The British East India Company (BEIC) has created a lucrative place in history as the one of the most robust political and economic influences to the modern day marketplace. The spice trade is where BEIC’s endeavors become first notable, before it’s rapid expansion eastward into the tea and opium trade. To understand what effect this economic powerhouse had on today’s world, it is crucial to look back and analyze the development and sprawl of BEIC’s monopoly. India, China, and the American colonies all, at one point or another, were encompassed under British economical control. The power differentials fluctuated with the flow of commodities and products, over time skewing in favor of the more powerful trade partner. This imbalance led to raw material-rich India bowing under imperialist colonial control, enigmatic and affluent China declining with the introduction of opium, and igniting the spark of revolution within the American colonies. All of these causal relationships were provoked by one product; tea.
The BEIC was officially chartered in 1600 by Queen Elizabeth, which allowed merchants to make private business ventures east of the Cape of Good Hope. The enterprise was directed by a group of London businessmen who wanted their hands in the spice trade from the ‘East Indies’ using ships rather than land routes. Initial BEIC ventures took the form of early capitalist conventions, “conducting each voyage as a separate business venture with its own subscribers or stock-holders” (Landow), lasting a little more than a decade before switching to temporary stocks. In 1657 the company converted to permanent joint stocks, eventually assembled its own administrative departments and even a military. It became an imperial force of power ...
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...na comes in at a close second in exports, and India is one of the most labor-outsourced-to nations in the world. All because of tea.
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