Short History Of... - The East India Company

Episode Date: July 13, 2025

Over 400 years ago, a bold commercial venture was established to allow an ambitious group of English merchants to send ships halfway around the world in search of spices, skills, and profit. It was known as The East India Company. Over the next 250 years, the Company grew into one of the most powerful and controversial enterprises in history. At its height, it had the powers of a sovereign state - fighting wars, extracting wealth, and changing the fate of nations.  But how could a private company be allowed to wield so much control? What are the consequences when capital rules without conscience? And what does its rise and fall reveal about the economic and political empires that shape our world today? This is a Short History Of The East India Company. A Noiser Production, written by Sean Coleman. With thanks to Dr Mark Williams, a Reader in Early Modern History at Cardiff University, who has published widely on the English East India Company.  Get every episode of Short History Of... a week early with Noiser+. You’ll also get ad-free listening, bonus material and early access to shows across the Noiser podcast network. Click the subscription banner at the top of the feed to get started. Or go to noiser.com/subscriptions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's early spring, 1770, in Bengal, Eastern India. A young woman walks wearily, barefoot, along a dusty road. In her arms, a baby cries. Faintly now, the sound is more breath than voice. She rocks him with one hand and shields his face from the sun with the other. Her own skin is cracked from heat and hunger, her lips parched and dry. But still she walks on, past fields where nothing grows, trees stripped bare of fruit and bark, and bodies lying motionless in the shade.

Some are merely asleep, but from the smell of rot carried on the hot wind, and bodies lying motionless in the shade. Some are merely asleep, but from the smell of rot carried on the hot wind, she knows that others will not wake again. The ground is as hard as rock. The crops in the fields all around are withered, betrayed by rains that never came last year. Even the wells have run dry. last year, even the wells have run dry. Up ahead, a queue of hollow-eyed men and women snicks towards a low stone building with wooden shutters, the village grain store.

Inside, in the cool dark, lies the answer to all of their prayers, a stockpile of rice. The young woman moves towards the villagers, swaying with the baby she hardly has the strength to hold. A British East India Company guard leans in the shade of the wall, his musket upright, jacket unfastened. He chews something, spits, and looks away when she approaches. These company men arrived here decades ago, with their pale skin and foreign tongues. She doesn't know why they have the right to control the grain. She only knows that anyone who challenges them is beaten, or worse. It's been the same story village after village.

The precious grain is not for the people who farmed and tended to it. It's reserved for the foreign soldiers or sent far away. Now another woman in the queue drops to her knees in front of the white man whispering please in Bengali. The guard is unmoved, and another neighbor steps forward, his desperation turned to anger. Straightening, the guard clicks his musket into readiness. The local man backs away, eyes blazing. But then he crouches to scoop up a rock and stands, weighing it in his hand.

Another man joins him, then another. With a raw cry, the small group surges forward, hurling their stones at the guard, who now levels his musket at the ringleader. The man falls, and the rush is over. The guard reloads with shaking hands and aims again. But they have all backed off and the woman slinks away, hugging her baby to her chest. Perhaps she will have better luck in the next village, but she knows better than to expect any mercy from the East India Company.

Over 400 years ago, a bold commercial venture was established to allow an ambitious group of English merchants to send ships halfway around the world in search of spices, silks and profit. Over the next 250 years, the East India Company grew into one of the most powerful and controversial enterprises in history, operating across entire continents and controlling millions of lives. It fought wars for profit, extracted wealth through punitive taxes, exploited famine for control, and in doing so changed the fate of nations. At its height, it was something unprecedented. A global corporation with the powers of a sovereign state. But how could a private company be allowed to wield so much

control? What are the consequences when capital rules without conscience? And what does its rise and fall reveal about the economic and political empires that shape our world today? I'm John Hopkins from the Noyzen Network. This is a short history of the East India Company. As the 17th century begins, Elizabeth I is nearing the end of her reign, ruling over a fragile union of England, Wales and Ireland. The country is small, politically fractured, and still defining itself after decades of religious upheaval.

As William Shakespeare prepares to unveil Hamlet at the Globe Theatre, and Francis Bacon begins to publish radical ideas about knowledge and scientific method, English ships are tentatively probing distant waters, searching for better trade routes with the East. But while the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 was a triumph, England's navy is still no match for the great seafaring nations. The Dutch are outpacing them in trade. The Portuguese have dominated the Spice routes for nearly a century. With England's treasury strained by war, its merchants are growing increasingly impatient to share the spoils from far-flung lands with their European counterparts.

Dr. Mark Williams is reader in early modern history at Cardiff University and has published widely on the English East India Company. What really irritates the merchants of London, but England more broadly, is that for 50 years, more than that even, they've had to rely on intermediaries, middlemen, to bring in the exotic goods that the nobility, the aristocracy, but increasingly the rising middle class of England wants as a way of showing off their wealth.

The English merchants know they are falling behind in the race and they're beginning to worry that they might miss out altogether. There is a limited amount of wealth that can be carved up among the world powers and the Spanish and the Portuguese are getting more and more of that so they better get on it now. And so there's this drive to say if we want these exotic goods, especially spices, so nutmeg, pepper, mace, cinnamon as well, if they want this they have to get out there. Since these merchants have neither the finances nor the resources for ocean-going adventures, they devise a new model to support their ambitions. A commercial company where multiple investors pool capital,

fund a voyage, and share both the risks and the rewards. But if they're going to hold any sway in the choppy waters of international trading, they need more than just money. They petition for a royal charter, which would grant them the legal authority to trade and add power to their negotiations. The Crown is very interested in this idea of, well, we can gain wealth and influence while not investing a great deal of capital on the part of the Crown or the Treasury and generate wealth through this.

So it's trying to respond to these very challenging, very difficult economic circumstances, the need to look outwards, but giving this core group of predominantly London merchants the authority, the privilege to go out and do it and hopefully gather the wealth through it. On December the 31st, 1600, Queen Elizabeth I hands a royal charter to what will be commonly known as the East India Company.

As their name suggests the merchants have their sights on what is currently known as the East Indies. The vast loosely mapped region stretching from India to the Indonesian archipelago. loosely mapped region stretching from India to the Indonesian archipelago. It's home to the Spice Islands, where nutmeg, cloves and pepper grow in abundance. To get there, they need ships strong enough to survive months at sea, and armed sufficiently to fend off Portuguese and Dutch rivals. Not every vessel is up to the task. rivals. Not every vessel is up to the task. One, the Mayflower, is deemed unseaworthy and is passed over. She will later sail into a very different chapter of Imperial history.

Instead, the company assembles four ships, the Ascension, Hector, Susan, and their flagship, the Red Dragon. She had once sailed under the more threatening name Scourge of Malice, before being politely renamed for diplomatic appearances. Command goes to James Lancaster, a hardened privateer, essentially a state-sanctioned pirate. His previous semi-legal expedition to the same region ended disastrously with ships lost and many of his crew dead from scurvy or killed on hostile shores. But now, older, sharper, and backed by royal authority, he sails again as the first captain of the Company fleet. And there is a lot of responsibility on his shoulders.

The average investment from any given subscriber to the initial voyages is sitting around 250 to 300 pounds at that point in time. Translating that, that's sitting around 35 to 40,000 pounds. So it's a not insignificant investment. 40,000 pounds. So it's a not insignificant investment. On a cold January morning in 1601, Lancaster's fleet heads off from Woolwich, loaded with bullion, woolen cloth, tin and letters of negotiation. But they've barely made it into the English channel before the wind dies, leaving them bobbing helplessly for days

within sight of shore. Onlookers gather with picnics, watching, pointing, and laughing at the proud expedition that can't seem to leave English waters. For men dreaming of conquest and commerce, it's a humbling start. Eventually, the winds return and the fleet gets underway. They make steady progress south, rounding the Cape of Good Hope and on towards the East Indies, where the better funded,

better armed Dutch already have a firm grip on the spice trade. At sea, rival ships tail one another, loaded with treasures and guarded with cannons. In a world built by privateers, looting is just another form of diplomacy. Still, Lancaster sails on to Bantam in western Java, where he achieves something remarkable, a diplomatic breakthrough. He meets with the Sultan, offers gifts, and negotiates the company's first foothold in Asia. The outpost is known as a factory, but in reality it's a combination of a fortified

warehouse, office and residence. From here the company can buy spices and textiles ready to ship back to England. Then they'll sell them for enormous profits, and then plow the funds into further explorations. Other factories soon follow in Ache, Sumatra, and even briefly in Hirado, Japan. No Frills delivers. Get groceries delivered to your door from No Frills with PC Express. Shop online and get $15 in PC Optimum Points on your first five orders. Shop now at NoFrails.ca.

The East India Company makes good ground. By 1610, its voyages are no longer funded individually. Instead, a permanent joint stock model is adopted, spreading the risk across all ventures, giving the company financial stability and allowing them to make longer-term plans. But these early gains come at a growing cost. The Dutch, protective of their established trade route,

are not simply out-trading the English, they are out muscling them. What the Dutch managed to do, that the English don't in the first 20 years or so of their operations, is loosely what one could call negotiate, but realistically violently at times intimidate the populations of Indonesia where they start to trade. And that is violence undertaken in order to leverage and secure access to nutmeg trade. But the consequence of all that is that the Dutch gain a real foothold in Indonesia, especially areas around what they would call Batavia and now modern-day Jakarta. And they fortify, they start to control through military presence those territories. And the English never really managed to push back against this.

That imbalance comes to a head in 1623 on the island of Amboina when the Dutch accuse a group of English merchants and their Japanese mercenaries of plotting to seize control of a fort. The evidence is flimsy, but confessions extracted under torture lead to the accused being put to death. So any sort of peaceful relationship between the Dutch and the English in these territories falls apart quite early on. The result is that the English look to try and gain

a foothold elsewhere. That elsewhere is the vast subcontinent of India. But by now the East India Company has learned that if it can't dominate the East Indies through force, it should embed itself more subtly, through diplomacy and opportunism. At this point, India is ruled by the immensely wealthy Mughal Empire, which governs more than a fifth of the world's population, some 125 million people. Its economy is larger than that of all of Europe combined, and rivaled only by imperial China.

With its court in Delhi, its real strength lies in its provinces, controlled by regional governors known as Nawabs. The English, newly arrived, poorly connected, and economically insignificant, seek protection from the Nawabs through courtesy, careful mediation, and by forming strategic alliances. And in the decentralized structure of Mughal rule, they find just enough openings to worm their way in. So part of the process of simulating and gaining a foothold in India, in Indonesia, in China, is getting people who can learn the language,

understand the rituals of trade, understand how this ought to be done so it doesn't collapse because you don't know the niceties. And that takes a long time. At this stage, the company's approach is not yet framed in racial or missionary terms and is built more on opportunism than ideology. Even so, there is a growing belief, subtle but present, that the British are a superior people, destined to lead. But for now, company agents supplicate themselves, wooing local rulers with gifts and the promise of valuable foreign merchandise. In return, they seek permission to build outposts from which to exchange their English goods

for the increasingly valuable textiles from India. Knowing what the locals might want to buy in return is another challenge. In theory, England's best export is wool, but heavy English cloth has little appeal in the heat of India. Instead, the company leans heavily on gold and silver bullion. In these early years, the company ships almost anything, tin, lead, glassware, even English lace, to see what turns a profit. For a while, they even offer themselves as a water taxi service to the upper classes. Slowly, the company gains permission to establish outposts in Surat,

and later Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta. These small settlements quickly grow into bustling towns, and for now, the Mughal court sees the East India Company as manageable allies. They are given what's called a Tharman, which is a license to trade more or less with the monarch's good grace. And this is sometimes lapsed. It is sometimes renewed and it's all based on more or less the good behavior of those merchants in that territory.

But the East India Company doesn't always behave that well. Famously in the 1680s, what becomes known as the Anglo Mughal War, the company tries to forcibly extract another farm on out of the Mughals, and the company is just absolutely obliterated in the conflict that comes out of that, and they have to actually publicly apologize to the Emperor for having done that. It's a humbling moment. But instead of learning restraint, the company adapts its approach and arms itself. As similar companies from France and the Netherlands expand their own footholds in the region,

what begins as a defensive security force for the East India Company's factories evolves into a powerful private army. into a powerful private army. Its troops are largely made up of locally recruited Indian soldiers called sepoys and led by British officers. And it will swell to nearly a quarter of a million troops, making it one of the largest standing forces in the world, outnumbering even the official British army back home. even the official British army back home. Thus strengthened, the company starts intervening politically, playing rival rulers off against one another

and influencing succession disputes. But even at this stage, the company is not seen as a threat to Mughal power. They just don't really think about them very much. Because what they are concerned with more often than not is how they can gain dominance or at least secure their power in South Asia. If the English can help with that, they might give them a bit of a nod. If they can get money from them, perhaps that might be good. But really those South Asian powers are not really all that fussed about what the

Europeans are doing a lot of the time. not really all that fussed about what the Europeans are doing a lot of the time. Perhaps they should have been. Because the East India Company is no longer a loose band of traders. It's organized, wealthy, and with its increasing military strength, it's now a far more dangerous beast. But by the early 18th century, the Mughal Empire finds itself fragmenting. Aurangzeb, the last of the great Mughal emperors, has expanded the empire further than ever before. But his military campaigns have drained the treasury, and his religious intolerance has

alienated large parts of the population. By the time he dies in 1707, his empire is overstretched and vulnerable. Back in Britain, parliament and commerce are growing in influence, and the nation begins to emerge as a global trading power, hungry for wealth and expansion. The East India Company, with its fortunes tied to Britain's prestige abroad and its profits back home, is seen as a means to achieve that. One of the trends that emerges in this period is that the British Crown is subsidized at times through massive bungs of money from the East India Company. And this later on becomes a question of political corruption.

It's often seen as such. But what it also is doing is ensuring the ongoing health of the company and also leveraging political influence to ensure that the company maintains its place and isn't dissolved at the whim of a monarch. With India in a crisis of authority, the company sees a chance to send more of its men. And not just to trade, but to profit from the land itself.

One of its young clerks, named Robert Clive, arrives in India in 1744, aged just 18. He is an anonymous cog in the commercial machine. But he's restless, ambitious, and quick to grasp the power games unfolding around him. By 1756, what is often termed the Seven Years' War, erupts between the British and the French. That's fought across a number of different theaters across the globe. When that war spills onto Indian shores, the East India Company finds itself drawn into the fighting, forced to defend its interests against French rivals and their allies.

Clive sees his chance. He signs up for military service in the Company's growing private army and begins his transformation from clerk to commander. Bold, lucky, and willing to bluff when outgunned, Clive moves through the ranks quickly, not just of its army, but of the whole East India Company. By the early 1750s, one of the wealthiest provinces in India, Bengal, is sliding into chaos. The authority of its Nawab, Sirajat Dala, is being jostled by rival factions, with the French backing one side and the English another.

What then materializes is something like a localized conspiracy against him, to try and oust him from power. The nobility are part of this. Perhaps the most important part of it is a family called the Jagat Seth banking family, a family of extraordinarily wealthy merchants. They helped to determine the rise and fall of emperors in the way the Medici did in Italy. And a coup starts to take form.

The East India Company sees an opening. If it can help to install a more compliant ruler in Bengal, it will consolidate its power in the region. What Clive and others see is the sense of if we back the right horse here we will have a favorable result. We'll be able to wield more influence, we'll be able to secure our power, our profits in South Asia. Clive is by now a Lieutenant Colonel and is sent in with a small force.

He makes secret deals with defectors inside the Nawab's court, most importantly with Mir Jafar, Siraj's commander-in-chief. Clive offers him the throne of Bengal if he will turn against his master. In return, the company expects loyalty, trade concessions, and access to Bengal's immense revenues. But the night before the planned confrontation, despite much secret negotiation, Clive is still awaiting confirmation that Mir Jafar will stick to their plan. It's June the 22nd, 1757. The monsoon presses close, the air swollen with thunder and distant rain.

A small huddle of canvas tents squat in the damp heat of the Bengal night on the edge of a mango grove. Inside one of them, a lantern swings on a hook, casting shadows over a low wooden table. Here, Robert Clive inspects a map, ink smudged, creased, and marked with charcoal. At 32, he's a soldier of fortune, shaped more by instinct than training. He scans the map of the battlefield, the mangrove grove, the riverbank, the open plain. Every inch matters. His army of just over 3,000 men is camped outside.

Opposite them, ready to fight, are 50,000 troops loyal to the Nawab. The Englishman knows only too well that if Mir Jafar fails to act, or worse, betrays him, his own small force will be crushed by morning. Outside the tent, soldiers clean their muskets and prepare their kits and horses. Somewhere in the dark, elephants trumpet restlessly in the Nawabs' camp. Lightning tears across the sky. The thunder that follows sounds like distant cannon fire. There is little more Clive can do now but wait.

Dawn comes in, sodden and steamy, and his men drag their guns into position under the cover of trees and tarpaulins. His meagre force of company men and Indian sepoys line up in thin rows, facing an army more than ten times their size. The Nawab's cavalry begins to advance, but Mir Jar's troops, positioned on the left flank, do nothing. In the center column, confusion spreads. Orders are shouted. Elephants turn. The Nawab's men hesitate. Jaffar has stayed his hand.

Clive's plan is working. And just as the British open fire, the heavens open. A monsoon downpour drenches the battlefield. The Nawab's troops scramble to cover their supplies, but it's too late. Their gunpowder is soaked, their cannons silenced before they can be fired. But Clive's sheltered troops stay dry and deadly. What follows is not so much a battle as a collapse. By the end of the day the Nawab is in flight. And the East India Company, with just 3,000 men, is triumphant. With Sirajat Dala defeated and killed, Jaffar is installed as Nawab of Bengal. And Clive and the East India Company are rewarded handsomely.

It's easy to see Mir Jaffar as sort of a puppet of the company. I think it's probably unfair. There's a financial sentiment, a massive sort of gift given to not just the company, but to Clive specifically as well. Clive tellingly is made a member of the nobility in Bengal. So he becomes part of that social hierarchy there. The company now controls the wealth and political direction of Bengal, the richest province in India.

And while Mir Jafar now relies on them for military support, he is also expected to fund their operations. In the years that follow, the company's control deepens, until in 1765, the Mughal emperor finally grants the company the Devani of Bengal. It's a deed that allows them to administer civil governance in the region and, more importantly, to extract wealth from its people. They start to gain access to the right to tax, to generate revenue from the lands in Bengal and later

on through the Mughal Empire. And again, Clive is part of this process. He becomes the governor of Bengal in the 1760s up to 1767. Clive returns to Britain a hero, hailed as the man who brought India under British influence. But his success is overshadowed by suspicion around the vast sums of money he has amassed, both personally and on the company's behalf. The gift that he receives amounts to about 22 million pounds

in today's money. So he is extremely rich and that gets all kinds of reputational damage towards him back in Britain. But he actually, when he meets with Mir Jafar in the wake of it, says that the company's concern is to attend solely to commerce at this point in time. So at least his broad stance is one of, we are not going to interfere further. We're just here to make a profit. We're simply merchants.

And this is a line that emerges many times across the company's history, which is that they will engage in this sort of activity, sometimes be aggressively expansionist, but then we look back and say, but we're really just merchants. At this point, the company has exclusive rights to trade in tea, textiles, and opium. In Britain, every cup of tea legally imported comes via the company's ships. At its peak, the East India Company accounts for around half of all global trades. Its reach extends from Canton to Calcutta, and from the tea rooms of London to the plantations of Assam. Why just survive back to school when you can thrive by creating a space that does it all

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Conditions apply. By now, the East India Company governs large swathes of India. The wealth of these regions, especially Bengal, is vast, generated by centuries of agriculture, artisan labour and trade. With company-backed rulers in place and control over taxation and revenue collection, the enterprise redirects India's wealth back to London and becomes one of the richest organisations in the world. But this extractive model proves devastating.

Traditional industries are undermined, land taxes are set at unsustainable levels, and grain is hoarded or exported while local populations starve. The most horrifying result is the Bengal famine of 1770, which follows a series of poor monsoons and widespread crop claps. Drought devastates the region, but it's not the weather alone that kills. There is a famine which emerges from a choice that the company makes in many respects, which is that the collection of tax is prioritized over the distribution of grain, the purchase of food, and a willingness to let the price of rice in that area to spike.

People simply cannot afford it. Where at once Nawabs managed food supply during times of scarcity, stabilizing prices and releasing grain reserves to prevent starvation, the East India Company simply hoards the grain for its own soldiers. It's worth remembering that through the latter half of the 18th century, the company is at war quite frequently and so there's that old cliche of an army marching on its belly. But the sense there again is to prioritize the continuing operation of the company, continued securing of its power, of its revenue, instead of any sense of responsibility to the population. So the food goes to the

company first, and famine again results. By the time the crisis subsides, at least 10 million people are dead, nearly a third of Bengal's population. In Mashidabad, once the capital, the population reportedly falls from 200,000 to barely 20,000. In some villages, there are no survivors left to bury the dead. Fields lie fallow, trade collapses, and whole sections of society, from farmers to weavers to laborers, are wiped out. And still the grain stores remain guarded and the company continues to collect taxes. In fact, its directors even increase revenue demands the following year to make up for lost income.

At the same time, the company expands its reach across the Indian Ocean and into East Africa. Here, from the 17th to early 19th century, the East India Company actively participates in the slave trade, transporting thousands of people, mostly from East Africa, to work in India and Southeast Asia. Though it doesn't operate plantations in the Atlantic style, it buys, sells and uses enslaved labor freely across its territories. And still, the drive for growth continues. Between 1760 and 1830, the East India Company expands across India.

And it begins to anglicize Indian society with new legal codes, infrastructure, English language education, and the promotion of British values, often under the guise of a civilizing mission. One of the real shifts that occurs in the Enlightenment period is that you get, what's often termed the emergence of scientific racism, you get a world hierarchy that is still informed by that sense of sort of religious belief and the superiority of particular faiths over others, but also a belief that there is an empirical reality

to the existence of race, that science reinforces the idea that there are inferior and superior races. And that's when it really starts to gain momentum in the 18th and especially in the 19th century. It's a worldview that wasn't really available to the company prior to that. Against this philosophical backdrop, the company continues to consolidate power. But back home, reports circulate that the company's spectacular profits mask a deeper rot.

Whispers abound of misrule, corruption, and the near collapse of its finances. What happens in the course of the 1770s, 1780s is that the British parliament starts to introduce acts to kind of regulate and control the company. And this is partly fed by this rumor mill of exactly how neglectful the company often is. The company actually nearly goes bankrupt in 1772, so the state intervenes and bails them out. But that bailout comes with caveats.

In 1773, parliament passes the Regulating Act, which forces greater transparency and political oversight, and installs a governor general of Bengal to oversee company operations in India. The man chosen for that job is Warren Hastings, an ambitious long-serving company official with a reputation for discipline. Tasked with reforming a chaotic and scandal-ridden administration, he rationalizes tax collection, codifies laws laws and creates a centralized bureaucracy. But while he speaks the language of order and good governance, his methods are often brutal.

Taxes are raised sharply, land is seized, local officials are replaced with company agents, and traditional protections for farmers and weavers are stripped away. In cities artisans are driven to ruin as British traders undercut their prices or monopolize supply chains. Under Hastings Watch, the company's reputation as a self-interested force becomes impossible to ignore. Hastings becomes more or less the embodiment

of all that is seen to be going wrong with the company. It's a slightly unfair allegation to Leviathan, to be honest with you. He had been doing more or less what a lot of company officials had been doing for the entirety of the company's existence. He had been undertaking what was termed private trade. Now, private trade in retrospect seems like sort of skimming off the top. That you're not putting the money back into the company to benefit its shareholders. But everybody did it. In 1787, Hastings becomes the subject of a sensational impeachment trial led by Edmund Burke,

a prominent member of parliament who accuses him of presiding over a regime of oppression, injustice and wrong. What Burke levies against Hastings is this charge of corruption, of overextending that power, of making the company into an unchecked body of government. And his great position of advocacy, and again, this is in the backdrop of the American Revolution, which Burke supported, and increasingly the French Revolution, which Burke does not. And he says, well, where does this lead us? Do we want the company to become an agent of tyranny

in this other part of the world? The trial drags on for seven years. And though Hastings is eventually acquitted, the damage is done. The public, once dazzled by tales of wealth and conquest, is now disturbed by reports of corruption and violence. The company is no longer a distant trading concern to be controlled at arm's length. Its imperial ambitions need to be reigned in.

Over the next few decades, the British state continues to assert its power over the company. For the past few decades, the British state continues to assert its power over the company. In 1784, you got the India Act, which gives the state control over who sits in the board of directors. It has direct control over the governors general who are appointed as well. The charter of the company itself is renewed in 1794, in 1813, in 1833. But at each stage, powers are stripped away. And this is because information is starting to come back to Britain that suggests that the company is not only inefficient, but often immoral and not governing in the way as they would see it that a British government ought to govern.

By the early 19th century, the East India Company controls more territory than ancient Rome at its height. Its private army is one of the largest in the world. And yet, on paper, it is still just a commercial enterprise. The company continues to push deeper into the subcontinent, absorbing entire regions through legal technicalities. British officials begin heavily promoting Christian missionary work, interfering with centuries-old traditions. One of the most symbolic flashpoints is the outlawing of Sati, the ritual practice in

which a Hindu widow is expected in some regions and communities to throw herself onto her husband's funeral pyre. The company bans the practice in 1829, but many Indians decry what they see as cultural intrusion. One more sign that the British intend not just to rule India, but to remake her in their own image. Discontent is rising, and by the early 19th century, the company's monopoly on global trade is slipping too. Finally, the thing that really puts the nail in the coffin, I think really, is that by 1833 the company loses its tea monopoly. And this has been an ongoing debate going back towards the end of the 18th century.

For a long period of time, any tea that came into Britain was essentially company tea. The tea that's tossed over the harbour in Boston at the advent of the American Revolution is East Ind essentially company tea. The tea that's tossed over the harbor in Boston at the advent of the American Revolution is East Indie Company tea. And the merchants in London especially are starting to say, well, if the company is increasingly inefficient, if it's more concerned with territorial power, why not open that up?

Why not allow others to trade for tea in these territories, bring it in through other means? At the same time, in 1833, Britain officially abolishes slavery across its empire. But while the Atlantic trade ends, the company simply shifts its methods. It replaces outright bondage with punitive labor contracts imposed on Indian workers across British colonies, from Mauritius to the Caribbean. Conditions are harsh, mobility is restricted, and punishments are severe. In many cases, it is slavery in all but name.

You know, coincidentally, shortly after that, the company starts blasting into China. The Ethiopian wars really start in earnest. It had been relying for some time on the production of opium to leverage that trade as well. But it becomes desperate on these points to opium to leverage that trade as well. But it becomes desperate on these points to try and again consolidate that power in light of both a challenging position in South Asia but also opposition back in Britain. While Britain wins the first opium war militarily, the long-term costs for the East India Company is steep.

In an act of economic desperation to offset its declining fortunes elsewhere, it helped fuel the conflict by flooding China with opium grown in India. But while trade is forcibly expanded, the company's own profits are undercut by scandal, scrutiny and spiraling military expense. And in India, the consequence of its greed and misrule are beginning to erupt. In company barracks, Indian sepoys grow restless at being asked to fight for a ruler that offers them little in return. With few rights, they are poorly paid, harshly treated, and increasingly expected to fight their own people. Finally, in 1857, the tensions reach boiling point. A rumor spreads that the new rifle cartridges are greased with pig and cow fat,

an unthinkable violation of both Hindu and Muslim religious laws, especially since, to load the rifle, a soldier must bite the cartridge open. Though historians dispute the use of these cartridges at all, the rumor is enough to spark mutiny. It is the 10th of May, 1857, in the Meerut Cantonment, a company military base northeast of Delhi. The sun is nearly gone, melting into a haze of dust, while crickets chirp in the scrub near the barracks. A young soldier, a Havildar, or junior officer, crouches behind a crumbling wall near the

edge of the barracks. His company tunic is open at the throat, sweat soaking through the cotton, and in his hands he grips a stolen musket. Behind him, other sepoys from the regiment crouch too, their faces set. Holding muskets, blades or stones, they wait for the moment to strike. The air tastes of iron and sweat, with a tang of smoke. Somewhere beyond the wall, the horse whinnies. The Havildar peers around the bricks, across the open yard to where the prison block squats in shadow.

Inside are 85 men, sepoys like him, but who, a few days ago, refused to bite the new cartridges. Despite protesting and pleading, they were stripped of their uniforms, beaten and humiliated, and shackled like thieves. Watching it all, something shifted in this group of young men, now crouching in the dust. If they can't make the company treat them better, they'll bring them to their knees. Either way, they're going to free their brothers tonight. They're going to free their brothers tonight. Slowly the Havildar rises with a nod and sets off, and the others follow close behind. But they don't get far before they see.

A shot cracks through the silence, sharp and close. The company men are firing at them. Another shot, farther off, is followed by a scream. Now, one of the sepoys carrying a lit torch breaks away from the group, rushing over to toss it at the roof of an officer's bungalow. The flames curl up into the thatch. Other torches are lit with shaking hands, and a Havildar breaks into a run, his musket clutched in both hands. He passes the chapel and the horses bucking in panic as the flames approach.

Up ahead, a group of rebels are already at the prison gates, heaving and straining to tear it from its hinges. He lends his weight to the wave of bodies and with a crash, the gate is torn down. to the wave of bodies, and with a crash, the gate is torn down. Inside, the 85 prisoners cower and blink into the smoke and chaos. With their shackles still biting into raw skin, they start to run. But now, from the shadows, company officers emerge, guns levelled. Just then, a shout goes up among the sepoys, and the young officer turns to see some of

his comrades on horses, blades drawn and eyes wild. They ride into the nights like men with nothing left to lose, heading for Delhi to call the rest of the country to rebellion. But the Havildar is not going with them. He's going to save his comrades first. He fires now at will, reloads and fires again as he marches forwards into the prison, into the fire, into death or a new future. Breaking news, McDonald's international menu items are vanishing.

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What unfolds across northern India in 1857 is not so much a coordinated revolution as a patchwork of uprisings, massacres, sieges and retaliations. The British response is swift and brutal. Entire villages are burned. Civilians are executed without trial. Rebels are tied to cannons and blown apart as a warning to others. As the violence spirals, the East India Company, now fighting for its very survival, casts aside any pretense of restraint. Some estimates suggest that up to 800,000 Indians die as a result of the rebellion, including the famine and disease that it triggers.

By the time the smoke has cleared, though the Company has reasserted control, its reputation is in tatters. It can no longer be trusted to rule, not by the British public or its parliament, and certainly not by the people of India. In the aftermath of the rebellion, parliament steps in. The Government of India Act is the thing that really follows the 1857 rebellion, that comes in 1858, that calls for the liquidation of the Company. And it more or less puts the apparatus of state in control of the British Crown. It is more or less the founding act of what we would know as the British Roche. The Act transfers control of the Company's territories to the British Crown, making Queen

Victoria Empress of India. first control of the company's territories to the British crown, making Queen Victoria Empress of India. And while she promises her new subjects equal treatment under the law, an end to annexations, and assurances that British rule will not interfere in Indian religious life, for many the words come too late. The skeleton of the company still remains in place, especially for things like tax extraction. So that's what it's good at. It's the one thing that the company was doing really well still into the mid-19th century. And the Raj that emerges is still kind of a bit of a chimera in

that case. It blends some of what the company has still put into place while creating new institutions around that. And the British Raj is much more interested than the East Indian Company was in things like the sort of idea of the white man's burden that emerges out of it. That it is the duty of the British in India to bring quote unquote civilization to these populations. That's not for want of the fact that there were people in the East Indian Company who had deeply entrenched ideas of European superiority, that emerges out of the Enlightenment period especially, but it becomes much more of a philosophy of state in the wake of the company's collapse. The company lingers legally until 1874,

but when it is formally dissolved, its archives, infrastructure, and troops are absorbed into the British government. The sun has set on the world's strangest empire, but its story is far from over. The East India Company pioneered global trade, shaped modern capitalism, and laid the foundations of the British Empire.

It was one of the first truly multinational corporations, and for over two centuries it blurred the line between business and state. But its legacy in the Indian subcontinent is not just one of ports and railways, legal codes or trade routes. It is also one of exploitation, violence and inequality. Generations of Indians were displaced, taxed into famine, or ruled without consent, all in the name of profit. Its activities were increasingly underpinned by new ideas of racial hierarchy. And though these beliefs outlived the company, what began as justification for conquest became part

of the intellectual framework of empire. And its echoes remain, woven into the assumptions and inequalities of the modern world. Today, as statues fall and histories are re-examined, the East India Company stands as both a blueprint for empire and a cautionary tale of what can result when profit is placed above people. You look at those famines in the latter half of the 18th century are really harrowing and there's a lot of minutiae to it as far as how it unfolds at a local level but I think the general fairly safe interpretation is that the company bears quite a lot of responsibility for the response to it

but the fact of the matter is like that is the sort of neglect that can arise from saying profit matters first. The number of environmental disasters that have occurred globally on the back of corporate neglect, but they don't answer to anybody. And the problem is that the company got out of this in the end with quite a lot of money in pocket and very little accountability in terms of that sort of broader sense of responsibility and a lot of people died for it. Next time on Short History of, we'll bring you a short history of Captain Cook. When we think about Cook's legacy, it comes back to the complexities that are inherent within his voyages themselves. They are, on one level, voyages with a scientific imperative behind them.

They are voyages that are born out of a desire to learn, a desire to sort of push the boundaries of knowledge and understanding to test out new theories. But then they are equally sort of bound up with a particular British imperial project. That's next time.