Hello and welcome back to Monsoon Kingdoms, I am Said Al Harthi. Last time we walked a ruined city. This time we follow a piece of paper. In the 1600s a merchant in Surat, on the coast of Gujarat, could write a short note, hand it to a captain, and have it honoured for its full value by a trading house in Mocha, in Basra, or in Malacca, weeks of sailing away. No bank, no treaty, no coins in the hold, just a written order and a reputation. The system was called hundi and it ran the finance of an entire ocean. We go to the Surat waterfront in 1640, we meet Virji Vora, who may have been the richest private merchant alive, and we look at why the English East India Company needed him far more than he needed them. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts.