Great Read:The East India Company: The original corporate raiders -see the template

[malaise]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/04/east-india-company-original-corporate-raiders
<snip>
One of the very first Indian words to enter the English language was the Hindustani slang for plunder: “loot”. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, this word was rarely heard outside the plains of north India until the late 18th century, when it suddenly became a common term across Britain. To understand how and why it took root and flourished in so distant a landscape, one need only visit Powis Castle.

The painting shows a scene from August 1765, when the young Mughal emperor Shah Alam, exiled from Delhi and defeated by East India Company troops, was forced into what we would now call an act of involuntary privatisation. The scroll is an order to dismiss his own Mughal revenue officials in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, and replace them with a set of English traders appointed by Robert Clive – the new governor of Bengal – and the directors of the EIC, who the document describes as “the high and mighty, the noblest of exalted nobles, the chief of illustrious warriors, our faithful servants and sincere well-wishers, worthy of our royal favours, the English Company”. The collecting of Mughal taxes was henceforth subcontracted to a powerful multinational corporation – whose revenue-collecting operations were protected by its own private army.

It was at this moment that the East India Company (EIC) ceased to be a conventional corporation, trading and silks and spices, and became something much more unusual. Within a few years, 250 company clerks backed by the military force of 20,000 locally recruited Indian soldiers had become the effective rulers of Bengal. An international corporation was transforming itself into an aggressive colonial power.

Using its rapidly growing security force – its army had grown to 260,000 men by 1803 – it swiftly subdued and seized an entire subcontinent. Astonishingly, this took less than half a century. The first serious territorial conquests began in Bengal in 1756; 47 years later, the company’s reach extended as far north as the Mughal capital of Delhi, and almost all of India south of that city was by then effectively ruled from a boardroom in the City of London. “What honour is left to us?” asked a Mughal official named Narayan Singh, shortly after 1765, “when we have to take orders from a handful of traders who have not yet learned to wash their bottoms?”

We still talk about the British conquering India, but that phrase disguises a more sinister reality. It was not the British government that seized India at the end of the 18th century, but a dangerously unregulated private company headquartered in one small office, five windows wide, in London, and managed in India by an unstable sociopath – Clive.
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But as long as the crown received the treasure, they were all happy.

[leveymg]

1. And then there was China and Opium.

But, that's a tale for another time . . .

[enlightenment]

2. Interesting that they

use "East India Company" rather than "British East India Company", since they are talking about the latter entity.

The Dutch did it before the British . . . and are considered the first "multi-national corporation", warts and all.

http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/dutch-east-india-company-deicvoc
http://theojanssen.ca/indonesia/indonesia%20hist.htm

[malaise]

3. I have always viewed the 'Holy Roman Empire' as the first multinational corporation

but you are right - the Dutch did it first.

[dixiegrrrrl]

4. Did you ever hear about the Great Hedge of India?

I was flabbered when I read about it...then I thought of the walls being put up in various countries today.

The wall had its beginnings in a series of customs houses that were established in Bengal in 1803 to prevent the smuggling of salt to avoid the tax because salt was one of the most smuggled item back then due to high prices.
Salt tax brought East India Company the biggest chunk of their revenue.
The hedge evolved into a living hedge known as The Great Hedge or Inland Customs Line. The hedge was 12 feet high in some parts.

http://www.indiatvnews.com/news/india/the-great-hedge-of-india-wall-that-divided-india--22215.html

It was the salt tax that made Gandhi's going to the sea and taking a handful of salt such a meaningful gesture.
But most of us grew up not knowing much about Gandhi or the conditions in India that he opposed.

[malaise]

5. There were many such hedges in the colonies

To be kind they were greedy barbarians

[ieoeja]

6. Boston Tea Party was *not* directly against the tea tax.

The boycott was working. The British East Indies Tea Company couldn't find anyone in New England to purchase their tea. They appealed to the British government which mandated that the Massachusetts Bay Colony Corporation had to purchase the tea. The Colony responded by suing the government. The suit was successful as the judge ruled the government could order the Colony to purchase the tea.

In the meantime, some not too bright people reasoned that the government could not force the Colony to purchase the tea if the tea did not exist. Hence, the Tea Party. Subsequently, the exact same judge who ruled in favor of the Colony previously ruled that the Colony could be held responsible for the safety of the British East Indies Tea Company ship while it was in their harbor.

The Tea Party completely backfired. The Colony was ordered to pay for the tea which is exactly what the Tea Party was trying to prevent.

[countryjake]

7. K&R!