Consider the following statements about the Dutch trade in Mughal period : 1. The Dutch transported silk goods from Bengal through Hooghly 2. Cloves and nutmegs were collected at Surat by the Dutch and exported to Europe Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
- (a)1 only
- (b)2 only
- (c)Both 1 and 2
- (d)Neither 1 nor 2
Correct — A, 1 only. Statement 1 is sound. The Dutch East India Company worked Bengal from the Hooghly, with its factory at Chinsura, and Bengal raw silk and silk piece-goods were among the most valuable things it carried out of India. Statement 2 turns the spice trade the wrong way round. Cloves grew in the Moluccas and nutmeg and mace in the small Banda islands, and the Dutch held that production as a monopoly enforced from the 1620s; those spices reached Europe from Batavia, not from Gujarat. What happened at Surat was the opposite transaction: the Dutch brought spices, copper and silver from South-East Asia and Japan and spent them on Indian cotton textiles and indigo, which they then sold across Asia and in Europe. Surat was a market for spices, not a source of them.
- (b)2 only — This rejects the one statement that holds. The Dutch presence on the Hooghly and their trade in Bengal silk are among the best-documented parts of their Indian commerce.
- (c)Both 1 and 2 — Statement 2 makes Surat a collection point for cloves and nutmeg. Neither spice grew anywhere near western India; both came from the eastern archipelago, where the Company guarded its monopoly, and Indian ports received them as imports.
- (d)Neither 1 nor 2 — Statement 1 is correct, so this option goes too far. Bengal silk moving down the Hooghly under Dutch hands is exactly what the Company's Bengal trade consisted of.
The Dutch East India Company, founded in 1602, built an Asian trading system rather than a simple export line to Europe. Its factories at Surat from 1616, on the Coromandel coast at Pulicat and Nagapattinam, and in Bengal at Chinsura on the Hooghly, supplied Indian textiles, indigo, saltpetre and silk. Those Indian goods were the currency of the eastern trade: they bought the spices of the Moluccas and Banda, which the Company monopolised, and they were exchanged for Japanese copper and silver. Batavia, on Java, was the hub through which the Europe-bound cargo passed.
The trap in statement 2 is geographical rather than commercial. It names two real Dutch commodities and attaches them to a real Dutch port, which is enough to make it read as true if the map is not consulted. Cloves, nutmeg and mace were the produce of a handful of small eastern islands, and the whole logic of Dutch policy there — the seizure of Banda in 1621, the exclusion of rivals from Amboina — was to keep them so. What Surat gave the Company was cloth. A useful way to hold the system in mind is as a triangle: Indian textiles buy island spices, island spices and Japanese metals pay for more Indian textiles, and the surplus goes home.
- The VOC was founded in 1602 and set up its factory at Surat in 1616.
- Its Bengal trade ran through Chinsura on the Hooghly, carrying raw silk, silk goods, saltpetre and cotton textiles.
- Cloves came from the Moluccas and nutmeg and mace from the Banda islands, held as a Dutch monopoly.
- At Surat the Dutch bought textiles and indigo, paying with spices, copper and silver from South-East Asia and Japan.
- Batavia on Java was the hub of the Company's Asian network and the assembly point for Europe-bound cargo.
Spices arrived at Surat as imports. Reading them as an export from Surat inverts the whole Dutch system.
- Accepting a statement because both the commodity and the port are genuinely Dutch.
- Assuming every European company exported the same goods from the same Indian ports.
- Forgetting that spices moved into India as imports as well as out of the archipelago to Europe.
A two-statement item on European trade, where the second statement is factually shaped but geographically reversed.
Which of the following statements is/are correct? 1. The Dutch East India Company was formed after the formation of the British East India Company. 2. Vasco da Gama reached Calicut in 1498. Select the correct answer using the code given below.
- (a) 1 only
- (b) 2 only
- (c) Both 1 and 2
- (d) Neither 1 nor 2
Answer(c) Both 1 and 2
The chronology behind this question: the English company was chartered in 1600 and the Dutch in 1602, and both were following the route Vasco da Gama opened in 1498. The Dutch factory at Surat followed in 1616.
The Dutch were defeated by Marthanda Varma of Travancore Kingdom in the battle of
- (a) Wandiwash
- (b) Rakshasi – Tangadi
- (c) Pullalur
- (d) Colachel
Answer(d) Colachel
What the Dutch were after on the Indian coast, and where it ended. Their interest in Malabar was pepper, and the defeat at Colachel in 1741 closed their attempt to control that trade at source.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The Dutch East India Company's principal settlement in Bengal was at
- (a)Chinsura
- (b)Serampore
- (c)Chandernagore
- (d)Balasore
Answer(a) Chinsura — on the Hooghly; Serampore was Danish and Chandernagore French.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Nutmeg and mace, monopolised by the Dutch in the seventeenth century, came chiefly from
- (a)the Malabar coast
- (b)Ceylon
- (c)the Banda islands
- (d)Sumatra
Answer(c) the Banda islands — a small group in the eastern Indonesian archipelago seized by the Company in 1621.