Eastward Enterprises: Colonial Ireland, Colonial India

Abstract

This article re-examines the career of Gerald Aungier, ‘founding father’ of Bombay and president of Surat (1669–77) through the lens of early modern Ireland. It looks closely at his roles as successful entrepreneur and cosmopolitan imperialist and reconstructs his public and private global networks. It has two objectives. First, it considers how Ireland, England's oldest overseas colony, may have influenced the development of Bombay in the 1670s and how a Protestant from Ireland contributed to the formation of empire in Asia. It will be argued that in a number of key areas Ireland served as a ‘laboratory for empire’ for seventeenth-century Bombay, much as it did for India in the nineteenth century. Irishmen such as Aungier operated as agents of the English empire, establishing structures and formulating policies that were first implemented in colonial Ireland and later transferred to India. The second goal of this article is to invite scholars to interrogate eastward enterprises, as well as westward ones, in a more interconnected way. It investigates the intimate interplay between commerce and colonization and the importance of challenging traditional distinctions between the commercial and imperial eras in British India, as well as distinct notions of a colonial Atlantic world and a ‘trading world’ of Asia.