The Role of the British East India Company

British East India Company played a significant yet strange part in the Indian. It was, at its inception, a commercial venture in the history of The British Empire, which was established in the year 1600 in the subcontinent. The main reason for entering the subcontinent was trade, making money and importing spices from South Asia. It was the Portuguese who used all their skills and their navigational technology to enter this great area first, and start trade in the most profitable manner they could. East India Company entered as an early and old-fashioned venture, and conducted a separate business with their private stockholders. Their approach and their trade lasted for many years until year 1657 (Farrington 5), when they made their base in India and created permanent joint stocks.

What actually happened was that Indians lost the monopoly of goods upon the entrance of this company and instead the Portuguese, who now had hold of trading spices and other valuable things, gained this monopoly. It was the competition that these Portuguese faced by the English investors and the other main merchants, which led to their merger in the year 1708 when they united together as England trading with the East Indians. It was the year 1600 when Queen Elizabeth I granted the permission to the British East India Company and gained power and control over the area for more than two centuries and finally lost power over the British Raj in 1858. The British government took direct control of India at this point and EIC was dissolved in 1874.

What started out as a trading company went on to rule the subcontinent for over two centuries, but its main purpose for existence remained in trade. EIC’s focus and thus the major part of its trading were with In...

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...eign trade; these included Foochow, Canton, Ningpo, Amoy and Shanghai. This trade also included the open trade of opium between Chinese markets and British companies (Freda 103), which led to the Second Opium War in 1856 until 1860. This war was fought jointly by the British and the French against China and resulted in the Treaty of Tientsin.

As mentioned above, tea was one of the largest items of British trade and its demand was increasing rapidly. In fact this demand increased so much in England that by the year 1750, tea trade came up to a total of 4,727,992 lbs. per year. But tea was a really expensive commodity, both because of the taxes and the East India Company’s monopoly on the trade. This led to large scale smuggling of tea, especially to cater to the needs of the less wealthy (Moxham 22-27). Some of the smuggled tea was even brought aboard the East India