As an historian whose work has focussed on the interaction between Europeans and non-Europeans in the Indian Ocean, and especially Persia, there is one ‘document’ on which I have worked more than any other; The East India Company’s Persian Farman. As this is my first post for MEMOs, I thought that a look at why the Farman is so important would be a great start. A Farman is a collection of proclamations and grants made by a ruler, usually to a subject or a subordinate. In the Ottoman Empire, the term Ahdnameh is used, while the individual terms are known as Irqam (sing. Raqam). In Europe, Raqam was often translated to the Latin capitulum, meaning ‘article’, or ‘subheading’, hence these grants becoming known in the Ottoman context as ‘Capitulations’. Due to this quirk of translation, many students of the history of the Middle East have mistakenly believed that the Ahdnameh therefore had something to do with surrender, but in fact the opposite is true. The Persian Farman, like the Ottoman Ahdnmaeh, is in fact a set of permissions handed downward to a supplicant. This tells us that the relationship between Europeans and Asian powers, whether the Ottomans, Safavids, Mughals or others, was often tipped in favour of the latter rather than the former.

Why does this matter? In the case of the East India Company, this distinction is hugely important for two reasons; firstly, it gives agency to Asian rulers in a way that historiography has often overlooked, while secondly showing that the relationship between the European recipient and the Asian ruler was reciprocal. The East India Company’s Farman shows that both parties recognised the need for a status quo, indeed in the case of Persia, the Farman was renewed a number of times over the course of more than a century.

While some Irqam were changed or adjusted, for the most part, additional terms tended to demonstrate a recognition of current issues or standing issues. The Farman therefore tells us not only about the trading circumstances of the East India Company, their access to silk, horses and customs exemptions, but also broader social concerns. Who was responsible for children born to English and Persian parents, did the Company have permission to build their own houses, were they allowed access to municipal water supplies? Far from being trivial, these terms tell us a great deal about the lived experience of European merchants in Persia. They were having children with local women and had concerns over the status of their homes. Likewise, the granting of these same privileges by the Persian Shahs shows that addressing these matters was important enough to require direct action.

The Farman stands as a clear sign that both Europeans and Asian states and organisations approached their interactions in a legalistic way, with mutual interests and mechanisms written and maintained in writing. Holden Furber spoke of Eurasian relations in the Early Modern Period in terms of partnership, Subrahmanyam instead saw managed conflict, I would contend that the Farman instead points to an age of cooperation by contract.

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Source: IOR/G/29/5 ff. 350‒351 List of Irqam granted to the Company in Consultation on 12 August 1736. Image courtesy of the British Library.