The 1689 Mughal Siege of East India Company Bombay

Crisis and Historical Erasure

Bibliographic Data

ID4494610
AuthorsMargaret R Hunt (0000-0002-5917-3390, Uppsala University, corresponding author)
Year2017
Volume84
Pages149-169
Publication date2017-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueHistory Workshop Journal (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1363-3554 • E-ISSN: 1477-4569
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/hwj/dbx034
OpenAlexW2749541039
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited15

Sidi Yakut Khan’s 1689–90 siege of Bombay was the final act in the First Anglo-Mughal War, started by the English East India Company in the mid 1680s in an attempt to improve its terms of trade. The siege has previously been little studied, and this essay outlines the main events and uses them to discuss some of the challenges the Company faced both in India and in England. The siege and the humiliating peace terms which resulted from it reflected badly on the competence of the Company’s servants, the loyalty of its soldiery (many of whom ended up deserting over to Sidi Yakut Khan), and the viability of its monopoly trading model. Consequently Company directors back in England, already under fire from the new regime of William and Mary, tried with a fair degree of success to cover up or minimize what had happened at Bombay. Recovering that largely forgotten story highlights the precarious nature of early modern English settlements in India while also suggesting the need to view English trading ventures in a more Asia-centred context than is typically done

Ancient history · Archaeology · Context (archaeology · Economic history · Economics · Economy · Human settlement · Market economy · Monopoly · Siege · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Philippine History and Culture