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East India Company Heritage Sites
By Samia Rahman
East India Docks
Built largely to prevent piracy and theft of goods while unloading cargo, the East India Docks were formally opened in 1806 and operated as an import and export Dock until their closure in 1967, by when steam power became a popular means for transporting goods. The Docks today are now mostly filled in with office-towers and residential properties.
Business at the East India Docks boomed, which ‘periodically echoed the roars, hissing, and squawking of exotic animals as they were unloaded from the company’s ships after a long voyage from the East, along with tea from China, spices from the East and Muslin from India’.
The East India Docks were built several years after the building of the West India Docks. Prior to the building of the West India Docks, the East India Company did not see the need for docks of their own for unloading the cargoes shipped from the East. One of the important considerations behind the building of the West India Docks was the loss of cargos brought in from the West Indies through piracy and theft on the river, especially during unloading.
The building of the West India Docks meant that mooring and unloading became more secure. This lead to a switch in the attention of river pirates to cargos of East Indiamen unloading at Blackwall. Although unloading cargos from East India at Blackwall was relatively safer than goods from the West Indies due to the East India Company’s semi-military role, nevertheless piracy and theft of goods increased after the completion of the West India Docks.
The Quantity of Tea Stolen in the delivery of the Ships has been on Average for the three Last years 210 Chests. Valuing them at £10 per chest the amount of Plunder is in this Article alone £2100 per annum.
The East India Docks comprised of an Import Dock and an Export Dock and continued to operate for 161 years until their closure in 1967. During that span of time attention shifted mainly from the East Indies to include imports from Australia, America and other colonies.
The closure of East India Docks was part of a larger plan to close all the docks on the Thames. The site was sold to London Electricity Board in 1971 and then during the 1990s nearly all buildings and structures of the docks were erased to make way for new developments.
Cutler Street Warehouses
The Cutler Street Warehouses were used for storing the commodities brought in by the East India Company. This was mainly tea shipped from China and other items such as carpets, spices, feathers, ivory silk and cotton. Built in the late eighteenth century, the warehouses once employed 4500 staff and covered approximately five acres. As the East India Company’s prime location in the City of London, the Cutler Street warehouses were heavily used for storing goods that came from the Docks.
The Cutler House Warehouses were largely built in the 1790s. At that time the East Indiamen carried imported cargos to Blackwall on the Thames which had deep waters where they were unloaded. From there the ‘valuable cargoes were then carried by lighters to the ‘legal quays’ and ‘sufferance wharves’, and from them to the spacious East India Company warehouses, which by the late eighteenth century centred on Billiter Street and Cutler Street.
The East India Company had warehouses scattered around the East and City of London area, but they were too small when the levels of imports started to magnify after the Battle of Plassey and the growing British involvement in Indian affairs, resulting in a need to increase the access to Indian goods.
The Bengal Warehouses (above) were built in 1771 in Bishopsgate and incorporated under the very large Cutler Street complex. Some of the structures have survived to modern times and were converted into other usages.
The Cutler Street complex – under the Port of London Authority (PLA) – continued to function as a mixed warehouse of rugs, wine and dry goods up until 1973 when it was cleared and sold for conversion into offices. What remained simply as sanitised building for a long time, was later to be converted into a landscape office development in 1982. Today, a visit to Cutler Street will find a scenic garden surrounded by offices.
East India House
The international headquarters for the company was established at East India House, a great commercial mansion, in Leadenhall Street. It was in this building where the Company’s board of directors engaged in its global operations, and where its auctions where held on a quarterly basis.
The East India Company’s operations were mostly eliminated after the Indian Mutiny had ended in 1858 when the rule over India was taken over by the British Crown. The once famous building in Leadenhall Street was pulled down in 1869. Today there is no mark of that splendour that once stood. Currently, the Lloyds of London building is situated on the very spot where the company’s headquarters were once located.
East India House. Published in London in 1817. © The British Library Board. (P1389)
Lloyds of London Building on the site of the earlier East India House
The East India Company’s operations were mostly eliminated after the Indian Mutiny had ended in 1858 when the rule over India was taken over by the British Crown. The once famous building in Leadenhall Street, the East India House, was pulled down in 1869. Today there is no mark of that splendour that once stood. Currently, the Lloyds of London building is situated on the very spot where the company’s headquarters were once located.
East India Museum
Although no physical signs of the existence of the East India Museum and Library can be found anywhere today, they did in fact exist. The East India Company headquarters in Leadenhall Street had an extensive collection of items gathered from the East and documents relating to the administration of the Company’s affairs at home and overseas. The items and the documents were respectively organised into a museum and library. The East India Museum was one of London’s great Victoria attractions ‘showing the wonders of the Raj’. The engravings shows the interior of the East India House Museum in Leadenhall Street, London, in 1858. Many of the items on display in the museum at that time were from the collection of Dr. Forbes Royle. This image shoes a room that had been remodelled, by Digby Wyatt, in the Middle Eastern Islamic style. Both the museum and library were opened in 1801 with ‘great enthusiasm of writers, governors general, [and] employees of the company’.
An image of the inside of the East India Museum
The engraving shows the interior of the East India House Museum in Leadenhall Street, London, in 1858. The museum housed a vast collection of impressive items and clearly resulted in overcrowding due the limited size of the museum’s space. An illustration by Peter Cunningham, Hand-Book of London, 1850, provides an impression of the museum’s contents.
Here is a Museum open to the public on Saturdays, from 11 to 3. Observe — large and capital drawing of old East India House. Hindu idols in silver and gold. Hindu and Goorkha swords. Pair of Gauntlets made at Lahore, sometimes used by the native chiefs and horsemen in India (beautifully elaborate). Sword of the executioner attached to the palace of the King of Candy, (taken at the capture of Candy). Piece of wood of the ship “Farquharson,” containing the horns of a fish called the monodon; the largest horn had penetrated through the copper sheeting and outside lining into one of the floor timbers. An emblematic organ (a tiger on a man), contrived for the amusement of Tippoo Sultan. Surya, the Sun, in his seven-horse car. Buddhist idols, and relics. A perfumed gold necklace. The state howdah of Durgan Sal, usurper of Bhurtpore. Full-length portrait of the famous Nadir Shah. Roman tesselated pavement found in front of the East India House – human figure reclining on a tiger. Babylonian inscription on stone, as sharp and perfect as the day it was cut. Bust of Mr. Colebrooke, by Chantrey. The coins (a most valuable collection under the care of Prof. H.H.Wilson) can only be seen by special permission. Hoole, the translator of Tasso; Charles Lamb, author of Elia; and James Mill, the historian of British India; were clerks in the East India House. “My printed works,” said Lamb, “were my recreations – my true works may be found on the shelves in Leadenhall-street, filling some hundred folios.
After the demolition of the East India House in 1869 the museum’s collections were opened to the public in different venues and under different names before being finally disposed of in 1879, ‘... now forms the basis of the V&A’s superb collection of Indian art. The Amaravati sculptures and the inscription of Nebuchadnezzar are among the treasures of the British Museum. Natural history specimens passed on to the Natural History Museum, while other items went to Kew Gardens.’
East India Library
As one of the most valuable oriental collections in the world, the East India library comprised of the most extensive records and books kept by the East India Company. The Company’s board of directors established the library as part of their societal commitment for learning and knowledge. Library material was principally intended to support the administrative work of the company although scholars and orientalists were allowed loan items. The aim of the records was to assist the control of overseas affairs and better administration, though it was anticipated that the information gathered would direct towards a better understanding of India.
Items in the library included:
... original letters received, drafts or copies of letters sent, ... correspondence, minutes and proceedings of committees and other corporate bodies, .... personnel and nominal returns, ... title deeds and other legal documents, ... account, reports, memoranda, ships’ journals, etc. ...official publications and maps, assembled by the India Office and its predecessors chiefly from materials received in the official correspondence.
Critics of the library believed that such record-keeping hindered efficiency because of the length of the despatches from India. The Company was also not keen on visitors. As a consequence, the library remained underused and limited to outsiders.
However, after the demise of the East India Company’s rule of India in 1858 the collections of the museum and the library started to be dispersed. Especially after the demolition of the Leadenhall headquarter in 1869, the library collection went to the new India Office, which scrutinised the records, destroyed those not considered to be significant and kept those it judged to be important historical records. Subsequently the records and documents were passed on to different agencies for safe keeping before passing on the responsibility, in 1982, to the British Library Board.
Commercial Road
The East India Company lobbied Parliament for permission and paid for the construction of Commercial Road to facilitate the transportation of goods from the East India Dock to the East India Company’s warehouses, particularly those situated in Cutler Street, as the previous narrow and long roadways could not efficiently cater for the needs of the increase in trade and commerce generated by the opening of the East and West India Docks in the early nineteenth century.
A view of East India Dock Road from the entrance to the Blackwall Tunnel going towards Commercial Road
As the British Empire spread across the globe, their expansion resulted in an increase in imports from far-away places, and subsequently, the East and West India docks were built to make unloading more secure and to handle a greater range and volume of goods. However, this also meant that the existing roadways, being narrow with long routes, could not efficiently cater for the needs of the increase in trade and commerce generated by the opening of the two docks in the early nineteenth century.
Commercial Road was constructed to facilitate the transportation of goods from the East India Dock to the East India Company’s warehouses, particularly those situated in Cutler Street. The work took place during 1802-6 and a direct route was created linking the two docks and the City of London.
The Commercial Road was built in stages and many tributary roads followed, such as East India Dock Road and later Barking Road. These roads became very congested and along the Commercial Road houses were built to cater for the needs of workers employed in the sugar refineries established in St George’s in the East End. Victorian styled terraces for better off people were built towards Stepney.
This new highway was dominated by commercial activity and the first stretch built began from Whitechapel to Limehouse. The Commercial Road was built on an area which once accommodated 250 houses. At the time, it was a project undertaken to eliminate the slum area of East End. However, the vicinity around Commercial Road is still relatively an economically-deprived area. Commercial Road exists to serve the route for which it had been built.
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