Draft:The Mughal Empire’s trade relationship with European nations and America in the 18th Century and the 19th Century

• Comment: Besides the Eacott source, I see no indication that this subject (even if corrected to an encyclopedic title) should be covered as a discrete topic. Perhaps a broader article on the Mughal Empire and trade is appropriate, but essay-type writing needs to go. Pbritti (talk) 03:53, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

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As the Mughal Empire got into the eighteenth century, the trade received a pronounced setback especially when compared to the dizzying heights of the seventeenth century; At the same time, the evolving political developments progressively diminished the factor of Mughal presence in the functioning of trade operations. During the 18th century, India’s foreign trade underwent a considerable expansion as a result of the tripartite participation of the Dutch, English and the French. Individual French merchants, however, were to conduct the Indies commerce, which had recovered significantly by the late 1760s but paled in comparison to that of the British East India Company. The Mughal Empire’s exported goods were famous for its luxury goods, especially textiles and spices. Textiles, for example, the average annual value of the total English and Dutch exports in the first quinquennial period of the 1750s was about 5.5 million while the total value of the Asian exports of Bengal silk and textiles can be computed at 8.5 to 10 million at the minimum. With the emergence of sophisticated business networks in Asian trade, colonial India became the centre of a major network of international and inter-regional trade,exporting cotton textiles, silk, indigo, spices and other raw materials to Europe and North America.

A direct trade between the Mughal Empire and the American colonies was limited. This period was marked by European colonial powers, controlling trade routes and markets as well as the 17th century. American colonies were under British rule, and their trade policies were heavily influenced by British interests. Trade between the Mughal Empire and America, therefore, was intermediated through European tradespeople including Dutch, French and the British merchants. Goods from the Mughal Empire, like cotton textiles, spices, and indigo, were exported to European markets and then re-exported to the Americas. Not just fabrics but fashions from India, too, increased in popularity Gentlemen from Calcutta, to London, to Philadelphia wore calico or damask banyans in the East Indian style, loose and form fitting “at all times of the day and abroad in the streets”. By the late 1750s, almost 30 percent of colonial purchases came from countries and regions other than Britain, like the Caribbean and India, but were heavily taxed since they had to be bought through British merchants. And yet the demand for Indian textiles remained high, partly because they were of higher quality than anything being produced locally, and partly because the colonists did not have access to materials like silk. The Indian goods accelerated colonial tensions between America and Britain due to their high taxes and restrictive trade laws within colonies. Americans could get goods more cheaply and make greater profits by trading with Holland and France, for example, Leyden (Netherland) offered a good market for Indian goods for American merchants. After the independence of the United States of America, in the late 1770s, merchants in New York, Philadelphia, and Hartford, Connecticut had boasted of their fresh supplies of India calicoes, chintz, muslin and shawls specifically imported from London; Smugglers brought English and India Goods from British-occupied ports into US-held ports. The independent United States offered Britons familial merchant partners and the ideal cover not only for the capital but also for men and ships; It helped to provide a level of access for private British merchants to India who had gained their experience in India working for the Company, and they traded with Company representatives in Company colonies, which the trade was extralegal. The American independence did not sever the commercial ties with British and Indian goods.

In the 19th century, the trade relations of the United States and India were intricately intertwined within global commerce. The most important agricultural commodities for India in the first half of the 19th century were opium, raw cotton, raw silk and sugar, and they were a growing fraction of India’s export. Indian commodities, renowned for their high quality, contributed to the accumulation of British wealth. The outbreak of the American Civil War marked another stage in the development of the relationship, as Indian raw cotton became an essential substitute for American cotton. In addition, the British private companies in India had begun to diversify their investments. By the 1840s British private enterprise in India had become involved in tea plantations and a number of small industrial concerns in Bengal, but until the 1850s the importance of India to the British economy was still limitedto a relatively modest mutual commodity trade.The exports from India continued to be dominated by Indian goods such as opium, cotton, silk and sugar, which were crucial in supplying raw materials to the industrial sector in Britain. After the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the Mughal Empire was collapsed and India was turning into the British Raj from the Company Raj.