UC Riverside

“The Gulfe of Persia devours all”: English Merchants in Safavīd Persia, 1616-1650

by

Daniel B. Razzari

Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in History

University of California, Riverside, Month 2016

Dr. Thomas Cogswell, Chairperson

This dissertation focuses on the Englishmen residing in Safavīd Persia from 1616 to about 1652. Relying primarily on the correspondence between the East India Company’s factors, this present work will examine a series of problems, both internal and external, that eventually brought the Company’s silk trade in Persia to a sudden halt in the 1640s and well before the Company lost its monopoly on eastern trade in 1653. This dissertation is divided into two major parts. The first half is concerned with examining the development of Anglo-Safavīd relations before and after the siege of Hormuz in 1623, and how the English responded to the Safavīd’s expectations towards the quasi-military alliance against the Portuguese. The English silk trade depended on their active involvement in Shah Abbas I’s plan to eradicate the Portuguese from the Persia Gulf, but as the English lost their enthusiasm to aid Shah Abbas relations between the two began to erode. Additionally, the English leaders in Surat developed policy that greatly affected their tenuous relationship with the Safavīd State. In 1635, William Methwold’s peace with the Portuguese was a pivotal moment in the East India Company’s history, which was most noticeable in the restructuring of the international political landscape. The second major theme in this dissertation examines the English lifestyle in Persia. This includes diet, social interaction with their peers, their living space, the terrain, religion, mortality rates, and individual wealth. It shows how the English lifestyle affected the stability of the English factory in Persia, but also how it ultimately created a shift in attitudes in the Safavīd court towards the English factors. As a whole, the dissertation provides a social history of the East India Company’s servants in Persia, and how their experience in Persia had a significant role in the outcome of English trade. The conventional approach to the Company’s history follows the macro-economic perspective, but the pages that follow will display the importance of isolating pockets, from within the vast network of the wider English mercantile community, in order to reveal alternative explanations for the Company’s successes and failures.