CONTENTS
PART
ONE: INTRODUCTORY
1.
white
goes east page17
2.
madras-on-sea
20
3.
the
company
22
4.
captain alley and
Co. 25
5.
trade
and security
29
6.
across the
bay 31
7.
mergui
35
8.
an
emporium of the coast trade 38
9.
the
forest
belt 41
10.
old
ayudhya
45
11.
white
meets phaulkon 50
12.
elephants
56
13.
phaulkon
emerges 62
14.
lord
white
66
15.
apostates and renegades
69
PART
TWO: THE DAVENPORT PAPERS
16. White turns filibuster
79
17.A pirate in a
river 85
18.
the
capture of davenport 95
19.
captain coates and his opium 105
20.
white
increases the pace 109
21.
white
is recalled to ayudhya 113
22.
the
sorrowful journey 117
23.
white's desperate sickness
120
24.
the
fierce fight with the macassars 128
25.
phaulkon offers to make white prime
minister
136
26.
white
makes hay 144
27.
doubts and rumours
152
28.
the
four alternatives
157
29.
white
prepares to escape
166
30.
davenport's dilemma
169
31.
the
forged commission 172
32.
the
return of the 'resolution' 173
33.
davenport decides to betray white 176
34.
behind the scenes in london and madras 183
35.
H.M.S. 'curtana' (captain weltden) 202
36.
the
seizure of the 'resolution' 211
37.
white's plot and the wizards 220
38.
the
massacre
226
39.
white
and weltden face to face 238
40.
hiding in the
islands 241
41.
treason
246
42.
white
and weltden arrange for daven-
port's
murder
248
43.
white gives weltden the slip
254
PART
THREE: CONCLUSION
44.
the
fate of the 'pearl'
261
45.
the
torture and death of phaulkon 264
46.
white
in london
271
47.
the
last of weltden
281
APPENDICES
1.
the
davenport papers 286
2.
other
authorities
290
3.
notes
292
letter from white found in bath
300
index
307
MAPS
to face
page
A modern
sketch map of the mergui area 42
A map of mergui harbour 204
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I. WHITE GOES EAST
This book sets out to give an 'Accompt of the
Passages at Mergen', as
Samuel White, in the felicitous language of the seventeenth
century, called his account
of what happened at Mergui
in 1687. For the last hundred
years Mergui has been a
British possession* situated in the extreme
south of Burma, but at the time of James II it belonged
to Siam, being that
kingdom's port on the Bay of Bengal. It was then, as
a rule, called Mergen by the English. I much prefer
the name Mergen to Mergui; it is more euphonious, it carries
with it the sound of that remote shore. But, except
when I am quoting from
the original authorities, I must discard
it for the modern name.
I was at Mergui myself for
nearly three years in charge of the administration. It is a
town of some 20,000 inhabitants,
situated on an island of the utmost fertility
at the edge of a
great archipelago. The inhabitants in general
are dressed in
Burmese clothes and use the language of that
country, though
they are of the mixed blood of Burma, Siam,
Malaya, China and India, with strains of Portuguese and
Arab. It is a place overshadowed by a various past.
While I was resident
there, I heard a great deal about the
now forgotten Englishmen,
Samuel White, Francis Davenport and Captain Anthony Weltden, and
of the strange drama of violence and fraud in which they
were involved. I made it
my business to examine on the spot everything which bore
upon their history. On my return to London, I immersed
myself in the original sources preserved in the India Office
Library. The present narrative is built on these two foundations.
I have cast about in my
mind for some method by which I
might plunge straight
into the deep of the story, but I have not found it. The reader of this
book must be content to march
at first with
an easy step, making his observations as he goes
* From 1825 to 1948.
17
II. MADRAS-ON-SEA
In 1676 Madras was the headquarters of the East India
Company's trading establishments on the Bay of Bengal. There
were several of these, such as Masulipatam and Hugli, but
Madras was far the largest and strongest. It consisted of
the fort, called St. George, and the native town with its
fields.
It was an attractive-looking place and there are some
excellent contemporary descriptions. Dampier in his New
Voyage gives an idea of its striking appearance:
'I was much pleased with the beautiful prospect this place
makes off at sea. For it stands on a plain Sandy spot of
ground close to the shore, the sea sometimes washing its
Walls, which are of Stone and high, with Half Moons and
Flankers and a great many guns mounted on the battlements;
so that what with the Walls and Fine Buildings within the
Fort, the large town of Maderas without it, the Pyramids of
the English Tombs, Houses and Gardens adjacent, and the
variety of fine trees scatter'd up and down, it makes as
agreeable a Landskip as I have any where seen.'
We may be sure that, after eight months or so at sea on a
500-ton ship, Samuel White and Mary Povey, in their then
state of mind, will have found it enchanting.
There was no harbour at Madras, no mole of any kind. Ships
had to anchor in the open roadstead and landing was in boats
on to the beach. A Doctor John Fryer, who was there two
years before White, wrote of how his boat ran through the
breakers and how he was carried ashore upon the shoulders
of the Indians to the 'scalding sand', which was so
dazzling that he hastened to enter the fort through the
water-gate. Describing what he saw inside, he says: 'The
streets are sweet and clean, ranked with fine Mansions . . .
rows of Trees before their doors whose Italian Porticos
make no ordinary conveyance into their Houses built of
Brick and Stone.'
Continuing his promenade—and we may well suppose that
20
Old Ayudhya
last
unexplored regions in Asia. No one knows what may be in the
jungles extending for hundreds of miles north and south of
the track. Besides wild animals and leeches, they reek of
malaria. If you lose your way and escape the tigers, the
ants will pick your bones. All that is certain enough. But
they are also said to contain gold, oil and tin deposits,
rare animals such as tapirs, caches of Ming porcelain and
pieces of eight.
Taking
it all round, Mergui was not too easy a place for the
European visitor to enter. On the sea side pirate gypsies
gave him pause; eastwards a jungle full of uncatalogued
terrors confronted him. Eight times was White to cross the
forest, the seventh passage, this time in the monsoon,
nearly costing him his life.
At the
junction of the track from the pass with the main coast road
the country assumed again a mild and cultivated appearance.
The road led first to a small square town, behind a wooden
palisade, called Koui; from thence to Preanne, a port on a
river mouth, and lastly to Pipili, a large town with brick
walls. At either of the two last the traveller engaged a
large country boat and, cutting off the north-west corner of
the Gulf of Siam, came in a couple of days to the mouth of
the Menam river, called 'the bar of Siam'. Ayudhya was fifty
miles upstream, but two flood tides carried him easily to
the capital.
X. OLD
AYUDHYA
he
modern traveller is always a little disappointed. Easy
communications and European propaganda have levelled the
differences between countries. Marvels are no longer by the
roadside. But for White, trudging in his English clothes, or
in a palanquin or in a galley, 'This', as
45
Behind the Scenes in London and Madras
by Shafaad Ahmed Khan in his The East India Trade in the
Seventeenth Century,
that the Court of Directors never for a
moment contemplated
during that century the foundation of
an English dominion in
India. Here is a definite case where, disregarding their old
guiding principle of trade and security,
they desired to conquer and occupy a town with its adjacent
territory. True, Mergui
was not in India, but the project
shows a state of mind. At
the date, admittedly, it was a preposterous
notion, as the sequel will show.
But there is an explanation. Childe had recently come to
the alarming conclusion that if the English did not take
Mergui,
the French would do so. Though England was at peace
with France, that would enormously increase the
embarrassments of the East India Company in the bay.
To establish the fact that it was his preoccupation with
French designs in Siam that drove Childe to the issue of the
above rash letter, I must make a few further extracts from
the
correspondence. It will
be recalled that French interest in Siam
was missionary at first.
The laborious journeys of eminent
ecclesiastics have already been mentioned. All
that, of course, was
quite harmless and excited no interest in England. But in
1683, the year White was appointed Shahbandar, the King of
Siam sent an
embassy to Louis XIV to discuss reciprocal trade
arrangements. This was
actually the beginning of Phaulkon's policy to strengthen
himself against the multifarious dangers
of his position as a
foreign adventurer in an oriental court.
Observers of eastern affairs in England began to scent the
wind. In the autumn of 1684 Lord Preston wrote from Paris
to the Earl of Sunderland: 'The Mandarins of Siam saw the
day before yesterday, in passing by, his most Christian
Majesty in the gallery of Versailles. When he was about 10
paces from them they threw themselves upon the floor and
covered their faces, and being bid three or four times to
rise
they would scarce do it.'
The same diplomat
continued to keep his government
192
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