What was the Basis of the East India Trading Company’s Interest in India?
The East India Trading Company (hereafter referred to as the EIC) had two purposes in creating an economic foothold in the vast continent of India. First, and perhaps most important, was the fact that Britain was lagging behind the rest of Europe when it came to trade – despite their control of the seas (which, incidentally, interested Indian rulers almost as much as India interested the EIC), they were losing economic control to countries like the Netherlands and the Portuguese. While the Dutch, at least, had already established their own market in India, EIC agents hoped that they would be able to edge out the competition.
The other explanation for the interest in India was that the continent was rich. The Mughal dynasty had brought that part of India its “period of greatest splendour” and, several centuries later, the EIC were eager to cash in. As history has shown, the EIC managed, first by ingratiating itself with the rulers of India, then by increasing shows of force backed up by their own personal armies, to create a hierarchical structure within the Indian economy, whereby the money and time that was spent in their country, instead of benefitting them directly, was swept into the coffers of the British Empire.
What was Britain’s Position in India at this time, and how Did it Compare to their Position in North America?
The idea that the British Empire was purely focused on giving India a new, more liberal government is one which, however untrue, should be attached to the actions of the Empire itself. The EIC was at first an entirely separate entity, working to further its own interests by opening trade with the elusive continent.
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
Unlike the later actions of the British Raj, the EIC did not – could not, at the start – demand that the already-in-place Indian governments immediately switch to a method of government that was more conducive to their abilities. Instead, they tried to insinuate themselves into the courts and hierarchical structures, until they were strong enough to stand alone and make requests and demands as an independent entity.
This is marked contrast to the situation in the American colonies at the time. In India the EIC had to tread carefully, inserting themselves gradually into the existing power structures, and gradually working their work up to the point where they could begin acting by themselves. In America, the British Empire was confident enough in itself to move straight to the business of colonisation. While they did at first aim for peaceful colonisation, in America the Empire had the troops and ability to allow themselves to take what wasn’t freely given. Essentially, America was what could have happened in India, had the EIC and economic interests not managed to get their hands in first.
Who were the Nabobs?
The word nabob is a corruption of the word ‘nawab’ – a term for a Muslim regional leader in India during the Mughal Empire. The word itself as used during the empire, however, generally meant a trading company merchant who had made himself rich in the East. The nabobs themselves, as a group, were men who, were the original men who made contact with the governments of India, laying the groundwork for later imperial power structures, so their evolution was roughly analogous to the evolution of British ascendancy itself in various ways.
In this work, I argue that despite their patriotic behaviour, nabobs were, for much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, seen and criticised by their fellow countrymen for being un-British.
Perhaps the nabobs as a group took advantage of the fact that they were the first wave of Britons to move into India – as a result of the slightly lax conditions, with no British oversight to control their actions, they may have been the group which took native wives from the population, ate native foods, and in other ways ‘went native’ when out from under the watchful eye of British imperialism.
The nabobs were known for being corrupt – caring for riches more than for the well-being of anyone under their care, which is possibly part of the reason why they were so reviled by the people around them. Indeed, part of the rift between the merchants themselves and the politicians back in England was that the merchants were assumed to have given into the depravity and dissipation that was common to higher-ranking people in the East. The politicians may have had to rely on the merchants to establish a foothold in the new continent that they wanted dominance over, but that did not mean that they had to like relying on a group which were so unmanly.
How do the nabobs reflect the relationship between India and Britain?
The nabobs are interesting in that they reflect the unease which was felt on both sides of the colonial equation. We are used to seeing that countries which came under imperial rule had and have very ambivalent feelings about it, but what is not so often seen is the corresponding ambivalence which existed on the part of the citizens of the Empire’s home ground.
Within years of acquiring the province of Bengal, reports of scandalous activities in India destroyed the legitimacy of the Company, making its empire-building efforts synonymous with the less-than-honorable modus operandi of private profiteering.
Empire building had, until now, been something done by politicians and soldiers. The EIC had changed the definition of Empire, not only by building it on trade, but also by integrating themselves into the local economy before taking control. It may have come across as a cheapened way of expanding.
In the same vein, the scandals which made their way back to Britain itself, coupled with the alternative route to Imperial rule that was taken, may have combined to make people uneasy. In the case of America, for example, the declaration of Imperial rule was straightforward – Britain had a colony there, and it was answerable to them. India, due to the presence of the EIC, was murkier in that rule had not, strictly speaking, been imposed. The EIC had moved in to the Moghul court, true, but they had done so by representing themselves as equals at best, and subordinates at worst. The rule of the Moghul Empire and the rest of India did pass into British hands, but it was a far cry from previous colonisation experiences.
Bibliography
Dalrymple, William. “The East India Trading Company: The Original Corporate Raiders.” The Guardian March 4 2015. Accessed August 12 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/04/east-india-company-original-corporate-raiders
Fellinger, Mike. “’All Man’s Pollution Does the Sea Cleanse’: Revisiting the Nabobs in Britain, 1785-1837.” MA Diss. University of Warwick. 2010.
Gascoigne, Bamber. The Great Moghuls. Edinburgh: Robinson, 2009.
Marshall, Peter. “British North America, 1760-1815” in The Oxford History of the British Empire (edited by P. J. Marshall). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Kindle.
Ray, Rajat Kanta. “Indian Society and the Establishment of British Supremacy” in The Oxford History of the British Empire (edited by P. J. Marshall). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Kindle.
Sajid, Nida. “Myth, Language, Empire: The East India Trading Company and the Construction of British India, 1757-1857.” PhD Diss. University of Western Ontario. 2011.
