“Tap your hand if you believe in big businesses. Can you hear crickets? There is no trust in big businesses. Big companies only care about their owners and CEO. They don’t care about their customers or anyone else they hurt to make money for themselves. Yes, those are harsh words, but telling the truth hurts because big businesses have sold kids sticks of doom that are addicting and cause cancer and put up risky, poisonous factories in poor, downtrodden areas. And it gets even worse.”
“To see how bad a big company can be in the past, we only need to look a few hundred years back to the East India Company’s evil rule. You may remember those guys from the second and third pirates of the Caribbean movie. They were the ones who harmed Captain Jack Sparrow. It goes without saying though that they were even worse in real life than they were in the movies.”
“It’s pretty clear that the East India Company is a bad company, both on and offcreen. How bad is it? Okay, here’s the crazy truth about this well-known group. It started as a simple trading enterprise. The East India Company started out as a good organization almost. In the beginning, it was just a small group of private traders who wanted to trade spices in Indonesia.”
“Back then, British food was very bland, and they needed something to make it taste better, or at least like something. Don’t be silly, people. Even though millions of people have died, British food is still very bland, which makes the past of the East India Company even worse. In any case, Thorco says that Queen Elizabeth I was the first person to launch the company.”
“The ship set sail for the Spice Islands in 1600. When the company got there, the Dutch and the Portuguese were all, ‘Nope, we got here first.’ And so the merchants figured they’d maybe just go to India instead. And India was all crap. At least not at first. In the beginning, the traders set up outposts and traded English wool and silver for silk, sugar, tea, cotton, and of course, opium.”
“A lot of expensive goods were coming and going from those outposts. So, the merchants quickly realized they needed to hire guards to keep thieves and other angry people away. In that way, a simple business for dealing became, well, what it became. For 20 years, the operation was run out of some dude’s house. Initially, the East India Company was run out of a single man’s house, much like many large Silicon Valley tech companies.”
“There were only six workers working there. History doesn’t seem to remember if the employees had a pingpong table, worked 18 hours a day, and were paid almost nothing with the promise of stock options that never came through. But it does seem like a risky business for those first six people who were trying to run a company from halfway around the world without any kind of phone, internet or Skype.”
“Anyway, they did that for 20 years straight. As per Britannica, the East India Company had 35 employees in London by 1700, 100 years after it was founded. It had also moved into a small office in the English capital. Around 159 people worked full-time in its home office by 1785. Just think about that for a moment. Millions of people died because of the East India Company, which was run from very, very far away by just 159 people.”
“Bad things come in odd shapes and sizes. The East India Company starts causing trouble. The East India Company’s charter had a clause that let it print its own money, take over land, build forts and castles, gather troops, and wage war if it was in the best interests of both Britain and the company. Everything was done because it was thought to be good for Britain and the company.”
“So, its leaders weren’t afraid to use the tools the crown gave them. History today says that in the early days of the company, India was controlled by the Mughals. The Mughals were a very wealthy dynasty that was open to trade, but had some annoying ideas about taxes, trading with people who weren’t part of the company, and you know, being in charge of their own lands.”
“In 1686, James II gave the company permission to send 19 ships from London to India to show the Mughals who was in charge. They got stuck in a war that lasted 4 years and ended with a humiliating loss. An army of Mughal troops big enough to have eaten up all the company’s soldiers for breakfast poured into the company’s Bombay fort, scattering the fleet and taking officers and soldiers prisoner.”
“But then, for some reason, the Muggals chose to let the British stay in India because, well, they were in charge now and might become friends in the future.”
“Aha. The East India Company takes over India. Britain’s ability to stick to things has always been one of its best quality. The British never gave up, which is how they won the Battle of Ajin Court when the French had at least 20,000 well-rested men and only about 6,000 tired, hungry, sick archers.”
“They also didn’t seem to have much of a sense of respect for people who weren’t British or East white European back then. And not having respect means you don’t fight fairly. The Mughals beat the East India Company in a 4-year war and then let them stay in the country. The East India Company obviously thought this meant they could try to take over.”
“The East India Company decided to take over India in the middle of the 1700s. According to the Guardian, by 1803, it had pretty much done that. Its first action was to defeat the Mughal Emperor Shah Alam in 1765. After his loss, Sha Alam had to fire all of his tax collectors in India’s major trading and replace them with English guys.”
“Oh, and the East India Company would also start collecting Mughal taxes right away in a fair and honest way. Take note of the sarcasm. And you thought today’s corporations had way too much power. Think about what life would be like if Amazon took over the whole Western Hemisphere. Wait, what? Amazon has already taken over the whole Western Hemisphere, so that might not be the best model.”
“Now, picture Pottery Barn saying, ‘We’re running things now.’ They would then remove everyone from the Senate and the Supreme Court. And every year when you paid your taxes, you would have to make the check out to Pottery Barn instead of the IRS. Now picture if they hired slaves to work at Pottery Barn, built an army, and then used it to take over every crate and barrel, IKEA, and restoration hardware store in the US.”
“Also, picture this force from Pottery Barn killing people for shopping at Bed Bath and Beyond. That’s what happened. According to the Guardian, after Sha Alam gave the East India Company charge of India’s money, after a few years, about 250 East India Company workers ran an army of 20,000 people and were essentially the country’s ruling party.”
“Like any good colonial power, their only goal was to get more land and money. By 1803, the company had taken over most of India. What’s crazy is that the British crown had nothing to do with it. There were no rules for the company in London and it was run by Robert Clive who the Guardian calls an unstable sociopath. Britain still has a whole lot of Indian treasure.”
“The Guardian says that Pace Castle is a Welsh fort from the 1300s that is now used to store the British Empire’s stolen goods. There are also Roman artifacts, works of art from all over Europe and some British items in the castle. However, a big part of the treasure that the East India Company stole in the 18th century is also kept there.”
“It looks like there are more Mughal artifacts in this Welsh castle than in the National Museum of Delhi. This should give you a pretty good idea of how big of a theft the company committed. The treasure includes daggers with jewels on them, bags full of rubies and emeralds, jade and ivory decorations, silk wall hangings, and statues of Hindu gods.”
“Even though there’s no good reason to steal cultural items from another country, the most disgusting thing about this collection is that most of it was stolen and then brought back to Britain so the thieves could brag about how rich they became while stealing for the East India Company. Also, no one has really thought about whether they should give the stuff back.”
“The East India Company had a ridiculous amount of power. India was pretty much taken over by the East India Company by the year 1803. Their army had grown to 260,000 soldiers, which is a huge number. For reference, the US Army had about 12,000 soldiers at the same time. So yeah, the difference between the size of the American military and the size of the military run by a small private London-based company was pretty amazing.”
“Even when you count the 5,000 sailors in the Navy and the 1,000 Marines that the US had at the same time, the British Crown and the East India Company stayed mostly separate during all of this. The Guardian says that Britain spent a lot of money to protect the company’s interests in India, but the company was still able to make the case for staying legally separate from the British government.”
“This was mostly because many people in the British government owned stock in the company and wanted to make sure that it could keep doing its thing. They engineered the worst famine in Indian history. In reality, a colonial power can only have a good reason to invade another country, set up a new government, and claim all of the local wealth as their own if racism is built into the whole business.”
“That is, you can’t colonize other people unless you can convince yourself and others that they are less important than you or not even people. Once you’ve done that, you can do anything horrible. Your story says that India had famines before the British took over. But the leaders of the time cared about what happened to their people and did something about it.”
“There was more to the East India Company than that. In fact, they caused the famines that happened while they were in charge out of greed. Farmers were forced to grow high-value crops that couldn’t be eaten, like indigo and poppy. The extra food that wasn’t edible, couldn’t be saved for hard times because it wasn’t something that could feed a family.”
“Additionally, the company taxed farming peasants a huge 50% of their cash harvest. When a lot of peasants died, the taxes were raised to 60% to make up for the lost tax revenue from those peasants deaths. Tens of millions of people died. But the East India Company had a great year and made more money than in previous years. Hey, what’s a few million kids dying compared to that? They were drug lords.”
“Millions of people were killed by the East India Company as they took over a whole country. The only thing that could have made the company much worse is if it sold drugs as well. Hey, guess what? Drugs were also sold by the East India Company. It wouldn’t be too far of a stretch to say they were drug lords.”
“According to Sanskriti magazine, the East India Company saw selling opium as a way to make money. It didn’t matter to them if it was morally or ethically wrong because making money is more important than helping people. Sense a pattern. China banned opium smoking and said that selling opium was the same crime as stealing and inciting someone to kill.”
“At the same time, British India took over the opium trade and worked to make it bigger. It’s true that the East India Company was so angry that China wanted to protect its people from a dangerous and addicting drug that it went to war with China three times over the right to sell opium in China. The company had won the first opium war and was now allowed to sell opium in five Chinese ports.”
“It had also destroyed much of China’s coast and made the Chinese pay $15 million to traders to make up for it. Hong Kong was also kept by Britain. They were slavers. It will shock you to learn that the East India Company bought and sold slaves. The truth is that you probably didn’t even blink when you read that because you’re probably so used to hearing about the East India Company’s crimes.”
“The East India Company did trade in slaves. Yes, because what’s a little extra human pain in the big picture when you’re already morally bankrupt? Counterpunch says that the East India Company brought slaves from both Western and Eastern Africa to its colonies in India, Africa, and some parts of Asia.”
“By the 1730s, it was transporting a lot of slaves, and this continued into the 1750s and 1770s. It also bought and sold indentured servants who were really slaves hiding behind nice names. The East India Company hired poor Europeans to work for them. The deal was usually like this. ‘Live in an East India Company settlement for 4 to 7 years as the legal property of a rich person in return for free crossing the Atlantic.'”
“Where do we sign up, please? To be honest, that doesn’t sound like a great deal, but it must have worked for the EIC. At least we have tea and chutney. We can now 200 years later look back on the past of the East India Company with the knowledge we have today. People can wonder how this could have happened and we can look at the cultural foundations that the East India Company was built on.”
“Another thing we can do is look for a small silver lining just so we don’t have to accept how terrible everything is. Did it lead to anything good? This is what the Boston Tea Party ship and museum says. Britain now has afternoon tea. Chutney made from mango. Yes, those do seem to be some of the main reasons why so many millions of people had to die.”
“Yes, mango salsa is tasty and tea is like the sun for the British people. It’s not that those things don’t have any value, but you can get tea and mango salsa in Canada, too. So they weren’t necessary for Canada to invade another country and starve a lot of people to death. Those things probably would have made their way into British society at some point.”
“If they hadn’t, coffee would work just fine instead of tea. Even though mango sauce on a papadum is great, it’s still not worth the lives of millions of people. The end finally comes for the East India Company. Most murderous psychopaths get caught by someone in power and that person decides, ‘h maybe we shouldn’t let that guy continue to be a murderous psychopath.'”
“In India by the 1850s most people were sick of the East India Company. In 1857 there was an uprising. Indian forces who worked for the company turned on it and killed British soldiers, civilians and Indians who were loyal to the British. At that point, the East India Company was so sure that God gave them the right to rule over and steal from India that they didn’t think twice about putting down the revolt and then killing a lot of people as a response.”
“In their report, Historic UK says that the company killed thousands of rebel supporters and soldiers. That’s crossing a line. The British government finally said, ‘If it’s enough to make colonial Britain nervous, then it’s a pretty big line.’ The crown got rid of the East India Company in 1858. Still, it didn’t really give India its freedom or anything.”
“For another 89 years, the country was ruled by the British.”
