# The English factory at Surat
**सूरत में अंग्रेज़ी कोठी**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/surat-factory/
- Chapter: [The Mughals and their rivals](https://indianepics.online/chapter/mughal.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1613 CE
- Where: Surat, Gujarat (21.17, 72.83)
- Tags: trade, colonial

## Summary

After an English victory over the Portuguese off Swally, Jahangir confirms the East India Company's right to trade at Surat.

स्वाली के पास पुर्तगालियों पर अंग्रेज़ों की जीत के बाद जहाँगीर ने ईस्ट इंडिया कंपनी को सूरत में व्यापार का अधिकार दिया।

## Account

Thomas Best's ships beat off a Portuguese squadron at Swally, Surat's roadstead, in November 1612. The Mughal governor then agreed terms, a farman from Jahangir ratifying them reached Best in January 1613, and Thomas Aldworth stayed on to run the factory: a trading house, not a fort.

The Company spent most of its first century as one trader among Portuguese, Dutch, Armenian and Gujarati rivals, and Surat remained its chief Indian base until Bombay took over in the 1680s. Thomas Roe's embassy to Jahangir in 1615-19 won firmer terms.

## Sources

- Foster (ed.), The Voyage of Thomas Best to the East Indies, 1612-14 (Hakluyt Society, 1934) — https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.505027
- Letters Received by the East India Company from its Servants in the East, vol. 1 (1602-13) — https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.38607

## Image

Surat castleE. Carmichael, John (Around 1751); Grose, John Henry (Around 1750-1783), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASurat_castleE.jpg

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