or other since the early decades of the 17th century in India and on the busy Coromandel Coast. Some ‘smugglers’ were found to be wealthier than an average EIC servant in India. The EIC could not/did not stop its servants from realising their temptations for extra income and aspirations of becoming rich quickly and attaining high positions later in England. The private traders, in all their efforts, were driven by the need to make a quick fortune, and the ambition to return to England to enjoy a comfortable landed retirement. The high profits of the private traders had attracted the EIC servants into this prohibited business. They built bridges between the natives and the EIC. The British Empire was built by the free merchants, who studied the strengths and weaknesses of India. It all started in Chennai. They frequently faced many uncertainties and faced the hazards of sailing along the rocky coasts in rough weather. They created a market for so far unvalued and undervalued products of Chennai as well as other provinces and nations. Sometimes they made huge profits and spent them mostly in Chennai and sent the rest to England. Lastly, the EIC had no alternative but to allow private trade. And Chennai enjoyed all these advantages. It enabled them to leap on the economic ladder. Private trade by the EIC servants was first prohibited on the grounds that it was detrimental to the interests of the EIC. But the long distance and weak control from London made an effective and strict control difficult, especially in minute matters like private trade. There is not much evidence that the directors had ever tried seriously to enforce measures against private trade in the 18th-century Chennai. They found many advantages.
