In Our Time - The East India Company

Episode Date: June 23, 2003

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the private trading company that helped forge the British Empire. At its peak, its influence stretched from western India to eastern China via the farthest reaches of the Indonesian archipelago. It had a fleet of 130 twelve hundred tonne ships and commanded an army of 200,000 troops that came to dominate the Indian subcontinent. It funded governments, toppled princes and generated spectacular amounts of money from trading textiles and spices. But this wasn’t an empire, it wasn’t even a state, it was a company. The East India Company, founded in 1600, lasted for 258 years before the British state gained full control of its activities. In that time it had redrawn the map of India, built an empire and reinvented the fashions and the foodstuffs of Britain. But how did the East India Company become so powerful? How did it change both India and Britain and how was the idea of a company running a country ever accepted by the British Crown?With Huw Bowen, Senior Lecturer in Economic and Social History at the University of Leicester; Linda Colley, School Professor of History at the London School of Economics; Maria Misra, Fellow and Tutor in Modern History at Keble College, Oxford.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio 4. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello, at its peak, its influence stretched from Western India to Eastern China via the furthest reaches of the Indonesian archipelago. It had a fleet of 130,200-toned ships,

commanded an army of almost 200,000 troops, and came to dominate the Indian subcontinent. It funded governments, toppled princes, and generated spectacular amounts of money from trading in textiles, drugs and spices. But it wasn't an empire, it wasn't even a state. It was a trading company, the East India Company, founded in 1600, it lasted for 258 years before the British state gained full control of its activities.

In that time, it had redrawn the map of India, provoked an empire into existence, and reinvented the fashions and foodstuffs of Britain. But how did the East India Company become so powerful? How did it change both India and Britain? And how was the idea of a company running a country ever accepted by the British Crown? When we did discuss the East India Company are Linda Colley,

Professor of History at the London School of Economics, Hugh Bowen, Senior Lecture in Economic and Social History at the University of Leicester, and Mario Mesra, fellow and tutor in modern history at Keble College Oxford. Linda Colley, Queen Elizabeth established the East India Company by a royal charter on the last day of 1600. Why did she do it?

sort of company? What was it, what was it all about? Well, East India Company is a joint stock company, which means that sort of different merchants pool their resources. They share the risks, they share the potential profits, and they do so because this is a dangerous trade. And the company initially sets out looking not at India, but the East Indies, by which is meant what is now Indonesia mainly. And they're interested in spices. Spices because there's a lot of profit in spices. Spices, you need spices to tart up food that's gone rotten. You need it to hide unpleasant smells of which there's a lot in the early 17th century. And that's really what they're going for initially. And it's only gradually that they move to the Indian Peninsula, attracted

there by the lure of their superb textiles mainly. This is something they really want to get at. Well, we get to that in a few minutes. What sort of commercial world existed in Britain on the last day of the year 1600? I mean, was it unusual for a royal charter to be given to a bunch of buccaneering merchants? No, it wasn't unusual. I mean, there were lots of East India companies, or East India companies, Denmark, Sweden, the Dutch. They all had them.

I mean, this is not something that the state can subsidise by itself. It doesn't have the money. So it depends on its merchants. But I think it's even more pronounced in England as it was then. The English crown doesn't tend to take a leading role with anything approaching like empire or adventurous overseas commerce. It sort of privatises these things. So it relies on these merchants to do this. And this is what happens. And remember that England is quite small at this time, not just geographically small, but small in the European power stakes. The big empires at that time are the great Islamic empires, the Spanish empires, the Dutch are becoming increasingly powerful.

The English are starting off from behind. they have no notion when they start this company what it's going to result in. Why did they need a royal charter? Why didn't they go and just private areas they've been doing before? Why did they seek a royal charter, Brian? You know, this is what you did. They wanted protection, they wanted the name. Various companies are competing for the title of the East India Company in the 17th century.

It isn't clear until 1700 that this company is going to be staying together, is going to be the one that goes ahead. So it's a very unpredictable story, like so much of the rise of British Empire so called. it's an unpredictable story. Hugh Byrne, before I move on to talk a bit more about the senior company with you, about which you are extraordinarily knowledgeable and expert. Can we just go into the spice trade a little bit more? This was a very dangerous journey to take from Britain then to what we now called Indonesia.

It could take anything from 12 to 18 months. There were perils at sea. There were perils from competitors. There were perils from pirates. and yet they wanted to go for it. So can you give us some idea of the value of the spice trade? Well, it had long been recognized that spices were potentially a very profitable product because they are small in volume but high in value.

They're much in demand in Europe. And a cargo hold full of spices would generate enormous profits. Can you give us some, do you nominate some of the spices? Well, we're talking about such things as nutmeg, mace, a whole variety of peppers, and so on, all of which are used to flavour foods and puddings and so on. They are bringing spices to the taste and the palate of Europeans. Spices have been finding their way into Western Europe for the previous three or four hundred years via the overland route, and therefore it's not so much that Europeans are unfamiliar with these items.

It's that they can't secure large, reliable quantities of them. And therefore, it becomes logical, I think, once the sea route to the Indies is opened up in the 1490s, first of all by the Portuguese, that the European powers and the European trading companies will seek a more direct and reliable form of access to these commodities. Linda talked about the joint stock nature of the East India Company. Can you develop that?

Was it unusual at its time in that organisation? No, it wasn't. A whole host of companies have come into being in England at this time and indeed across Europe. We're thinking here of companies like the Muscovy Company, the Levant Company and so on. So the notion of developing larger corporate organisations where we have the pooling of resources is not unknown. And, of course, East India Company arrives at the end of that process and therefore picks up a lot of the organizational and financial forms. of existing companies.

The difference here, however, is something that we've alluded to already. The length of time it takes to procure spices. If you're sailing out to the East Indies, it takes 12 to 18 months. You then have to procure the cargo and return home. Now, that means that there is often a three, perhaps four-year lag between the time the ship sails out and the time it returns. And therefore, this requires a very high level of capital. capitalisation. Investors don't get an immediate return on their funding of the company. And therefore,

what we find occurring is this pooling of resources because this is a trade that requires quite significant infrastructure. The ships are expensive. The trading forts that develop are expensive as well. And therefore, it's really a case of, I suppose, bringing together resources, not just from England, it has to be said, because the East India Company attracts investment from all over Europe. The second, I think, distinct... Are we talking about individuals here? We're talking about wealthy...

To start off with that. I was talking about, what size is it? 12 wealth individuals, 20 wealthy individuals? We're talking about 200 initially subscribers. And these are the great merchant princes of London. If you look down the list, many of them had already been involved with the Levant Company to a considerable degree.

They are aldermen of the city of London. they are well connected at court and so on. But they are experienced. The men that they employ are experienced. They are free-booting adventurers, if you like, who are well acquainted with the risks of the sea. And these men translate their expertise, if you like, into the Asian trade,

having served an apprenticeship in the Atlantic and so on. But I think the most distinctive, if you like, institutional development that is worth just stressing here is the way in which these companies separate the ownership of the company from the management of it. In other words, stockholders subscribe, they provide resources, but they then enable and allow directors of the company to manage the trade. In a recognizably modern form, these are organisational patterns that are very familiar to us today. So in that sense, the East India Company, I think, is very important

as a precursor, if you like, of the multinational companies that were so familiar with, today. Before I move on, did it take it, how long was it before they could say this is working, this is a success, we're getting our money back? Some of the initial returns are very good indeed, and we're talking about a profit margin of 250%

on the original investment. But I think what happens is there is a realisation that single voyage investments are not really serving the purpose when you need a trade with long-term continuity. So over the first half of the 17th

century, we get the evolution to what is known as a permanent joint stock. And by 1657, we have this permanent joint stock being created. And that means that investors can be paid an annual dividend. And most importantly, they can trade the shares in the company. Thank you. Mary Miserra, the English, as it were, then, got to Indonesia and found that the Dutch and Portuguese had buttoned up the trade more or less. And also they got very little to trade with because our big export but wool didn't go down very well in a hot climate. And so they turned to India, as I understand it, to get stuff to trade with the East Indies with.

So what did they find in India? Well, I think they thought that they were going to find a lot of spices in India, and they didn't. They found pepper in the south, which the Portuguese had already started trading, and they got into that trade. But I suppose the really big thing that they find in India to trade in is textiles, cotton and silk textiles, which India is the world leader in producing. at that time. And that pulls them into Bengal, particularly. They also become involved in

Salt Peter, which is a constituent of gunpowder, I believe, and that becomes quite an important item that they trade in, an indigo, which is a dye. And also they begin to branch off into little kind of individual transactions, some of the writers. And they get into diamond trading and jewelry trading. Writers are, I suppose, effectively, a cross between a merchant and a bureaucrat, and these are the people who are employed by the company to go out and actually organise the trade for them and to establish relationships with Indian middlemen,

to keep invoices, to keep records, to find textile producers, to supply them with the goods, to organise keeping it in warehouses in India, and then send it out. But quite early on these writers get into, we're not allowed to get into, a certain amount of private trade, and they make a lot of money on the side.

So they find, principally, they'll salt pet or that and a bit of pepper, but they're principally finding textiles in India, which they can take to, as you were, Indonesia, and get spices through that trade. Yeah. And then bring the spices back to this country. Yes, but principally, the market that they develop is the British market.

And I suppose that's what's interesting about them. And there's actually quite a lot of material showing how they develop a market. And in that sense, they are a very modern company. And the people in Britain study the market. They study consumer demand. They look at these sort of Jane Austen-type ladies and the kind of dresses that they want to wear. and they write back to the writers and say, you know,

we're looking for the latest fashion, send us the best stuff, you know, don't send us last year's stuff. But the problem they've got, of course, is what do they pay for these textiles with? I mean, there's an absolute demand, wild demand, for these kinds of things in Britain. But as you say, there's absolutely nothing that the British produce that the Indians want.

And that gets them into a very sticky situation because it means the only way that they can establish this trade is by exporting silver, by exporting bullion to India. And at that time, under mercantilist economic theory, that's regarded as a net loss to the British economy. That is a bad thing. So you've got to find some way of getting these textiles out of India without pumping silver in. And so? Well, and so.

I mean, I suppose I'm making the story sound a little bit too linear. But as you said earlier, these companies had protection because trade wasn't very stable. The states they were dealing with weren't very stable. And also because they were competing. by the mid-18th century, particularly with the French, the East India Company had actually started to acquire a military force. That's later on. I mean, they went for the textiles,

and they developed in this country, was developed a massive appetite for textiles for clothing. You made the comment in one of your remarks, that this taught the British, allow the British to have clean underwear, regular clean underwear for the first time ever. I don't know that's true. And so they were getting from textiles

what they'd hope to get from spices. They were getting from both, really. Yes, but the problem was that they were having to pay for it with silver. They were having to export silver to get it. And they were being criticised for that. What accommodation did the Mughal Empire make to the British? Well, initially they were quite happy, I think, to have the British there as competitors with the Portuguese,

who I think they felt were a bit uppity and getting above themselves and were interested in sort of proselytising and converting people to Catholicism and the British should have promised not to do this. But they didn't give them any special privileges at all. I mean, in the 16th and 17th century, you know, the British were not a big deal in India. And the Mughal Empire was a strong, serious state

and it was able to call the shots. What these companies did want was exemption from taxes. I mean, the problem with it with trading in India was that India had lots of internal customs barriers. You know, it didn't really operate as an integrated economy. and what the East India Company, along with these other European companies wanted, was exemption from these internal taxes. And so they went to the moguls, or they went to rulers they found,

and tried to get exemption. They paid. They basically paid £350 down on the table, in return for which the Mughal Empire would exempt them from all internal customs duties. So we're still jostling at this stage with how they got some idea of how they established themselves in this country. And they went across the sea, and they began to, at the very edges of, of the Asian mainlands, they nibbling at the edges there. What did they find there, Linda Collin? Did they find civilizations and economies much bigger and more powerful than ours at the time?

Very much so. I mean, as Maria has already said, in many ways, sections of the Indian economy are far in advance of the English economy at that time, certainly in terms of textile production. They see this great mogul emperor who is so grand that when early English ambassadors turn up in the early 17th century he can make them wait for three years before he deals with them properly. They're a gentleman in waiting around. They are aware of the sheer size of this structure

and they're very much on the fringes of the Indian peninsula. And that's how they see themselves. I mean, it's very striking in the 1730s, the East India Company commissions a series of paintings to be made of its overseas basis. And it's striking that in all of these great paintings, they're coastal scenes. You're looking at India from the edge.

Even at this stage in the 1730s, you don't really seriously think. apart from a few zealots and militants, you don't seriously think in London of the prospect of the British moving into the interior of this vast peninsula, even though by then the Mughal Empire is beginning, well, has begun certainly, to disintegrate.

So the idea of getting a military grasp of any part of India actually takes a long time to develop. So therefore we must conclude that in order to get more wealth out of India, they had to learn to make alliances all the way along to go inland. Is that right, Hugh Byrne? Very much so. All of the early English business in India is conducted with Asian merchants, often in partnership because they have the language, the expertise, the skills,

and above all the capital, which is very necessary for the company often to purchase its products. It's a cliche, but the early stage of development of the company is very much an age of partnership. and we see the company acting step by step with Indian agents, intermediaries and so on. Yes, and it's a very interesting point of the East India Company, for me, fascinating, is that there seems to be, well, they intermarry, they adopt native customs, they adopt Indian customs, they learn Urdu and Persian, they get stuck in that. I mean, it is nothing altruistic. They have to because they are beggars at the feast, aren't they?

Very much so. As Linda said, they are on the fringes of these societies and communities. The English settlements are tiny. The numbers of Englishmen in India are very small indeed, and these are alliances of necessity. But they have the interesting, I think, socio-cultural aspect of them, that they draw the early company servants into Indian worlds of culture, society, religion and so on. There is no sense of separation here. or superiority in any way.

And there is certainly, for the first 130 years of the company's existence, any sense of an imperial project. I think that needs to be stressed. This is very much trade, not conquest, and it's trade in partnership in alliance with Indians. Yes, and what we're going to come to in a few minutes is this incredible transformation from people sort of nibbling around the edges to people being able to say that this whole place is their empire.

But we'll come to that in a second. What sort of profit are they making at the beginning of it? They've been there, say, 100, 120 years. You said 250% was being made quite early on. Are there still profits of that nature? Yes. The company itself is only as stable as the British domestic state. And I think what we see happening is that over the first 150 years of the company's existence,

it becomes embedded, if you like, in the British state society and economy. as that happens, its operations become more predictable, well managed, extremely sophisticated, and by the beginning of the 18th century, the company is beginning to return an annual profit of about a half a million pounds a year to divide amongst 2,000 stockholders. Half a million is what now? Have we any idea? That's the difficult question that everybody always asked. Two hundred years ago, what is it?

Multiply by... At least a hundred. I was going to say 94, but a hundred will do. Yeah, yeah. And so we're at the stage, are we organised, how are we organised? We're organising things called little forts, aren't we, in various places? Yes, they are trading forts or settlements. They're grandly entitled presidencies.

And I think that's in the sense is the shape of things to come. But these are very small... 20 or 30 men, as it is it? 20 or 30 men. In a fortified settlement, I think that's quite important. They are given by the local authorities the right to protect and defend themselves. They are also given by the... Charters that they have, the company, are given the right to defend and protect themselves with armed force.

But these are tiny, tiny footholds in large Asian cities. Maria, Linda alluded to the fact of the massive nature comparative relative to the British, of the Indian civilisation and economy. And when the English-British, I keep saying English-British, because it started as an English thing and then developed, particularly through the Scots, to be a British thing. In fact, it was one of the things that transformed England into Britain this episode. What sort of, what, they face this huge manufacturing economy

and then there was industrial revolution in this country where we became the manufacturing economy. Can you talk about the effect of the one on the other? Well, I mean, the effect of British manufacturing doesn't really start to hit India until the 19th century and really until the mid-19th century. I suppose one obvious thing that happens is that the company starts to come under pressure from British merchants who don't like it having a monopoly on the Indian trade. And so in 1813 it does officially lose its monopoly

and other kinds of private merchant houses open up and start trading there. Ultimately, I suppose there's a big debate in Indian history about the effect of the development of cheap British manufactured textile. on Indian textiles. It's certainly the case that India loses its role as the market leader in exporting textiles. Its textiles by the 1820s and 1830s cannot compete with these cheap Lancashire goods. But on the other hand, I wouldn't say that the Indian textile industry completely disappears. There's still a large inland industry. There's still a large inland demand in India. And also by the 1860s and 1870s, Indian industrialists are starting to set up factories in Bombay and later other parts of India.

start to manufacture cheap cotton goods as well. So I suppose the jury's out on that a bit. I mean, I hate to be a boring historian, but, you know, we haven't got the stats. But it probably does hurt, you know, the handloom industry, the weaving industry, who've been producing very high-quality export goods. And by the 1830s and 1840s, those people are suffering. I was struck the other day, just a small anecdotal piece of evidence, reading the account of a traveller, upcountry from Bombay in 1802, 200 miles inland,

who comes across a group of itinerant. salesmen and ask them to open up their baggage so that she can inspect the goods. And what she finds in there are textiles from Sheffield and from Lancashire in particular. And she comments that 50% of the commodities carried by these itinerant salesmen are manufactured in Britain at this stage. And they include cotton textiles. Obviously there are things like scissors, knives and forks and so on. But I think that's the shape of things to come that India, by the beginning of the 19th century,

is providing raw materials for Britain rather than what we'd seen in the past which were manufactured goods. Is there any sense of threat yet? Is there any sense in the... We're moving into the mid-18th century that, A, the senior company is outstripping the Dutch to Portuguese, the French,

and B, it is really challenging the great Indian Empire. Is there any sense of that at all? Or is that, if we're at the time looking at, Maria, would we say, well, that's not even... No, I don't... I wouldn't say that. I mean, there have been some mild sort of, you know, flurries of military activity. I mean, as early as the 17th century,

some of these emerging Indian regional rulers who eventually replaced the moguls. They don't like the fact that these companies have fortified settlements. And they don't like the fact that they have exemptions from inland revenue, because obviously it's damaging these people's tax take. So, you know, there are occasional flurries of activity. Shivaji, I think, destroys the British fortifications. around Bombay at one stage, and the British had clashed with Bengal rulers in the early and mid-18th century, and there'd been battles over, small battles over Calcutta.

But I don't think anybody at that stage would have imagined that they might end up taking over as the state in Bengal, no. I'd like to try to turn this towards the way it changed from being one among many trading companies from Europe and not the leading one either, to moving into becoming the imperial force in India. Now that's a big deal, but let's try to do it. Would you say that Climb of India, the Battle of Plessy, Middle of the 18th century, could we use that as a turning point,

where Britain's military presence became, although it was a funny battle, it wasn't really about it. Military presence became a real factor allied to the growing naval presence, which would really hit in a few decades later. These two things took the company from companies, to empire. Is there something in that? I think there's three things.

We've stressed that there isn't an imperial project from the beginning. But it does happen that the East India Company's three great bases in the Indian Peninsula, Madras, Calcutta, Bombay. You've got a kind of magic triangle effect here from which they can sort of move on each side. and that is, I think, a potential advantage. I think the thing that really starts it changing, apart from the fact the East India Company is increasingly successful, is that the whole India question gets caught up in,

well, it's not a cold war between Britain and France. It's a hot war and it gets hotter and hotter from the end of the 17th century onwards. And by the 1740s and 1750s, British and French forces are skirmishing, very much on the Coromandel coast in particular of India. They're trying to work out who can get the advantage. They're playing one small Indian ruler against the next. And, of course, the classic high point of that, the battle that every schoolboy is supposed to know is the Battle of Plessy in 1757, Clive of India. But that leads on to the third point.

We think of that as a British victory, but actually most of Clive's men were not Brits. Most of them were Indians, and indeed such white troops as he had, many of them were not from Britain. They were Swedes, they were Dutch, they were French. It's a mongrel army. But what that campaign

teaches the British, and the French had actually had the idea before them, is that they can build up armies of Indian troops to fight for them. And that's something that they hadn't really understood before. They knew that they couldn't have enough white troops of their own because the disease levels, the transport difficulties, the transport costs. And the positive of the population. Yeah. But you build up this indigenous army, which by the 1790s has already reached about 100,000 by Waterloo in 1815.

We're talking about almost a quarter of a million troops. Run by a private company. Yeah. And this is your weapon. This is what converts you from your commercial company to a political and military and fiscal complex. But it is amazing because what happened is not only that they were trained and they trained Wellington. I mean, his sepoys he referred to very, very proudly. They won the Battle of Waterloo, Duke of Wellington himself,

but also that they were prepared to fight against other Indian states in the service of this British private company. And yet at the same time, another complication, which is fascinating, I think, Hugh, is that back in London, they didn't want it to be, as I understand, these 200 wealthy aldermen and investors from all over Europe and so really didn't want it to have imperial longings whatsoever. They wanted to get on with trading. No, the mantra throughout is still trade, not conquest,

and they're almost in denial about this. And I think quite revealing is what happens to the company in Britain after the conquest of India begins. And the answer is, nothing changes at all. It continues to be configured as a trading company. It continues to send out its annual fleet. And there is almost a turning of the blind eye to it all. There are a couple of points.

if I can just add to what Linda was saying about how this transformation takes place. One important development I think that is crucial is that the company is backed by the British state in the second half of the 18th century. And the reason for that is that India is now recognised of being great importance to the national interest, economically, strategically and so on. The second point is that the problem... What does backed by the state mean? What does it actually mean in practical terms?

They're not sending military out there. So what does it mean by them? They do send the military out there. And we must remember the context here is a global conflict between Britain and France. It comes on all over the places, Britain and France. They're fighting each other in America. They're fighting each other in the Far East. They're fighting each other in India.

But it does mean that if the company gets into difficulties, then the state will step in. They will commit troops, as they do in the Seven Years' War. They do again during the American War of Independence, which has a very important Indian dimension to it. So we're faced with the rather than... Was the Indian dimension in American War of Independence? Well, that France comes in against Britain in 1778 in support of the American colonists,

and immediately that conflict is transferred into the Indian Ocean arena. So there's a lot of Anglo-French conflict going on in India during the American War of Independence. Can you tell us what the Mughal Empire, Mughal Empire was doing? We don't happen. It is in decline. What is the decline? What sort of decline is it? What are they prepared to give up to keep going as people?

in decline tend to do, well, if I can hang on a little bit more by selling a bit more family silver aisle? Well, they're giving up their attempt to make their rich run in the regions, really. And I suppose what's effectively starting to happen in India from 1707 from the death of Arangzeb, who's the last great tumult, is that India looks as if it's splitting up into regional states.

And what's really interesting, I think, what Indian... Is there anything to do with the pressure from... Sorry, it didn't mention it from... Is there any... Is that anything to do with the pressure of the European companies, or is it to do with... No, it's to do with India. You know, India has its own dynamic politics. It has its own traders. And what happens is a system of regional states are emerging who are becoming dependent.

To some extent, I suppose this is where Europeans might come in, who are becoming dependent on Indian bankers and Indian financiers to bankroll them. And that makes them vulnerable. And I suppose that in a sense, it brings together what we think of as very separate issues, which are politics and commerce. And it's quite clear that politics and commerce and the formation of new states in India in the 18th century are not separate. They're deeply connected.

And the point about the East India Company is it ends up being the institution which can combine all of those things most successfully. Why do you think that is? Because it's very institutionally advanced, as Hugh says. It's very well organised, it's got a command structure, it's got a well-organised army. And I do think this is probably the most important thing.

It's not a technological advantage. It's not a cultural advantage. I think it's to do with being able to organise big institutions like armies at a certain point in time that gives you an advantage because I think in terms of technological or weaponry advantages the Indians catch up terrifically fast but what they're not very good at doing

is organising mass standing armies, paying them regularly, giving them pensions, giving them a sense of regimental loyalty. So I think it's that that the British are bringing over that makes them very distinctive and very powerful. Linda, what does the... When the East India companies begin to make territorial gains, and as the 18th century, after the French Revolution, which has a big effect,

it seemed to me, the Wellesley and then his brother, who became the Duke of Wellington, begin to make territorial gains, which are frankly imperial. How does the British Crown react to that? Sorry, I'm going to backtrack a bit, because I think we can't do this without mentioning the Warren Hastings position, the British vis-a-vis Warren Hastings, a great Nabob in India, who was impeached, he was unequitted,

but he was impeached for employing too many Scots and having too much personal power and personal fortune, which is ironic because he was very friendly and understanding of Indian culture and Indian customs and so on. So can you talk about Warren Hastings for a moment or two and then let's try to talk about the imperial adventure? Well, I mean, I think we have to backtrack a bit and say that British domestic attitudes to the Indian connection

had always been a little ambivalent. I mean, they were ambivalent about many of these luxury goods flooding in. All this tea, I mean, Wesley, the Methodist leader by the 1750s, is saying all this tea drinking is enervating the ordinary people of these islands. Even porcelain, if you look at Hogarth's paintings in the 18th century, all this import porcelain that the company is bringing in from Canton. Porcelain is always cracking in Hogarth's paintings. It's a sign that these luxury goods may be causing trouble.

But the concern mounts after Placcy with the emergence of people like Clive, who makes a lot of money, certainly some of it corruptly. And Hastings, as you say, is this paradox. a man who is very cultivated, very multilingual, deeply concerned about Indian culture, Indian legal traditions. But has the misfortune to be around at the same time as Edmund Burke, who sees on Hastings somewhat dubious processes politically, militarily, economically, and sets up this great show trial in the 1780s. using Hastings not just as an individual to attack,

but using him to set up a debate both about what the British are doing in India, but also about what he thinks India and the contamination of the company in India is doing to the British state itself. There's this feeling that the corruption that the company is stirring up in India is hitting back and corrupting the British polity, British society as well. And buying members of Parliament and being new wealth being dubious in itself. The Nabobs.

And this strange business have been indicted because of employing too many Scots, which in fact Burke accused him of being and making a little empire of his own. Though Burke was quite happy to see fellow Irishmen going over to India, I should say. Oh, well, I mean, that sort of thing goes on all the time. What's there, we just touch on the Chinese connection here before we try to get some final grip on the idea of empire. Again, they met a very different empire in China. And the Canton deeply developed economy as well at the time far in advance of what was happening in.

In this country, and we got tea from there, and the only way we could really buy it was to grow and trade opium in India and trade that for the tea. That's right. A very different set of relationships exist in China. The Chinese Empire keeps Europeans at arm's length, keeps them restricted to Canton, they're not even allowed to settling Canton for the whole year. So there's no prospect whatsoever of any imperial adventure in China. But as far as the company is concerned, the importance of tea, of course, is that it is the great commercial winner of the 18th century because it has an elastic demand, it will expand. greatly, as indeed it does during the second half of the 18th century. And crucially, it's seen as a means of returning home wealth from Asia. The key point, again, however, and it's something we refer to at the very beginning, is how do you pay for it?

We've got very little to offer the Chinese in the 18th century. They don't want woolens. They don't want our metals. And what the company has to really hit upon is an alternative mechanism for funding the tea trade. and what they begin to do is invest heavily in textiles, but also opium, as you mentioned, to fund the tea trade. And therefore we get the development of a form of triangular trade, if you like, from Britain to India, from India to China and back.

Finally, can I go around because we've spent time on that, and I think it was, I mean, I enjoyed it a lot, but when did this turn into empire? Can each of you give me a summary of that? Maria, when did, we've seen it start as a small trading company, we've seen it grow, we've seen great territorial advances, we've seen the army, as Linda's mentioned, grow up by the time of Waterloo to a quarter of a million, a private army of a private trading company. We've heard about the Mongol Empire declining, and when did this become an imperial project? I think in the 1770s and 1780s it does, because I think you begin to see the formulation of an idea in Britain that this is a company has to start governing. Bengal in the interests of Indians.

So there's a trusteeship idea and the beginnings of ideas of cultural superiority, I think. And then on top of that, there's the need to secure your borders, I suppose, and that starts to produce, de facto, you know,

I suppose a sort of expansionary momentum, which it's then difficult to stop. I suppose it really acquires a strong imperialist ideology and momentum to round about the turn of the century with Wellesley, I would say. And what happens then, Linda, is that the nature of the English-British relationship with Indians and India

changes quite dramatically, doesn't it? And instead of wanting to learn a language, it's tracing the English language back to Sanskrit, discovering about Indian culture, there becomes a racial element enters into it. Is that right? And could you explain why? I think there always has been a racial element, and I don't think that you get a complete clean break because, you know, there's lots of 19th century Britons in India

who are learning languages and interested in Indian archaeology and so forth. So I don't think it's a complete shift. But what I think, there's two things that are very important, the fact that Britain loses the American colonies. And so interest and emotion and lust, if you like, shifts from North America substantially to the Indian Peninsula. That's very important. The other important thing is that now with these swollen armies,

you can conquer. You crush the Mysore Empire in the south of India in the 1790s, you destroy the Marathas, and you finally move on to Punjab. And so basically now that you have this territory, apart from anything else, you have to think imperially because, hey, it's there. You've got to do something with it. When did the, and how did the East India Company come to an end as a company,

250 years after it's, 58 years after it began? Well, the ironic thing is that it continues as a governing agency, long after it loses its commercial privileges and monopoly, and therefore after it loses its charter in 1813 and the charter to China in 1833, it continues as the governing agency. And I think that is quite an extraordinary transformation. It's the ultimate sort of privatised empire, if you like. It's administering India on Britain's behalf. The great seismic shock, of course, is the Indian uprising of 1857, which begins. in the Indian army, but actually draws in elements from across Indian society. And I think that's the wake-up call for the British, and that it highlights the great inconsistencies of leaving control of enormous territories and peoples in the hands of what essentially is still a private corporation.

And at that point, the British state and the Crown has no alternative other than to step in and assume primary responsibilities for the empire itself. Well, thank you very much. very much for taking that on in the... I know you all know 50,000 times more about it and it's quartz and pint bottles, but thank you very much indeed. Linda Colley, my name is Hugh Bowen and we'll be back next week talking

about volcanoes. Thanks for listening. We hope you've enjoyed this Radio 4 podcast. You can find hundreds of other programmes about history, science and philosophy at BBC.com.com.uk forward slash radio 4