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British East Indies Company

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Wikipedia: British East Indies Company

The British East India Company, originally two very similarly named companies, and popularly known as John Company, founded by the Royal Charter of Queen Elizabeth I on December 31, 1600, became one of the most powerful commercial enterprises in its time.

The original company, The Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies, merged in 1702 with The English Company Trading to the East Indies (which had been formed in 1698), to become The United Company of Merchants of England Trading to the East Indies.250px-Gb heic.png

Flag of the British East India Company
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Impact

Based in Leadenhall Street, London, its influence reached out to all continents: it presided over the creation of British India, founded Hong Kong and Singapore, employed Captain Kidd to combat piracy, established the cultivation of tea in India, held Napoleon captive on St Helena, and made the fortune of Elihu Yale, and its products were the subject of the Boston Tea Party.

Its flag possibly inspired the Stars and Stripes (as argued by Sir Charles Fawcett in 1937), its shipyards provided the model for St. Petersburg, elements of its administration survive in Indian bureaucracy, and its corporate structure was the most successful early example of a joint stock company. But the demands of Company officers on the treasury of Bengal contributed tragically to the province's incapacity in the face of a famine which killed millions (1770).

History

The Company was founded by a coterie of enterprising and influential businessmen, who obtained the Crown's charter for exclusive permissions to trade in the East Indies. Initially, however, it made little impression on the Dutch control of the spice trade and could not establish a lasting outpost in the East Indies in the early years. Ships belonging to the company arrived in India, docking at Surat in 1608, and established a trade transit point and a factory. In 1615, Sir Thomas Roe represented the British interests at the court of the Mughal emperor Jahangir, who ruled over nearly 70% of the subcontinent and obtained his permission for exclusive trade in Surat. The company managed to eclipse the Portuguese, who had established their bases in Bombay (which was later acceeded to the British as dowry of Catherine de Braganza) and Goa. It managed to create strongholds in Surat, Bombay (1668), Madras (1639) and Calcutta. By 1647, the Company had 23 factories and 90 employees in India. The major factories became the walled forts of Fort William in Bengal, Fort St George in Madras and the Bombay Castle. In 1717, the company was also waived of its custom duty for trading in Bengal by the Mughal emperor. The company's mainstay businesses were by now, in cotton, silk, indigo, saltpeter and tea, all the while making inroads into the Dutch monopoly of the spice trade in the Malaccan straits. In 1711, the Company established a trading post in Canton (Guangzhou), in China to trade tea for silver.

The prosperity that the employees of the company enjoyed, allowed them to return to their country and establsih sprawling estates and businesses and obtain political power. Consequently, the Company managed to make for itself a lobby in the British parliament. Its monopoly was however curbed in 1694 when the House of Commons passed an act that allowed other British firms to trade with India. But, practically, the Company managed to retain its dominant position and made huge profits from India. By 1720, almost single-handedly managed by the Company, 15% of British imports were from India. The Company, surrounded by trading competitors, other imperial powers, and sometimes hostile native rulers, experienced a growing need to maintain an armed wing. Subsequently, it raised its own armed forces, mainly constituted by the indigenous local population.

Around the same time, Britain surged ahead of its European rivals with the advent of the Industrial Revolution. It also was engaged in the Seven Years War with France fought in Europe, in the colonies in North America and in India. The war which resulted in the defeat of the French forces, limited French imperial ambitions, and they were forced to maintain their trade posts in Pondicherry, Mahe and Chandernagar, without any military presence. This allowed the Company to surge ahead in its interests in the Carnatic from its base at Madras and in Bengal from Calcutta. The local rulers, most notably Siraj Ud Daulah began to resent the British presence.In 1757 Robert Clive led company forces against Siraj to victory at the Battle of Plassey, and snuffed out any practical resistance to the advances of the company.

By 1765, Britain sensed a distinct possibility of extending her empire formally over the Indian hozizon. The Company was turning increasingly bold and ambitious in putting down resisting states. However, it was getting clearer day by day, that the Company was incapable of governing the vast expanse of the captured territories. The company, also anxious to be relieved of the governing duties that would contradict its profit-making objectives, agreed to a pact with the Crown that would allow the land to be under the control of the crown, and be leased to the Company at 40,000 pounds for two years. The company was allowed to maintain its virtual monopoly over trade, in exchange for a promise of this leased amount and an obligation to export a minimum quantity of goods yearly to Britain. This move, initially welcomed by the company eager to return to profiting, backfired. The company had this yearly burden on its back, and its finances steadily declined. The Bengal famine, in which one-sixth of the population died, sounded the death-knell to the company's affairs and sent the alarm bells ringing back home. Military and administrative costs mounted beyond control. There was a commercial stagnation and trade depression in Europe at the same time. Britain became entangled in the rebellion in America which was one of the major importers of Indian tea, and France was at the brink of a revolution. The desperate directors of the company attempted to avert bankruptcy by appealing to the parliament for financial help. This led to the passing of the Tea Act, in 1773. This act, virtually lent the Company a free hand in running its trade in America, where its monopolistic activities triggered off the Boston Tea Party, which sparked the American War for Independence.

In the years 1775–1783 North America gained independence from Great Britain, imperial focus was brought across the globe to India where it was the center of colonial interest for the first time. The Eastern British armies at home swelled as did those of the East India company. In a series of reforms, the Company was brought under The Regulating Act for India in 1773. Despite stiff resistance from the East India lobby in the parliament, and the shareholders of the Company, the Act was passed and brought great governmental control and required the Company to appoint a Governor-General with the sole purpose of adminsitering the acquired territories (which comprised of Bengal, Oudh and Carnatic). This official was to be assisted by a council of four members appointed by the British Government. British judiciary will also be sent to India to administer the British legal system. Thus, Warren Hastings became the first Governor General of India. He was reasonably successful in pulling together the administrative strings of the Company and also ably put down the Maratha forces in the West and Hyder Ali's forces in the South. However, he fell out of favour with the Council of Four, who returned to Britain and brought upon corruption proceedings against him that led to his impeachment from his duties. The Regulating Act was deemed a failure because, it was immediately apparent that the boundaries between the governmental control and the Company's powers were obscure and highly prone to interpretations.

The government also felt obliged to answer humanitarian voices pleading for better treatment of natives in British occupied territories. Edmund Burke, a former East India Company shareholder and diplomat felt compelled to relieve the situation and introduced the India Bill in 1783. The bill was defeated and the King brought down the Ministry, because of intense lobbying and accusation of nepotism in the Bill's recommendations of an appointment of councillors. Nevertheless, this was an important step in the subduing of the Company and the 1784 India Act settled matters amicably, and it divided the control of governance and trade with clearly demarcated borders between the Crown and the Company. By the middle of the 19th century, the Company's rule extended across most of India, Burma, Singapore and Hong Kong, and a fifth of the world's population was under its authority. The Company had at various stages defeated China, occupied the Philippines, and conquered Java. It had solved its cash crisis needed to buy tea, by exporting Indian-grown opium to China, whose efforts to end the trade led to the two Opium Wars with Britain.

The efforts of company in administering India was the model for the civil service system in Britain. Deprived of its trade monopoly in 1813 and wound up as a trading enterprise twenty years later, the Company lost its administrative functions to the British government in 1858 following the Sepoy Mutiny of the previous year. When the Company finally reverted to the Crown in 1874, The Times reported, "it accomplished a work such as in the whole history of the human race no other company ever attempted and as such is ever likely to attempt in the years to come."

The company was dissolved in 1858.

Wikipedia: Warren Hastings

Warren Hastings (December 6, 1732 - August 22, 1818) was the first governor-general of British India, from 1773 to 1786. He was famously impeached in the 1787 for corruption, and acquitted in 1795.

Warren Hastings was born 6th December 1732 at Churchill, Oxfordshire. He attended Westminster School before joining the British East India Company in 1750 as a clerk. In 1757 he was made the British Resident (administrative in charge) of Murshidabad. He was appointed to the Calcutta council in 1761 then went back to England in 1764. He returned to India in 1769 as a member of the Madras council and was made governor of Bengal in 1772. In 1773, he was appointed the first Governor-General of India.

During his time in this post, a great deal of precedent was established pertaining to the methods which the British Raj would use in its rule over India. Hastings had a great respect for the ancient scripture of Hinduism and fatefully set the British position on governance as one of looking back to the earliest precedents possible. This allowed Brahmin advisors to mold the law, as no Englishman understood Sanskrit until the great Sir William Jones; it also accentuated the caste system and other religious frameworks which had, at least in recent centuries, been somewhat incompletely applied. Thus, British influence on the everchanging social structure of India can in large part be characterized as, for better or for worse, a solidification of the privileges of the caste system through the influence of the exclusively high-caste scholars by whom the British were advised in the formation of their laws. These laws also accepted the binary division of the people of Bengal and, by extension, India in general as either Muslim or Hindu (to be governed by their own laws). Though they cannot be accused of causing the Partition, they were both cause and effect of the forces which would eventually polarize Hindu and Muslim nationalists into the creation of India and Pakistan. In 1781 he founded Madrasa 'Aliya, meaning the higher madrasa, in Calcutta showing his relations with the Muslim population.[1]

As Hastings had few Englishmen to carry out administrative work, and still fewer with the ability to converse in local tongues, he was forced to farm out revenue collection to locals with no ideological friendship for Company rule. Due to lax administration these revenue collectors became tyrants and the population of Bengal suffered horribly, even more so when famine struck. Englishmen continued to be seduced by the massive wealth of India into corruption and bribery, and Hastings could do little or nothing to stop it. Indeed, he participated in the widespread exploitation of these newly conquered lands.

Hastings resigned in 1784 and returned to England. He was charged with high crimes and misdemeanors by Edmund Burke and Sir Philip Francis, whom he had wounded in a duel in India. He was impeached in 1787 but the trial, which began in 1788, ended with his acquittal in 1795. Hastings spent most of his fortune on his defense, although the East India Company did contribute towards the end of the trial.

Hastings was made a Privy Councillor in 1814.

The city of Hastings, New Zealand is named after him.