Excerpt from A Calendar of the Court Minutes, Etc of the East India Company 1660-1663 At the commencement of the period here dealt with, the entire management of the trade was in the hands of the New General Stock, which had been started in 1657 upon the grant of a new charter from the Protectorate Government. Its predecessor, the United Joint Stock, was still in the process of winding-up, and meetings were occasionally called of the Committees who had been entrusted with that task; but it had ceased to trade and had left the field to the new body. The latter had not so far attained any striking degree of success. The times had been difficult ever since the starting of the Stock. The uncertainty of the political situation and the financial needs of the Government had been a dead weight upon the trade of the country; while a further depression had resulted from the heavy loss of shipping due to the Spanish War and to the depredations of privateers. The East India Company naturally felt the full force of the depression; in August, 1659, we find the Committees writing to Surat that piecegoods would scarcely fetch their prime cost and that the supply must be cut down to one-quarter of what had previously been ordered; while in the following February it was stated that there was a sufficient quantity in hand of indigo and Surat calicoes to meet all probable demands for two or three years. Still, the Committees did not lose heart, but went on dispatching ships and goods to the East, in hopes of better times. The Barhadoes Merchant sailed in December, 1659, for Guinea and the Coromandel Coast, and was soon followed by the Blackmore (or Blackamoor) bound for Guinea and Surat. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.