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

6
The European Traders
A number of European nations were competing with the
English for the trade of the East, viz. the Danes, the
Dutch, and the Portuguese. Of these the Danes had but one
settlement in India - Tranquebar, on the Coromandel Coast,
and their commerce was small. That of the Dutch, on the
other hand, was much larger than the English. They traded
wherever the English did - in Bengal, Golconda, Gujarat,
Sind, and at Agra; they employed abundant capital and a
large number of ships. One special advantage they possessed
was their mastery of the trade of the Far East. This
enabled them to supply India with goods from China and
Japan, as well as with spices and pepper from Java and
Sumatra, thus obviating the necessity of relying, like the
English, mainly on the importation of money and European
commodities. These included glassware, hides, coral,
broadcloth and lead. In India itself their only territorial
possession was at Pulicat, on the Coromandel Coast, 25
miles north of Madras. Here they had a fort outside the