The bilateral trade between Antwerp and Mumbai is dominated by the historic diamond trade. There is an equally significant and voluminous trade in metals (18%), chemical products that include pharmaceuticals (active pharmaceutical ingredients) and benzene which are (17%), while machinery and equipment, textiles, plastics, and minerals make up the rest.
This trade[1] is significant. All major European ports have connections with India, but, says Luc Arnouts, Vice President, International Relations and Networks of the Antwerp-Bruges Port Authority (ABPA), his port and the Mumbai Port Trust (MbPT) and Jawaharlal Nehru Port Authority (JNPA) enjoys a market share of about 30% of EU’s trade with India. A large part of that is with Mumbai port. Consequently, the MbPT and JNPT are today ranked as ABPA’s tenth-most important partner port globally.
The ranking is new but the engagements between the two port cities over the centuries intersect, and they share similarities in their development despite their differing history and geography.
Unlike Mumbai which is a seaport, Antwerp is a riverine port located on the river Scheldt. It is a major outlet for exports and imports from Belgium’s neighbours France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and Italy. It is a much older port city than Mumbai, and gained prominence in the 16th century after the Portuguese short-circuited the Venetian-Ottoman monopoly on the Indian Ocean spice trade by discovering a direct sea route via the Cape of Good Hope in 1498 to the Indian subcontinent, South East Asia and the Far East. Portugal used Antwerp port and its markets as an outlet for the spices its caravels and carracks brought back to Europe. India’s famed Golconda diamonds were sold in Antwerp by the Portuguese during this period.
The earliest direct contact between Antwerp and the Indian subcontinent can be traced to the 18th-century Ostend Company which was established by a conglomerate of Dutch, Irish, Danish, and Flemish interests and was given its charter by the Austrian Habsburg emperor Charles VI in 1722. As its name suggests, the chartered company was headquartered in the port of Ostend in Flanders (in today’s Belgium)[2], and its directors worked out of Antwerp. Ostend Co. ships began arriving in the subcontinent the next year and were viewed by the English East India Company (EIC) and the VOC (Dutch East India Company)[3] as a threat to their Euro-Asian trade. [4] Like the VOC, Ostend Co. participated in the lucrative intra-Asian trade[5] in textiles (cotton, chintz, silk) and operated between Mocha, Jeddah, and Bombay ports in the Arabian Sea, and Masulipatnam, Tranquebar, and the Hooghly ports in the Bay of Bengal.[6] But this company was short-lived because its charter was revoked in 1727 by its own monarch Charles VI under pressure from England and the Dutch Republic. By 1730, its merchants stopped all operations.[7]
Trade between Antwerp and Bombay was finally reestablished in the second half of the 19th century. This was in 1830, after the Southern Netherlands (Belgium) declared its independence from the Northern Netherlands (Holland).[8] European recognition of Belgium as a sovereign state on 20 December 1830 was followed by the Treaty of 12 May 1863, between Belgium and the Netherlands that effectively removed all tolls on shipping that passed through the Netherlands stretch of the River Scheldt on their way to and from Antwerp and other Belgian ports.[9] “Nineteen countries pooled together money to make a one-time payment to the Netherlands for the tolls, and ever since the Scheldt has been toll-free,” Arnouts explains.
The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 accelerated the Antwerp-Bombay trade, which in the 19th century was largely in raw cotton as Belgium had a flourishing cotton textiles industry. It led to the establishment of a consulate in the city in 1882[10] whose longtime address during the 20th century was the Morena bungalow on Carmichael Road.
Trade figures from the late 1800s show Belgium, Germany, and Russia as the leading European countries shipping freight to and from Bombay Port. The Gazetteer of Bombay City and Island Volume 1 (1909) states that by 1880-81, the three countries[11] had acquired a considerable share. In 1889-90, their respective shares were Rs. 18, 7, and 12 lakhs, which rose to Rs. 134, 126, and 72 lakhs by 1906-1907. [12] [13] An important Belgian import to Bombay was chemical dyes for the city’s textile industry, for which it was the chief supplier along with the Netherlands and between 1901 and 1907, was the largest exporter at Rs 11 lakhs annually.
With the outbreak of the First World War, Indian regiments embarked for the European war front from Bombay, where many lost their lives or were injured in the fighting in Flanders and while defending navigational freedom in the sea channel between Belgium and the United Kingdom. On his arrival in Bombay on 11 September 1925 at Ballard Pier, Belgium’s King Albert the First addressed the crowds gathered at the Pier opening with, “We can never forget the great service which Indian troops rendered to us during the war. They came in the very nick of time.” He had first-hand knowledge of this as he commanded Belgian troops during this War and is popularly known as The Soldier King. The news report in The Times of India the next day remarked on the large number of Belgian nuns who had come from across India to greet their king and queen. In 2014, during the first centenary of the war, the Belgian ship Leopold I visited Mumbai port, and Belgium again acknowledged the service of the Indian soldiers in the European wars.
Trade picked up after the Second World War in the 1950s with the development of petrochemical complexes in both Bombay and Antwerp, adjoining their harbours. Antwerp’s was known as ‘petroleum city’, Bombay’s petrochemical industry began on its eastern seaboard and north of Mazagaon Docks in 1954 when Esso (originally Anglo-American Oil Company) set up a petroleum refinery there. Interestingly, the petrochemical complexes of both cities were originally developed by American and British companies. In Antwerp, many German companies also established manufacturing facilities.
Not surprisingly, Antwerp was the first European port[14] to open a representative office in Mumbai in 2006. When the city’s Royal Antwerp Museum of Fine Arts underwent renovation in 2013, the Belgian government hosted its most valuable paintings in an exhibition of original masterpieces by 17th century, Antwerp-based Flemish Baroque masters like Peter Paul Ruben and Anthony Van Dyke[15], in Mumbai’s main museum, the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS).[16] Today, the two ports share a history, and a productive joint venture for training in port management. A natural corollary would be for the two port cities to become twinned cities, expanding beyond business into social, cultural and educational engagements.
Sifra Lentin is Fellow, Bombay History, Gateway House.
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References
[1] Antwerp-Bruges Port Authority was formed in 2022 and is the second largest port in Europe after Rotterdam. Currently it handles about 270 million tons of shipments annually. This port authority also oversees the open seaport of Zeebrugge.
[2] The region of Flanders was then part of the Austrian Hapsburg Empire. The port city of Antwerp is also in Flanders.
[3] VOC is an abbreviation for Veerignede Oostindische Compagnie.
[4] Emperor Charles VI (r. 1711-1740) was the Holy Roman Emperor and monarch of the Austrian branch of the Hapsburg dynasty. His daughter and successor were the popular Austrian Empress Maria Theresa. Emperor Charles VI attempted to relieve the economic distress in the then southern Netherlands (roughly today’s Belgium and Luxemburg) by founding the Ostend Company (1722) to trade with Asia, but England and the United Provinces of the north (Dutch Republic) forced him after a few years to abandon the project.
See: https://www.britannica.com/topic/history-of-Belgium
[5] The English East India Company concentrated on direct trade between the Subcontinent and England, unlike the Dutch VOC, the Ostend Company, and the later American traders who also invested in the intra-Asian trade or trade between Asian port cities.
[6] Om Prakash, European Commercial Enterprise in Pre-Colonial India, pp. 264-65.
[7] Another short-lived joint stock company with an Antwerp connection and in the Indian trade during the 18th century was The Imperial Asiatic Company of Trieste and Antwerp founded by merchant-adventurer William Bolts in 1775. It wound up in 1785 after going bankrupt.
[8] At the Congress of Vienna, in 1815, The Southern Netherlands (Belgium) and the Northern Netherlands (Holland) were united to form one State. This new state was ruled by King William I. Although his policy was beneficial to the Belgian bourgeoisie, there were protests. The Catholics objected to interference by a Protestant king in clerical matters. The Liberals demanded more freedom. In 1828 Catholics and Liberals drew up a concerted programme of demands. The association between Catholics and Liberals was called unionism. After a series of incidents, a revolution erupted in Brussels in 1830. King William I sent in his troops, but they were expelled on September 27th, 1830. Following this uprising, Belgium separated from the Northern Netherlands. A provisional government declared independence on October 4th, 1830.
[9] For details of this Treaty see https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/bel005.asp#art1
[10] The Belgian Consulate General in Bombay celebrated its 125th year in the city in 2007, indicating that it was established in 1882. In the year 1885, the Belgian Consulate’s address was No. 5, Nesbit Lane (Byculla). For about 50-60 years it was located in Morena Bungalow (now Morena Towers) or the old Badani bungalow on Carmichael Road, till this bungalow was sold in 2008.
[11] Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire had a sizeable presence in this trade before these three countries joined their ranks of leading European countries in bilateral trade.
[12] Belgium’s cotton goods trade with Bombay in 1906-1907 was Rs 6.33 lakhs or 8.48% of its total trade of Rs 134 lakhs. From 1891, Belgium, along with Austria-Hungary, France, and Italy, was among the chief recipients of raw cotton from Bombay. Belgium also had a share in the wool trade (it imported raw wool) valued annually at an average of one lakh. Sugar imports were worth two lakhs and metal imports were worth 55 lakhs in 1906-07.
[13] An important import from Belgium to Bombay was chemical dyes for which it was the chief source country along with The Netherlands in the 1890s and was the largest exporter (approximately Rs 11 lakhs per annum) to Bombay between the years 1901 to 1907.
[14] Hamburg port also has a representative office in Mumbai.
[15] See https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/a-flemish-affair-rubens-van-dyck-on-first-visit-to-india/articleshow/21565471.cms?from=mdr
[16] The Flemish Baroque Masters exhibition at CSMVS was put up and sponsored by Antwerp Port Authority along with the Belgian Federal government and Indian sponsors, most notably Jet Airways who airfreighted the paintings free of cost between Mumbai and Antwerp. The Exhibition was inaugurated by Princess Astrid of the Kingdom of Belgium, with whose official visit to India with a Belgian trade delegation, the exhibition’s opening was coordinated.