Question

In which city was the East India Company's first factory built?​

Answer 1

$\huge\bf{Surat}$

By January 1613, the first East India Company factory had come up at Surat.

Answer 2

Answer:

Surat

Explanation:

Four hundred years ago, a maverick English sea captain, Thomas Best, sank four Portuguese galleons off the Surat coast with his two ships, Red Dragon and Hosiander. Captain Best and his crew’s exploits in the naval Battle of Swally (corruption of Suvali) on October 28, 1612, impressed the Mughal governor of the province so much that he got them a treaty ratified by Emperor Jahangir, which translated to trading rights. By January 1613, the first East India Company factory had come up at Surat.

Four centuries later, those early footprints of the British Empire have been obliterated. There is no sign of the factory — more of a warehouse — save fragments of a wall that once belonged to the sprawling establishment. The ruins are a testimony to our indifference to heritage structures.

Of course, nobody could have imagined that the English would expand that first factory into another factory, that factory into a province, and that province into an empire in about 150 years. But at Surat in 1613, there were five principal factors — Andrew Starkey, Canning, Aldworth, Withington and Kerridge — who struggled hard to stay afloat in the face of Portuguese hostility, intrigues of the Portuguese Jesuits, and unfriendly behaviour of Mughal crown prince Mirza Khurram (later Emperor ShahKhurram, who had the jagir of Surat, favoured the Portuguese over any other European power, and so did the Surat Mahajan Sabha, a representative body of Indian traders. However, it was Khurram who gave Sir Thomas Roe the firman to trade in 1618 in the name of his father, Emperor Jahangir, after the English once again defeated the Portuguese fleet at Surat and proved their mastery over the seas.

According to historian H G Rawlinson, the factory was one of the best buildings in Surat and was leased to the company for £60 per annum. “It was a solid, two-storied building, opening in Muhammadan fashion, inwards. The outside was plain stone and timber, with good carving ‘without representations’. The flat roof and the upper story floors were of solid cement, half a yard thick. Inside was a quadrangle surrounded by cloisters or verandahs. The ground floor was used for the Company’s trade; the rooms opening on to it, utilised as stores and godowns, presented a busy scene in the shipping season...” he wrote in his 1920 book British Beginnings in Western India: 1579-1657; an account of the early days of the British factory of Surat.