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British East India Company: Trade
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In 1601 the English East India Company was founded. A group of City merchants decided to risk their capital only after there had been favourable reports about trade prospects in the East. They sought a monopoly of the East for trading purposes, dealing in silk, ivory, spices and cotton. This ultimately led to the establishment of the British Raj. The history of Anglo-Indian relations was determined by the long-held belief among the English that India was never to be their permanent home. North America was thought to be more favourable to European migration; the distance was not so far as to be disorientating and the "New World" could still retain a European culture.
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The first English East India Company was formed in 1599 to compete with the Dutch for the trade of the spice islands. However, following the Amboyna massacre of 1623, it abandoned the East Indies to concentrate on the Indian subcontinent. The company began to acquire a territorial empire in India after the battle of Plassey in 1757, and the defeat of the Maratha empire in 1818 gave it undisputed supremacy. Territorial conquest... brought about more direct parliamentary control through the Regulation Act of 1773 and the India Act of 1784. It survived as a quasi-department of the British state until the Indian mutiny of 1857, whereafter it was abolished and its powers vested in a secretary of state for India.
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Having lost the opportunity to profit from the Indian textile trade, the East India Company was not hesitant in changing character. In 1616, Sir Thomas Roe, an envoy of the East India Company had declared to the Mughals that war and trade were incompatible. But already in 1669 (even before the bans on the textile trade), Gerald Ungier, chief of the factory at Bombay had written to his directors: " The time now requires you to manage your general commerce with the sword in your hands" In 1687 came the reply from the directors, advocating a Goa like British dominion in India. The French Dupleix was more or less of similiar view. Still earlier, in 1614, the Dutch Jan Pieterzoon Coen, had written to his directors: "Trade in India must be conducted and maintained under the protection and favour of your weapons, and the weapons must be supplied from the profits enjoyed by the trade, so that trade cannot be maintained without war or war without trade." (from Auguste Toussaint's: History of the Indian Ocean)
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The founding of the first Danish East India Company was based chiefly on hopes and ambitions that had been aroused by the enormous revenues produced by the initial ventures of the British and Dutch companies. At the same time, there was a desire upon the part of the Danish monarch to play a dominant role in contemporary world trade, a desire that was apparently not always wholeheartedly endorsed by the Danish merchants of the period.
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A second problem for the East India Company was that their profits were in direct conflict with those of their British-based competitors. Under these circumstances, as long as the profit motive was paramount (which it was), the Battle at Plassey, and the Opium Wars could be seen as logical outcomes of circumstances where continued profits by legal and honorable means were simply not possible. But, had the East Company comprised of "Gentlemen Traders" as some historians have claimed, they could not have switched so easily from trading in Indian Textiles, to trading in Opium for Tea which, in modern language - would surely be described as a form of "drug-running"! Had the traders of the East India Company been "men of honour", denied the right to profitable trade, they would have simply gone bankrupt, as so many do in the world of business!
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The English venture to India was entrusted to the (English) East India Company, which received its monopoly rights of trade in 1600. The company included a group of London merchants attracted by Eastern prospects, not comparable to the national character of the Dutch company. Its initial capital was less than one-tenth of the Dutch company's.
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