Broach

Broach, or Bharuch, stands on the Narmada near its mouth in the Gulf of Khambhat, the old Barygaza of Greek and Roman sailors. For centuries it was the sea outlet of the interior, exporting cotton cloth, agate and spices through an estuary of fast tides and shifting channels that needed pilots who knew it. It was the old home of the Bhargava Brahmins, and the Narmada tied it to the cities of the interior.

Broach belonged to the Gujarat sultans after 1394. In 1547 a Portuguese force stormed it in a night attack and won, and after Akbar's conquest of Gujarat the Mughals held it. English merchants came in 1613, and Sir Thomas Roe's embassy to Jahangir won them permission for a trading house; the Dutch set up a factory soon after. In 1736 the local Nawabs of Broach became sovereign and ruled independently, their prosperity resting on the cotton of the black soil around. The East India Company, with its eyes on that cotton, attacked in 1771 and took Broach on 18 November 1772.