Captain Middleton and the First English Factory at Surat (1611)

William Hawkins after leaving the court of Mughals at joined Captain Middleton at Bantam. In one of his homeward journey he died, but in 1611 Captain Henry Middleton landed at Swally near Surat and tried to get some recognition to the British Business.

At that time, English were in humiliating situation in India, subject to all kinds of indignities and insults. They had no valid rights to do any business in India and were obliged to pay bribes for any facility they could get here. They were gibed, robbed, arrested and beaten in the streets. There Portuguese influence was not allowing them to do something over here. When Henry Middleton entered India, there was an opposition from the Portuguese, but the British defeated the Portuguese in the Battle of Bombay in 1611.

But he was able to get a permission from the local Mughal governors to open a factory in India, so in 1611 the first English Factory was established in Surat.


7 Comments

  1. Jayanth

    March 14, 2013 at 11:53 pm

    first factory of english EIC was machilipatnam called masulipatnam in 1611. kindly check and correct it.

  2. ptsameer77

    July 21, 2013 at 1:09 am

    sir,
    there are a lot of mistakes in your history notes so please make it correct so we will able to get some fine quality of knowledge…

  3. Nitin

    October 21, 2013 at 12:14 pm

    sir,

    kindly check the details and correct it asap.
    In 1612,James I instructed Sir Thomas Roe to visit Mughal Emperor Nuruddin Salim Jahangir to arrange for a commercial treaty that would give company exclusive rights to reside and build factories in Surat and the mission was highly successful as Jahangir sent a letter to james through Sir Thomas Roe.

  4. Solanki Vipul

    April 6, 2016 at 8:20 pm

    Sir, First engliah factory in india is machilipattanam in 1611 and after in 1613 in surat….
    Please check it…..

  5. Sahil D hEarT hackEr

    July 27, 2016 at 3:02 am

    sir,
    You are right first EIC was established in Surat but in 1608
    and first legal EIC was established in machilipatnam in 1611

  6. Hitesh Gupta

    December 23, 2017 at 7:21 pm

    in 1608 they didn’t get permission from Jahangir , so they just created a trading post.

  7. Kailash suthar

    May 3, 2020 at 8:25 pm

    1600-east india company
    1608-William hokince(Jems 1)(didn’t get
    permission)
    1612-13 -suvali war and surat factory by henry Middleton & captain thomas best
    1615-sir Tomas ro (Jems 1)
    Surat factory oficial permission

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