The annals of history are not always written in stone; sometimes they are printed on paper. A newly digitised collection of 17th-century news pamphlets known as corantos offers a startlingly vivid window into the economic and political nexus between Mughal India and early modern Europe. Analysed by a team of historians at the University of Cambridge, these documents reveal that British merchants and diplomats were far more embedded in the subcontinent's trade networks than previously understood.
The corantos, printed in London between 1620 and 1650, contain dispatches from English East India Company agents stationed in Surat, Agra and Hooghly. They describe, in granular detail, the flow of indigo, calico, saltpetre and pepper from Mughal ports to European markets. One pamphlet from 1624 reports that the Mughal court under Jahangir actively negotiated monopolies with the English, exchanging textile quotas for military support against Portuguese rivals.
“What surprises us is the sheer sophistication of these early trade relationships,” says Dr. Eleanor Finch, lead author of the study published in the Journal of Global History. “The Mughal Empire was not a passive supplier but a shrewd trade partner that leveraged its resources to secure European technology and naval protection.” The corantos show that English factors often served as intermediaries between the Mughal bureaucracy and Persian or Armenian merchants, creating a truly polycentric commercial system.
The primary commodity that sustained this relationship was cotton cloth. The pamphlet dated 15 June 1631 notes that “the finest white calicoes are carried from Patna to Agra, whence they are sent to Surat and then aboard our ships for London and Amsterdam.” This textile trade, historians argue, laid the groundwork for the later Industrial Revolution by introducing European markets to high-quality, cheap fabric. It also had a profound environmental impact: the demand for indigo drove land-use change in Gujarat and Bengal, with deforestation for dye plantations reported in contemporary letters.
Yet the tone of these reports is not one of triumphalism. The corantos are also filled with warnings of famine, plague and political instability. A 1633 pamphlet describes a “great dearth in the Deccan” caused by drought, and another details the flight of peasants following Aurangzeb’s campaigns in the Carnatic. This serves as a reminder that while trade enriched elites, it did not benefit all. The study suggests that the 17th-century global economy was as fragile as our own, prone to price shocks and resource conflicts.
For modern readers, the relevance is undeniable. The Mughal Empire, like our globalised world, was a complex system of interconnected supply chains sensitive to climate variability. The monsoon failures that triggered famines in 1630 and 1650 share patterns with the El Niño events we monitor today. The British historians argue that the 1600s offer a cautionary tale about the limits of extraction: the cotton and spice booms were ultimately unsustainable, leading to soil exhaustion and social unrest.
As we face an era of climate-driven disruption, the corantos remind us that trade is not immune to planetary boundaries. The threads that tied Mughal India to London were as taut as the sea routes that now carry our own containers. Understanding those early entanglements helps us see that our current crises are not new, but part of a long, entangled history of resource use and empire.
Dr. Finch concludes: “We tend to think of globalisation as a modern phenomenon. But the 1600s were already profoundly interconnected. The only difference is the scale and the speed of change.” The weight of that history hangs over every present-day trade negotiation, every decision to open or close a market. The past, it turns out, is still very much with us.
