Merchants and Adventurers in India
B.G. Gokhale takes us on a visit to Surat, where the English adventure in India began.
Some one hundred and fifty-seven miles north of Bombay, along the Arabian Sea-coast, lies the town of Surat. Its meandering streets and the sluggish river Tapti, on whose left bank the town is located, scarcely give indication of Surat’s past greatness. Today it is a district town of some importance in the southern part of the state of Gujarat and has a population of some 300,000. Three hundred years ago Surat was the greatest Indian port and trade mart of India, hub of a vast international commercial network, binding the country with the Red Sea area on the one hand and South-east Asia on the other and England and Europe.
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