Skip to main content

British sets foot on Indian Soil




On 24 August 1608, Captain William Hawkins, anchored his ship Hector, off Surat. He becomes the first commander of East India Company vessel to set foot on Indian soil.

He carried with him the letters and presents from King of England James I, for Governor and Kings of Hindustan. William Hawkins was well versed with language Turkish and conversed fluently in that.

After anchoring in Surat his first obstacle were Portuguese who were already established and trading with India since 1501 (nearly from 100 years) and obviously did not want any competition from British.




Objective of Captain William Hawkins was to seek permission to trade and setup a factory in Surat. For this he was required to obtain permission from the Mughal emperor who was seated in Agra. Hence he started his journey from Surat to Agra which took him nearly 8 months and he reached Agra in April 1609.

The visit of William Hawkins to the court of the Great Moghul at Agra was a memorable event in the history of British relation with India. He was the first Englishman ever received by the Emperor of Hindustan as the official representative of the King of England.

Hawkins upon arrival in the court of Jahangir, was greeted with warmth. Hawkins used Turkish language to communicate in the court.


Jahangir was very impressed with his grasp of Turkish and ability to drink copious amounts of wine. Hawkins received attention and favors from Jahangir during his stay. Hawkins stayed in court of Jahangir for nearly 3 years. There he was also obliged to take Armenian Christian as his bride. During this period Jahangir gave him a name "The English Khan". During his stay at some point he was given the permission to setup factory at Surat, and then, under pressure and bribes from the Portuguese viceroy the permission was withdrawn.

Hawkins retired from court in disgust on November 2, 1611. He died a couple of years later on his voyage home.

His mission was not accomplished. Then in 1615 King James I, sent a proper ambassador to the court of Jahangir, 'Sir Thomas Roe' with the same objective of seeking permission to setup factory and start trading with India.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Story of unlucky French Astronomer

Guillaume Le Gentil Guillaume Le Gentil was born on 12 September 1725 in France. This french astronomer is credited with discovery of several nebulae and was also elected to Royal Academy of Sciences, Paris.  The lunar crater  Le Gentil  is named after him. Le Gentil was commissioned by the French Academy of Sciences to observe the 1761 transit of Venus in front of the Solar Disk. He was asked to make this observation from Pondicherry, India (Pondicherry was in French possession at that time). This was part of the international collaborative project to measure the distance to the Sun, by observing the transit of Venus at different points on the earth. Hundreds of observer astronauts  were sent to different parts of earth for observing the transit which was expected to take place on 6 June 1761. Le Gentil started on a sea voyage from Paris in March 1760 for Pondicherry, India. By July 1760 he reached Isle de France. Mauritius of today was ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sanskrit Language

This entire village talks in Sanskrit. From ordinary people, traders, laborers, old and young, men and women - every one - they greet, they communicate, they read and even gossip in Sanskrit. This is every day story of village  Mattur  in Shimoga District of Karnataka state, just 300 KM away from India's Information Technology capital (Bangalore). Sanskrit is an old Indo-Aryan Language. Oldest Sanskrit text can be traced in Rig-Veda. Rig-Veda is written in Vedic-Sanskrit in 1500 BC (aprox). Rig-Veda is the oldest of all the four Vedas. In the ancient times in India, Sanskrit was the language used by learned and priests. All north Indian languages have evolved out of Vedic Sanskrit
Post a Comment
Read more