The 17th century was a period of impermanence and economic constraint for the British monarchy, both the House of Tudors and the House of Stuarts. The British monarchy greatly desired to enhance its imperial power through trade, resources and land, primarily to outcompete the Portuguese and French.
The British including other European rulers and monarchs for bye believed that they had a moral holy obligation to “civilize” and “Christianize” the other parts of the world, leading to the establishment of Missionary Societies. Miserable as the British Empire was, the Persian Mughal Empire ruled India in her Golden Age, a significant Asian power extensively interconnected, economically integrated and socially incorporated with a professional standing army.
For English merchants, entrepreneurs and adventurers of the late 16th century – the Indian subcontinent was a paramount source of Asian novelties, ornaments, spices and textiles, of which there was a burgeoning demand throughout Europe. But this was a fiercely competitive environment where Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch traders already operated. Elizabeth I, Queen of England and Ireland, the last Tudor monarch of the House of Tudors and analogous to the Mughal Emperor Akbar, granted a group of 125 shareholders a monopoly on all English trade to Asia.
Through this Royal Charter, the “East India Company” was born. The Company soon arrived at Surat which became the Company’s first permanent trading post, exchanging Indian textiles for European silver. Subsequently over decades, the Company interwove into the socio-economic dominion of India, founding other trading posts like Fort St George, Madras and Fort William at Calcutta, which would later become independent “Presidencies” following the Stuart Restoration, the Company Rule to be replaced by the British Raj.
From the establishment of British colonial rule until the Indian Independence in 1947, India underwent significant changes in her economic structure and development. The economic policies introduced by the British rulers in India, both the Company and the Raj, resulted in the rapid transformation of the Indian economy into a colonial economy, the nature and structure of which were determined by the needs of the British economy. The Company succeeded in converting India from a manufacturing country into a country exporting raw produce.
Commercial Capitalism Phase – The British East India Company strengthened its foothold in India during the Commercial Capitalism Phase. They entirely monopolized the trade and exported the finished goods from India to England and Europe at an eloquently low rate, which led to massive drain of India’s accumulated wealth. During this phase, the company’s primary function was to buy spices and textiles from India and sell them at huge dividends to Britain.
Industrial Capitalism Phase – Under the Industrial Capitalism Phase, the East India Company introduced the “machine era” into the Indian markets. This introduction of machines into the market resulted in a dramatic loss of work for India’s indigenous artisans. The cruel British imposition of diabolic duties and tariffs on Indian cloth wreaked havoc while the British flooded India and the world with cheaper fabric from the perpetual churning and hissing steam mills of Britain.
During this phase, the company’s primary function was to buy spices and textiles from India and sell them at huge dividends to Britain.
Financial Capitalism Phase – In the Financial Capitalism Phase, India witnessed an expansion of British investments through the construction of railways, telegraph services, banking, post, etc., of which the British Lords, Viscounts and Earls were the principal beneficiaries and used the wealth to buy their inquisitive boroughs and marvellous estates. The British financial system was adopted to ensure rabid control over the Indian capital at all times by both the English bureaucracy and aristocracy.
It can’t be refuted that India was governed by the British for the benefit of Britain at the cost of Indian economic, social depredation and exploitation. India financed and paid for her own oppression. The proximate impotent Emperors of the Mughal Empire for all their intellectuality and derring-do, remarkably failed to adjudicate the British colonial and imperialist ambitions. The mighty Mughal Empire, which withstood the onslaught of battalions and legions, collapsed to a bunch of kleptic traders and ransacking merchants. It is for the readers to judge and discern whether the British rule was pre-destined to displace the Persianid Mughal Empire, or was the British Rule in itself a pre-determined satanic rule for India.
Dr Shadab Ahmed is an Oral & Maxillofacial Surgeon, and a translator of several books on Historical & Ethnic poetry