Trade & travel project: East India Company

It falls to the lot of few men to live as significant and dramatic a life as David Scott. As a young free merchant in mid-eighteenth century Bombay under the East India Company he acquired, lost and again acquired a fortune; as one of ‘the real rulers’ of the settlement, he wielded power in making and unmaking its governments. . . .

C. H. Philips — “Preface”, The Correspondence of David Scott Director and Chairman of the East India Company Relating to Indian Affairs 1787–1805, (Royal Historical Society).

I ought to apologise to Dady for my want of punctuality in correspondence. Public business formerly, and bad health latterly has occasioned this, but these have in no degree diminished my regard for old friends, and more especially for one so high in my esteem as Dady Nasserwanji.

— David Scott to Dady Nusserwanjee,
Monday, 2 September 1799;
EE letter ID: scotdaRH0010212a1c

On the Ganges near Ghazipur, 17 March 1802.
My dear Sir,
I have not possessed resolution to write to you for some time past . . . . . I now cannot afford you much comfort; your daughter after a fever of no great violence but which was attended by delirium, continues deranged and I understand had not derived benefit from the voyage to Madras with respect to the derangement of her mind, although her general health was good. Her return to Europe was absolutely necessary . . . . .

— Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley to David Scott,
Wednesday, 17 March 1802;
EE letter ID: scotdaRH0020389c1c