|
Cowasjee Shavaksha Dinshaw Adenwalla,
(1827-1900), was a Parsee trader who
emigrated from Surat, Bombay to Aden around
1855. The family name Adenwalla ("from
Aden") was a later addition. He was
significantly influential in the mid to late
1800's for the successful development of
Aden into a thriving port city and was
arguably the leading light in commerce prior
to the arrival in Aden of Antonin Besse.
In 1856 Cowasjee partnered with
Captain
Luke Thomas in his banking business which became
a limited liability company in 1857 known as
Luke Thomas & Co.
The Crescent in
1880. Cowasjee Dinshaw building is 2nd on
the right (3 levels) with the horse-drawn carriages
parked in front
Cowasjee travelled extensively and set up
trading posts in other British
possessions/protectorates, most notably on
the east-African coast in Zanzibar and
Mombasa. He was known for his business
acumen and the foresight that Aden would
become an important port following the
opening of the Suez Canal.
The Government had been disappointed with
the financial returns following the initial
restorations of the
Tawila Tanks and, despite advice from
the Resident, Capt.
Haines, did not want to allocate further
funds for the restoration of the last, and
largest, of the tanks, named the Playfair
Tank. In 1863, Cowasjee, with two other
leading merchants, Eduljee Manekjee
and Hasan 'Ali, formed a partnership which
offered to restore the tank plus 6 of the
hill tanks. A 10 year contract was signed on
29th June 1863 which was renewed in 1873 for
a further 30 years. During this
period the tank water was sold on a
commercial basis by the partnership.
By the 1890s Cowasjee
was operating several local steamers of
around 300 tons, including some on contract
to provide a regular service for passengers,
cargo and mail to and from the Somali Coast.
He undoubtedly would have owned a
number of dhows and buggalows as well. Most
of the former had a displacement averaging
around 40 tons whilst the latter were around
12-16 tons. He was selling 60,000 tons of
coal a year which would have been
50-60% of total sales at the time. Within a
few years there would be other agents taking
a bigger slice of an expanding market.
Cowasjee Dinshaw Building located on the Prince of
Wales Crescent, Steamer Point. The darker,
turreted building on the right is that of
Luke Thomas & Co.
Amongst his many ventures he had an entire floating dock shipped from
Britain in 1895 which was known locally as
the "Dinshaw Pontoon".
Cowasjee Dinshaw and Bros. owned a printing
press, the only competitor being a press
operated from the Crater Jail and manned
with convict labour.* He won the concession
to build and operate a 120km proposed rail
link from Aden to Dthala after successfully
negotiating a deal with the Sultan of Lahej,
who would receive a 4% commission on the
profits of the line plus one penny per
square of area taken by the line. The first
60km stage of the line was to extend from
Aden to Nobet Dukeim. It seems however that
the railway plan, for some reason, did not
eventuate.
Cowasjee Dinshaw
& Bros. Building. The sign over the shop
door on the left of the building reads,
"Chemists & Druggists - Cowasjee Dinshaw &
Bros."
A Parsee of the Zoroastrian faith,
and founder of the
Fire Temple in Aden,
Cowasjee, like many Parsees,
was a philanthropist and financed the construction of a mosque
for local Muslims which was known as the Cowasjee Masjid.
There were never many
Parsees in Aden – according to the
1872
census there were only 121 Parsees of
the total 19,289 population. However, by
1883 when the Holy Atash in the
Fire
Temple
was first consecrated there would
have been considerably more Parsees. They were not
very popular amongst the Arabs, perhaps for
the same reason that the Indians in Uganda
became unpopular for owning the majority of
the best shops and other enterprises.
Between the Wars the
Besse family became very prominent,
supplanting Cowasjee Dinshaw as the most
important commercial enterprise in Aden. But
for the second half of the 19th century
Cowasjee seems to have had a virtual
monopoly of all the best money-making
concerns in Aden.
An extract from an
account of a 36-hour visit to Aden by Sir
William Russell in January 1858. (Full
account here).
“We reached the
Hotel
at last. Ah! Parsee Cowasjee, where did you
get that soda-water? Anyone who remembers
those early days when his nurse would put
the soapsuds into his mouth, will know what
we who drank of that Aden soda-water
experienced. But who can describe the
horrors of the brandy, except the man who
can do justice to the strange qualities of
the bottled ale?
Our only resource, as
it was too hot to visit the station till
sunset, was to inspect the stock in
Cowasjee’s shop next door. It consists of
the whole house minus the roof, and it
contains everything that a man does not
want. I suppose that passengers going out to
India anticipate here their Indian
purchases, as passengers bound for Europe
here invest their money in Paris gloves made
at Malta, or in Windsor soap. There are some
people to whom a shop is an abstract
necessity for disbursement. Here, then, in
Cowasjee’s you see men and boys buying
Chinese slippers they will never wear, and
all sorts of garments and articles they
don’t want, and Cowasjee, a Parsee, with
large olive coloured, oval, smooth face,
quickeyed, and intelligent, place his hands
on his portly person, and smiles placidly
whilst his Parsee assistants glide round the
curious shelves, and recommend things they
never tried - Yarmouth bloaters, pate de
diable, pith hats, pocket handkerchiefs, eau
de cologne, Whitechapel cigars and Piver’s
perfumery.
[The Hotel he mentioned
at the beginning of this extract was the
Prince of Wales Hotel, which closed for a
while shortly after his visit. It re-opened
as the Hotel de l’Europe under French
ownership.]
This is an extract from
Mrs (later Lady) Brassey’s book ‘A Voyage in
the Sunbeam’, an account of a
round-the-world voyage in her husband’s
steam yacht in 1876-77. The Sunbeam called
in at Aden for 24 hours in April 1877. Full
account here.
“At nine o’clock [in
the evening] we dropped our anchor in the
roads; a boat came off with a bag of
newspapers and to ask for orders in the
morning. It was sent by the great Parsee
merchants here, who undertake to supply us
with coals, provisions, water, and
everything we want, and spare us all
trouble. ...... We reached the shore about
7.30 [in the morning]. Mr Cowasjee had sent
his own private carriage to meet us. It was
a comfortable open barouche, with a pair of
nice horses, and two servants in Eastern
liveries, green vests and full trousers, and
red and orange turbans. We went first to his
store, which seemed to be an emporium for
every conceivable article. There was carved
sandal-wood, and embroidered shawls from
China, Surat and Gujerat, work from India,
English medicines, French lamps, Swiss
clocks, German toys, Russian caviare, Greek
lace, Havannah cigars, American hides and
canned fruits, besides many other things.
But this general store is only a very small
part of their business, for about 60,000
tons of coal pass through their hands every
year”.
The Cowasjee Dinshaw
family got a brief but important mention in
William Maxwell’s account of the
Prince of
Wales’ [the future
George V] visit to Aden in 1901.
“The Prince and
Princess were welcomed in a pavilion, and
received an address from Mr Cowasjee Dinshaw,
a wealthy Parsee merchant, whose father had
a like honour in 1875, when the [present]
King visited Aden as Prince of Wales.”
* there was a printing press founded
by Menachem Awwad (Howard) in 1891 which was
attached to the Great Synagogue in Crater,
but this only produced text in Hebrew.
|
