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 ...
