Richard Craddock's Career with the East India Company - Man Family

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INTRODUCTION
In order to appreciate Richard Craddock’s career with the
East India Company it is important to understand the
economic, political, and social situation that prevailed in
India and Persia at the time, as well the organization of
the Company itself.
When we first meet Craddock in 1655 he is residing in
Ahmadabad, one of the major mercantile centres of the
Moghul empire. John Jourdain, the first Englishman to visit
the city on behalf of the East India Company in 1611,
describes it as follows:
This city is one of the fairest cities of all the Indias,
both for building and strength as also for beauty and
situated in a pleasant soil, and has much trade by reason
of much clothing which is made within the city, as baftas
[a general term for Indian piece goods] birames, pintadoes
and all sorts of other cloth. Likewise it is in the heart
of the country for Indigo… (From The Journal of John
Jourdain, p. 173 quoted by B. G. Gokhale i )
Nicholas Downton, another Company employee visited
Ahmadabad four years later and related that it is:
Famous for nobility and gentry, also for rich trade in
variety, indigo especially, by means of a general
confluence of most nations of the world, English, Dutch,
Portugeese, Jews, Armenians, Arabians, Medes and Persians,
Turks and Tartarians, cum multis aliis …. If please God,
our trade continue in those parts, I think Ahmadabad the
chiefest place for residence of four or five factors …
(quoted by B. G . Gokhale)
It was not just in textiles that Ahmadabad excelled but
also jewelry and precious metals such as gold, silver,
pearls and gem stones. An English traveler observed that
there were found there: ‘great pearls, very large emeralds
… and perfect colored rubies...’ (Gokhale) It was also an
important transportation hub linking Sind in the north,
Surat to the south, Cambay in the west and Agra in the
east. And it contained one of the four authorized mints of
the Moghul empire.