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IRAN
AND THE WORLD IN THE SAFAVID AGE
Abstracts
Barendse, Dr. René, Leiden University, Institut Kern, IGEER, History
Department, Leiden, The Dutch East India Company, Iran and the Arabian
Seas: Some Second Thoughts
The Dutch East India
Company (VOC) was far and away the most important European trading
partner of Iran with sales steadily growing from 400.000 'Asian
Guilders' in 1640 to 1.000.000 at the end of the seventeenth
century. The 'Persia
Office' accounted for about 20% of all sales of the VOC in Asia
and by 1690 surpassed Japan as the single most profitable office
of the VOC. This was
import-based growth: the VOC could sell a great deal in Iran but
there was no profitable product it could export from there.
The
importance of the VOC to the trade of Bandar Abbas steadily
increased with the decline of 'Asian' shipping to Bandar Abbas. However, from having a virtual monopoly in the trade with
Bandar Abbas around 1660, at the end of the seventeenth century
the VOC was facing stiff and rapidly growing competition from the
English country trade. Parallel
to this, its Indian competitors were steadily losing ground. The
problem for the Safavids here was that both the English and the
Dutch were not paying customs at Bandar Abbas and that, therefore,
in spite of the increasing trade, the court saw its customs-income
rapidly dwindle. Furthermore,
the Dutch were increasingly defrauding on internal customs too, so
that the increase of Dutch trade was at best a mixed blessing: it
provided jobs and cheap goods for Iranian consumers but it hardly
provided the state with any income.
Thus, there were repeated tussles between the Safavid
Empire and the VOC in which the state sought to curtail illegal
tax-free imports, efforts, which were then branded by the Dutch as
extortion.
The basic problem for the
VOC was that it could import to Bandar Abbas but that it had
nothing to export, as from 1650 onward (with the rise of
silk-exports from Bengal) the VOC made almost no profit on
exporting Persian silk to the Netherlands.
And, in any case, this silk could not compete with silk the
Armenians fetched to the Netherlands via Aleppo.
But the economic policy
of the Safavids was fundamentally a variant on the bullionist
theme: the administration sought to accumulate silver and gold
reserves and curtail exports and its main interest was in
encouraging the export of raw products and manufactured goods,
rather than 'import-based growth'.
This policy was subject to several sharp reversals but
basically the administration sought to restrict imports and to
aggressively promote exports.
It is in this context
that we should perceive the administration's attempts to constrain
the VOC to buy silk from the Crown Domains at a price fixed by the
court in return for freedom from customs.
Furthermore the court prohibited the VOC from exporting
bullion. This led to
two wars between the VOC and the Safavid Empire.
Nevertheless, this was
still very contained violence.
Though there was pressure of the 'men on the spot' to
establish a permanent military presence in the Gulf, for the VOC
in the seventeenth century (if not in the eighteenth), force was
part of a negotiating process in which an occasional show of force
was necessary. This
was no longer the case later on, proving that it was not something
inherent to the VOC but rather it was because the VOC in the
seventeenth century lacked local allies and a local structure for
the recruitment of manpower.
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