The old ports of Surat and Hoogly declined by the end of 18th century. Why? Give three reasons.
Answers
1)This resulted in a decline of the old ports of Surat through which local merchants had operated.
2)The European companies gradually gained power – first securing a variety of concessions from local courts, then the monopoly rights to trade.
3)At the port, the big shippers and export merchants had brokers who negotiated the price and bought goods from the supply merchants operating inland.
that's all
by Sujeet yaduvanshi
Reasons are :-
World trade expanded at a very fast rate during the 17th and 18th centuries. The acquisition of colonies was also responsible for the increase in demand. The producers in the towns failed to produce the required quantity of cloth. The producers could not expand the production in the towns, because urban crafts and trade guilds were powerful. These were the associations of producers that restricted the entry of new people into the trade. The rulers granted different guilds the monopoly right to produce and the trade-in specific products.
The European companies were gaining power by securing a variety of concessions from the local courts. It was very difficult for the Indian merchants and traders to face the competition as most of the European countries had huge resources. Some of the European companies got the monopoly rights to trade.
All this resulted in the decline of Surat Port by the end of the eighteenth century. In the last years of the seventeenth century, the gross value of trade that passed through Surat had been 16 million. By the 1740s, it had slumped to 3 million. With the passage of time, Surat and Hooghly decayed, while Bombay (Mumbai) and Calcutta (Kolkata) grew.
The company tried to eliminate the existing traders and brokers connect with the cloth trade, and establish more direct control over the weavers. It appointed a paid servant called Gomastha to supervise weavers, collect supplies, and examine the quality of cloth.
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