On 22 October 1634, the clerk responsible for keeping the diary drawn up in Batavia Castle (Dagh-Register gehouden in’ t Casteel Batavia) diligently summarized the latest intelligence about trade in the Bay of Bengal. His employer, the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, had just commenced trading operations in the Mughal provinces of Bengal and Orissa, and a barque arriving that day carried initial snippets of information concerning the first Dutch factory in the region , recently established in the small port town of Hariharpur. So far trade had been slack, hampered by a shortage of merchandise and high prices. This unpromising yet otherwise rather ordinary entry took a surprising turn, however, when discussing another recent entrant in to the Bengal trade, the English East India Company. The building of an English factory in Hariharpur had commenced with the consent of the nawab (provincial governor) of Orissa, but, according to Dutch reports, once the structure was nearly completed, the nawab had it entirely ‘destroyed and pulled down again’. 3 The reason given for this reversal of fortunes was that ‘a certain English merch ant named Mr. Cartrijcq’ and ‘the wife of a prominent Moor there residing’ were found to be ‘having carnal conversation through a large hole in the wall of said lodge’. To make things worse, when Cartwright left on Company business to nearby Balasore, he had attempted to take the married woman with him
