When we think of the British conquest of India, we often imagine it as a series of red-coated British soldiers marching across the subcontinent, conquering India much in the same way as they did elsewhere in the world. We often talk of the British conquering India, but this phrase hides a far more sinister reality. For it was not the British who were conquering large swathes of India in the mid-eighteenth century, but a dangerously unregulated private corporation run from a small office in London with 5 windows. This is the tale of the British East India Company.
The East India Company (EIC) was founded in 1600 as a private trading company. Its origins were hardly imperial. The late 1500s were a time of intense competition between European nations, all looking to profit from lucrative trade with Asia. Goods such as spices, cotton, silk and tea were in high demand, and the EIC was one such company set up to benefit from this trade. The EIC became one of many European trading powers in India, operating under trading permits issued to it by local authorities. During this time, most of India was dominated by the powerful Mughal Empire.
Following the death of Emperor Aurangzeb in 1707, the Mughal Empire fell into a state of disarray. Aurangzeb’s violent campaigns and intolerance of non-Islamic faiths had isolated the Empire’s Hindu majority, and regional powers such as the Marathas began to rise and become increasingly independent. Amidst this turmoil, the EIC needed to protect its profitable trade. The Company began supporting Indian rulers against their rivals, receiving money, trading privileges, and political concessions in return. The Company had become a political actor, and soon became a military one, using its profits to raise large private armies of locally recruited mercenaries and soldiers.
The turning point came in 1757 at the Battle of Plassey. Following suspicion of the Company’s growing power, the Nawab of Bengal, Siraj ud-Daulah, captured the city of Calcutta, the location of the Company’s Fort William. In response, the now militarily armed EIC defeated the Nawab and installed their own puppet ruler in Bengal. Not only did the EIC now control the Mughal Empire’s wealthiest region, but they soon obtained tax collection rights for Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa. The Company could now tax millions, using taxes to fund further expansion and setting into motion a dangerous cycle: conquer territory, collect taxes, use taxes to maintain and build an army, and use the army to acquire more territory. Eventually, the Company controlled large portions of India.
What made the EIC’s rule so different from the rule of other regional powers was the Company’s commercial interests. As a corporation that was accountable to no one but its shareholders, Company rule saw large sums of wealth extracted from India and sent back to Britain. As its shareholders became millionaires, parts of India were governed by an indifferent corporate power which oversaw devastating famines, extractive policies, and millions of deaths. Finally, in 1858, following the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the British government finally took direct control of India and out of the EIC’s hands, beginning the period known as the British Raj.
While the EIC no longer exists, its history demonstrates the frightening reality of what a corporate power can do when left unattended. While the Company made millionaires in Britain, it oversaw countless atrocities, like the infamous man-made Bengal famine of 1770, which killed a third of East India’s population. Needless to say, through a power vacuum, taxes, and local armies, the EIC transformed itself from a private trading corporation into a colonial power, extracting wealth from India to build an empire that would ultimately become the ‘jewel in the crown’ of the British Empire.
