13.1.5

The British Empire & India

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The British Empire and the East India Company

The East India Company was a private company. This private company initiated Britain's control of India.

Illustrative background for Origins of the East India CompanyIllustrative background for Origins of the East India Company ?? "content

Origins of the East India Company

  • On the 31st December 1600, Elizabeth I gave the East India Company (EIC) a royal charter to own a British monopoly over trade with India. The East India Company in 1600 mainly focused on trading spices and would compete with Portuguese and Dutch companies in India.
  • The East India Company is the best example of Martin Kitchen's view (1996) that before 1800, ‘the Empire [had] largely been left to exploitation by individual adventurers and commercial companies’.
  • The East India Company was a private company founded by the leaders of the Levant Company. They wanted to match the success of the Dutch "Company of Distant Lands', which was having great success trading spices with Indonesia.
Illustrative background for The East India Company's rise to power in IndiaIllustrative background for The East India Company's rise to power in India ?? "content

The East India Company's rise to power in India

  • The East India Company was a private company until 1858, by which time it had virtually seized control of India.
  • In the Anglo-Mughal War of 1686, the East India Company began its aggression, resisting tax increases on their business. The resistance led to a major war, but the East India Company was fined 150,000 rupees on its defeat.
  • The East India Company fought against other businesses to control India. The Carnatic Wars were fought in India by the East India Company and its French rival, the French East India Company.
  • In 1803, the East India Company is estimated to have had a private army of 250,000 men (mainly local Indian people). This was larger than the British government's army.
Illustrative background for Shah Alam and the Treaty of AllahabadIllustrative background for Shah Alam and the Treaty of Allahabad ?? "content

Shah Alam and the Treaty of Allahabad

  • In 1765, Shah Alam II signed the Treaty of Allahabad with the East India Company. He was the Emperor of the Mughal Empire in India.
  • The Treaty agreed that the Mughal Empire would not collect taxes anymore. Instead, the East India Company's own tax collectors and private army would make money by ruling the region, not only by trading spices and other goods.
  • Tharoor (2019) says "Shah Alam II and his successors lived on the sufferance of the Company", whilst Dalrymple (2019) calls the East India Company “the most advanced capitalist organisation in the world” who focused only on profit.
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The East India Company's tie to government

  • Tharoor (2019) says "It was not the British government that seized India at the end of the 18th century, but a dangerously unregulated private company headquartered in one small office, five windows wide, in London, and managed in India by an unstable sociopath – Clive [Robert Clive]."
  • Dalrymple (2019) says that "the East India Company probably invented corporate lobbying". It spend £1,200 paying MPs in 1693 and over 25% of MPs held EIC shares.
  • In 1767, when the East India Company came under challenge, it agreed to pay £400,000 to the government to keep its position.
  • The East India Company paid large dividends to its shareholders (up to 22% in some years) and in many cases bribed and lobbied MPs in Britain. The Parliamentary investigation found the EIC guilty of bribery.

Jump to other topics

1The Medieval World: 450-1450 AD

1.1Anglo-Saxon England

1.2The Contest for the English Throne

1.3Conquering the Holy Land, 10-96-1396 AD

1.4King John

1.5The Magna Carta & Parliament

1.6The Black Death

2Worldviews

3The Empire of Mali

4The Renaissance & Reformations, 1500-1598 AD

5The British Empire, 1583-1960 AD

6The Peasants' Revolt

7Religion in the Middle Ages

8Slavery, 1619-1833 AD

9The English Civil War, 1642-1660

10The Industrial Revolution, 1750-1840

11US Independence, 1775-1783

12The French Revolution, 1789-1815

13The British Empire, 1857–1930

14Suffrage

15World War 1, 1914-1918

16The Inter-War Years, 1919-1939

17World War 2, 1939-1945

18The Cold War, 1947-1962

19Civil Rights in the USA, 1954-1975

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