The British East India Company played a key role in one of the most successful periods of British history. The East India Company was responsible for the invasion of the Indian subcontinent, which became one of the empire’s leading supplier of profits. The East India Company was responsible for the overthrow of Hong Kong and other Asian countries; it was responsible for creating Britain’s Asian empire.
The British East India Company began as a joint-stock corporation of traders and investors which was granted a Royal charter by Queen Elizabeth 1 to trade with the East. The original name of the corporation when it first formed was Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies (Landow). They joined together to generate money importing spices from South Asia. James Lancaster was in charge of the 1st company voyage in 1601 that sailed around the coast of South Africa and across the Indian Ocean, arriving back in London in 1603 with ships filled with pepper. In the 1600s, pepper was the most significant part of the British East India Company’s commerce.
The group established its first Asian factory in Bantam and “it was here that the English were able to expand into other parts of Asia” (The [British East India] Company Story). Market at Bantam was multicultural because of other merchants from Arab, Turkey, Iran, and China trading products from their own nations. The company had woolen cloth and silver, but Asian traders favored Indian textiles which were good quality; therefore, it had to uncover ways to get fabrics from India.
In 1611, after failed attempts to enter into agreement with Mughal Emperor, Jahangir, the British East India Company enquired King James 1 to send a representative. The ambassad...
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...t finally “went out of existence in 1873” (Landow).
In the course of its supremacy, the British East India Company created trade across the Middle East and Asia. It regulated its own regions and played a role in influencing the American Revolution. The company’s products were the source of the Boston Tea Party in colonial America.
Works Cited
"The [British East India] Company Story." History. Trading Places. The British Library Board, n.d. Web, 3 Jun 2011.
"The Boston Tea Party, 1773." EyeWitness to History. Ibis Communications, Inc., 2002. Web. 3 Jun 2011.
Landow, George P. "The British East India Company: The Company that Owned a Nation (or Two)." George P. Landow, Professor of English and Art History, Brown University. Victorian Web. George P. Landow, Professor of English and Art History, Brown University, 6 Apr. 2010. Web. 3 Jun 2011.
The East India Company enjoyed the exclusive legal right – a privilege granted by the British government – to import products from the Far East into Britain. Chinese tea, which was said to be more valuable than gold, was the company’s most lucrative commodity, accounting for over 90 percent of its commercial profits.
One could approach this topic from two points of view; the British and the Indian. One could choose either party and find very different opinions. When British colonizers first arrived in India, they slowly gained more and more control in India through many ways, the most prominent being trade and commerce. At first, they managed India’s government by pulling the string behind the curtain. However, soon they had acquired complete rule over India, converting it into a true British colony. The British considered Indian civilization to be inferior and implemented their western ways overriding ancient Indian customs. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that British imperialism in India resulted in both positive as well as negative reforms in political, economic and social aspects of its new colony.
“Englishmen.. have given the people of India the greatest human blessing - peace.” (Dutt). Merely coming to India in the 1600s to trade, the British East India Company established trading outposts. After ridding of French influence in India during the Seven Years’ War and having Indians mutiny against British rule, Britain gained full control of India. India has been under the imperialist control of the British until their independence in 1947. British imperialism caused some negative effects on India through poverty and persecution, but retained more of a positive impact due to its massive improvements in the modernization of India and the overall improvement of Indian civilization.
They built the East Indian Company. The East Indian Company created a charter and a monopoly in the trade industry. In 1615 the company began in Surat on the northwest coast of India. In 1634 the emperor of India allowed trade to expand to Bengal in the northeast. The major trades that Britain wanted were silk, tea, and manufactured textiles. In 1711 the company began a trade post in southern China for silver and tea after the Mughal Empire began to fall. The company had trouble trading with the Qing and Britain was not making much of a profit. The East Indian Company created a monopoly on opium in Bengal. The British would smuggle the opium into China causing them to become addicted to opium to make a large profit of tea off of the Chinese. Qing banned the import of Opium, but it was ineffective. The British used the opium to develop an empire on trade. The Chinese saw the western people to be barbarians. They had many inventions that made them superior to the west. Until the industrial revolution where the British developed the steam engine in which they could travel and transport goods much faster than
Royally chartered companies monopolized international trade in the early days of the English empire. The monopolies were an effort to control the high economic risks of maritime shipping and multi-year voyages by restricting the supply of goods to maintain high prices and incentive the development of trade. Merchants banded together in joint stock companies to pool the risk and engage in capital intensive enterprises, such as the slave trade. Queen Elizabeth chartered the British East India Company (EIC) in 1600 to establish trade with Asia. Its charter granted the company a “monopoly on all English trade to the east of the Cape of the Good Hope,” a legally enforceable trade agreement that covered territory stretching from the east coast of Africa to the west coast of North America. The company’s first “factory” (trading station) in India was established at Masulipatnam in 1611. Charles II chartered The Royal African Company in 1672 to develop the English slave trade in Africa. He granted it a monopoly on the trade of slaves from Africa to the colonies and provided a robust legal framework with which to enforce
When The British took control over the colonies they imposed a lot of taxes on the colonists. One tax was the Tea Act. The Act allowed a kickback of the duties and customs on the exportation of tea to His Majesty’s colonies to go up on the tea to be sold by the British East India Company. When the British did this, the colonists were outraged. One night when they finally had enough of the taxes, the people and the colonists joined up at night at the Boston Harbor. As they wore Indian-style clothing and jewelry they threw three hundred and forty two chests of tea belonging to The British East India C...
James, Lawrence. Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India. New York: St. Martin's, 1998. Print.
There is no doubt that British imperialism had a large impact on India. India, having previously been an group of independent and semi-independent princedoms and territories, underwent great change under British administration. Originally intended to consolidate their hold on India by establishing a population that spoke the same language as their rulers, the British decision in the 1830s to educate Indians in a Western fashion, with English as the language of instruction, was the beginning of a chain of events, including a rise in Indian nationalism, that led to Indian resentment of British imperialism and ultimately to the loss of British control over India.
In the 1600's the English took advantage of the crumbling Mughals. In 1757, Robert Clive led an unquestionable victory against the Indian Forces at the Battle of Plassey. After that battle, the East India Company was the leading force in India. Eventually, the company governed directly or indirectly areas that included modern day Bangladesh, most of southern India and almost all of the land along the Ganges River in the north. Until the 19th century, the East India Company ruled with little to no interference from Britain. The company had even established their own army. The company staffed its army with British and Indian Soldiers, or Sepoy, with the Sepoys eventually out numbering the British soldiers ten to one. Mountstuart Elphinstone, the governor of Bombay referred to the Sepoy army as “a delicate and dangerous machine, which a little mismanagement may easily turn against us.” (British Imperialism in India.)
One country that had imperialism was India. By the mid-1880s, the British East India Company controlled three fifths of India. The cause of British domination was that the land was very diverse and the people could not unite and that the British either paid local princes or used weapons to get control. Positive effects of imperialistic rule in India were that the British set up a stronger economy and more powerful industries. They built roads and railroads. British rule brought peace and order to the countryside. They revised the legal system to promote justice for the Indians regardless of class. Indian landowners and princes, who still owned territory grew rich from exporting cash crops such as cotton and jute. The British introduced the telegraph and the postal system as a means of communication. These improvements and benefits from British rule eventually lead to Indian nationalism. The exposure to European ideas caused an Indian nationalist movement, the people dreamed of ending Imperial ...
4 # Stein, Burton (2001), a History of India, New Delhi and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. xiv, 432, p.222
For centuries, India was a country of separate dynasties and kingdoms, which often led to a wide variety of cultural and ethnic tensions and continuous change of power for many of the kingdoms. They viewed each other as enemies, which created an opportunity for countries, such as England, to invade and eventually rule much of the country. Britain colonized the Indian subcontinent (present-day countries of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh) from 1757 until 1947 (Iyer 2). Not all areas were directly under British control, in other cases Indian rulers governed them, and power was split between the two (Iyer 2). For the British, India was strategically placed in terms of geography, manpower, natural resources, and land, as well as many other sectors (Maddison 1).
Captain Francis Light, while in Penang, acted directly under command of the British East India Trading Company. The British East India company, commissioned by Queen Elizabeth 1st, began trading operations in Southeast Asia in 1600 primarily focusing on the acquisition and trade of cotton, silk, opium, and spices which were all extremely valuable commodities throughout Europe. Because the European countries were such impending rivals for the British, the British East India Company had created a sizeable English army who would protect the trading routes and lands operated by the Company. This was the foundation for the deal the Sultan of Kedah sought to make with Captain Light. In return for English military protection from the Siamese and Burmese, the sultan would cede Penang to the British. Upon the deal being made, Penang would formally be renamed as The Prince of Wales Island until it was renamed in 1867. Penang would be extremely advantageous to the British in the future in the ...
perceive the strategic threat posed by the East India Company. The British from the beginning followed a
India was the first major Asian civilizations to fall victim to European predatory activities (Duiker 31). With conquering India, the British had various purposes behind it. Their main purpose was to achieve a monopolistic trading position (The Economic and Social Impact of Colonial Rule in India). The second purpose was the control of India; this was a key element in the world power structure, in terms of geography, logistics and military manpower (The Economic and Social Impact of Colonial Rule in India). When the East India Company continued to trade under the British, huge armies were created, largely composed of Indian sepoys (Marshall). The armies were used to defend the Company’s territories protect the Indian states (Marshall).