There are few companies in history that were as powerful and
prominent as the British East India Company (EIC). The company name was officially established
in 1600 and was made up of London merchants who initially wanted to capitalize
on the opportunity to import spices from Southern Asia. What unfolds over the next hundreds of years
is a tale of trade and exploration, in hopes to achieve wealth and expansion through
trade commodities like cotton, spice, tea and opium. This group of merchants crafted a business
that vastly exceeded their highest expectations, connecting foreign markets and
uniting people from different cultures to help grow and maintain the British
Empire.
While the spice trade initially brought in capital and was
the primary commodity for the growth and expansion of the EIC, but both cotton
and tea soon after became necessities for the British and were essential in
foreign trade. The EIC became so
successful, and had so much power, that it basically took control of India
where they signed a treaty gaining exclusive rights to live there and build
factories, exploiting cheap labor and fertile soil. While at first the company would purchase
Indian silks, they now had control of their own factories, thus generating a
monopoly over Cotton sales and trade, where they would grow and cultivate the
cotton and export it back to England.
Trade with China: China
tried to keep the Tea Plant a secret, where they completely controlled the tea
market. In 1684, the EIC gained
permission to trade with China, importing tea to England where it soon spread
like wildfire. The demand for tea in
England was enormous. By 1750 annual tea
imports reached a breathtaking amount of 4,727,992 lbs (tea.co.uk). However, with China still keeping tea a
secret, they had strict trade stipulations where they would only accept silver
or gold as a payment. In search for a
substitute for silver or gold, the EIC began to exploit the Chinese demand for
opium, selling the plant/drug to private merchants directly for silver. The EIC shortly thereafter established a
monopoly on opium and trade with merchants for silver so that they could
purchase tea. While it may not be seen
completely legal, it was an extremely smart business strategy to exploit
Chinese addiction to opium and generate profit by indirectly selling opium to
China. Subsequently, the EIC wanted to
cut off the middleman and sell opium directly to China, which created enormous
conflict leading to two opium wars.
With help from Robert Fortune, the EIC was able to bring tea
seeds back to India where they began to plant and cultivate tea on their
own. From this, they no longer had to
depend on China for trade. The company
dissolved in 1874, with the East India Stock Dividend Redemption Act of 1873,
but their legacy will live in forever.
The EIC was a pivotal business in history, bringing people together,
merging cultures, funding exploration to new worlds, and generating mass
amounts of capital.
Check this site out for more information on the EIC!
http://www.tea.co.uk/east-india-company
Links to Photos: http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100827144419/pirates/images/3/38/Logo_eitc_emblem.jpg
http://www.portcities.org.uk/london/upload/img_400/H5964.jpg
http://philebersole.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/chinese-opium-smokers.jpg
Hey Tim,
ReplyDeleteGreat post. Could you talk about how the eventual suppression of opium in China affected the population?
Yes I could! Between 1906 and 1917 China (under the Imperial and then Republican regimes) enacted a highly effective intervention to suppress the production of opium. Evidence from British Foreign Office records suggest that the intervention was centered, in many areas, upon a highly repressive incarnation of law enforcement in which rural populations had their property destroyed, their land confiscated and/or were publically tortured, humiliated and executed. Crops were forcefully eradicated and resistance was often brutally suppressed by the military. As few farmers received compensation or support for alternative livelihood creation the intervention pushed many deeper into poverty. Importantly, the repressive nature of the opium ban appears to have been a contributing factor to the fragmentation of China, highlighting the counter-productivity of repressive interventions to reduce drug crop production.
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