Travels in India (Tavernier) 160.2.4

160.2.4

All the spices, sugar, and other goods of the Company are sold wholesale, generally at Hormuz or Gombroon, and amount in value, annually, to 15 or 16 tonnes of gold, each tonne being equal to 100,000 guilders, which are equivalent in our money to 120,000 livres, and the 16 tonnes of gold to 1,920,000 livres. The Sieur Obrecht did not sell all these goods without receiving annually for himself, 80,000 or 100,000 guilders, which the Persian merchants presented to him, underhand, through the broker, so that he might allow the goods to be sold at a low price. But he was not the inventor of this fine means of enriching himself, others practised it before him, and since his time others have employed it, especially the Sieurs Constant and Van Wijk. Moreover, there is also the profit that these gentry make on silk. It is true that for some years past the Company has not esteemed Persian silk so highly as it did formerly, because it has not so great a sale in Japan as it would have had if the trade had continued as it was in the years 1636 and 1637. All the chiefs of the factory who succeeded Obrecht could (not?) have made as much as he did; for in the two above-named years silk was dear in Japan, because the people of China and Tonquin being then at war with the Dutch, the latter prevented them from trading with Japan; and the Chinese and Tonquinese could not obtain silk except through the hands of the Dutch.