The East India Company

On the 31st of December in the year 1600, ‘The Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies’ received a Royal Charter to be England’s trading representative in India. By they early part of the 17th Century, Britain had already eclipsed Portuguese interests in India. The company bought in cotton, silk, indigo, opium, saltpeter and tea mainly in exchange for silver bullion. These were valuable commodities in Britain at that time. By 1720, 15% of British imports were from India.

"The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company, 1660-1760." EHnet. Web. 08 Mar. 2015.

Changes and continuities in commerce in the Indian ocean region from 650 to 1750 C.E.

British East India Company played a significant yet strange part in the Indian. It was, at its inception, a commercial venture in the history of The British Empire, which was established in the year 1600 in the subcontinent. The main reason for entering the subcontinent was trade, making money and importing spices from South Asia. It was the Portuguese who used all their skills and their navigational technology to enter this great area first, and start trade in the most profitable manner they could. East India Company entered as an early and old-fashioned venture, and conducted a separate business with their private stockholders. Their approach and their trade lasted for many years until year 1657 (Farrington 5), when they made their base

In the 1700s Britain established the British East India Company to create more profitable trade around the world. It became one of the most powerful mercantile organizations by creating and maintaining a monopoly on many exotic goods including cotton, silk, tea, and spices transferred to Britain. As it grew in power the company began to develop its own standing military, which established further control of the region and its peoples. Once Britain had fully taken control they began to implement changes, these changes had both positive and negative

The East India Company (EIC), formally chartered as the Governor and Company of Merchants of London trading into the East, it was also well known as the Honourable East India Company, and its primary purpose was to trade with the East Indies, though it mainly landed up trading with the Indian subcontinent. It started off as a Joint stock company. The company petitioned Queen Elisabeth I to sail to the East Indies after the defeat of the Spanish armada which prevented privateers from sailing to those waters because of the trade monopoly it owned over there.

Lalvani states that “... both nations benefited from the trade links that were firmly established in the 17th century and continued under the East India Company” (paragraph #10). However, because of the trade links established, cheap English fabric flooded the market, decreasing exports of Indian cloth and leading to loss of work, poverty, starvation, and even death as a result (document #5 & #6). The trade links led to the destabilization of the Indian economy and rendered Indians dependent on the British, losing the self-sufficiency they had before imperialism. In paragraph 17, Lalvani claims “the British also worked to preserve the environment and animals of India”. In reality, the growth of cash crops ruined Indian soil, only allowing them to grow the crops the British wanted.

By around the year 1920, The British have taken control of more than 25 percent of the human population. India was one of those colonies. Originally used by the British East India Company for a source of Cotton, Indigo, and Tea, The British took complete Economic, Social, and Political control of India before the Sepoy Rebellion in 1857. With many natural resources and a huge population of potential consumers, India had become the ¨Jewel in the Crown¨ of the British Empire. The administration of India that Britain created was superbly efficient, leading to the construction of massive infrastructure throughout all of India, and the education of some elite class Indians. On the other hand, British rule of India served the needs of the British

Britain had taken an economic interest of India long ago in the 1600’s. India had quickly become the “Jewel of the Crown.” However as time went on, the British’s interest had developed India into a target for imperialism. In 1757, the British empire had won their battle and took control. The Englishmen had taken India’s power, caused them poverty, killed their environment, drove them into starvation, increased death rates, and wasted their time with ineffective education.

The British originally came in as a decent sized company in East India, but when the sepoys attacked that company, England sent their whole army and navy to get the sepoys under control, but while doing that they also took over all of India. Although economically and socially the Indians did benefit in some ways, the British established a massive infrastructure by controlling India and having a huge political, economic, and social impact on India that helped them more than it helped the Indians.

There was a huge demand for luxury Asian goods in India, that would lead Europeans to trade along the Indian Ocean for Indian spices and goods. Because of this, an economy was revolved around trading, known as a mercantilist economy, where European nations would have rivalries in order to obtain silver in the Americas. This would then lead to European countries trying to thrive in the Indian Ocean with joint stock companies and trading posts in order to control the area and help out their economy.

Britain took over India after a brief struggle with France; initially to aid in its economy; mainly its textiles. The plan was to have Indians harvest raw materials to ship back to Britain. Britain would therefore have cheap raw materials sent back to them; because India was mercantilist (could only trade with the mother country) they did not have much of a choice but to sell to Britain cheaply. Britain therefore always had a steady source of raw materials Britain would turn raw materials into finished products that it would ship back to India and sell to Indians. Prices for goods were low and Indians liked that, but also Britain had a steady source of income. The most useful Indian industry for Britain was its cotton industry; Britain often used Indian cotton for clothing. India made for a cheap way to assemble (cheap labor) and an easy way to get business.

First, Europe’s relationship with India was of mutual prosperity and trade. Until the East India Company began to create a monopoly for itself in Indian trade, pushing out other European rivals, notably the French, followed it’s by conquest of the country, that phase was from 1600 to 1757 was not an unequal colonial relationship. The East India Company had a large interest in promoting the export of silks and cotton textiles from India which soon began to be noticed on British industrial

The British East India Company first gained power in Bengal in 1757, after the Battle of Plassey, when the Nawab of Bengal Siraj ud-Daulah surrendered his dominions to the Company. By 1773, when the Company settled their capital in Calcutta, they appointed their first Governor-General, Warren Hastings, and henceforth became directly involved in the governance of almost all of India.When it came to the education policies that the Company implemented in India, not every Governor-General had the same beliefs. Hastings was considered an Orientalist because he supported the traditional/Oriental learning that was already in India. The Orientalists were later opposed by advocates of a different approach to education in India called Anglicists. The Anglicists were supporters of instruction in the English language in order to teach Indians modern Western knowledge. This paper will be examining how The British East India Company, during its period of rule in India, transformed society in terms of language and education by means of power and religion.

In the four months that he was in England, Say was confronted on the things he saw, the things he admired and those that he deplored. Still in England, Say was able to make crucial friendship networks with well-known economist such as, David Ricardo, Jeremy Bethem, James Mill and Thomas Malthus. At the time, he visited Glasgow; he got a chance to sit on the professorial chair of Adam Smith, and this marked an emotional period in his life. Without a doubt, his perspective of England could not go without observation and criticism of his fresh acquaintances, particularly their view on the East India Company monopoly, as well as, the agricultural protectionism of England via the Corn Laws. However, both of the problem eventually came to an