Cowasjee Dinshaw

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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.

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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.  In 1875 Cowasjee built his landmark building in The Crescent. He may have owned The Marina Hotel  (Hotel de L'Europe) in The Crescent at some stage.

 

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.

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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.

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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 in Aden at the time. Within a few years, however,  there would be other agents taking a bigger slice of an expanding market.

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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.

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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.

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Between the Wars Antonin Besse 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.

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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?

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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.

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[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 later 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”.

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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.

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In the photos below, the lion, Mr. Leo, was a gift from the ruler of Abyssinia.