Company Of Heroes Far East Mod

[Melissa Hassel]

TheEast India Company (EIC)[a] was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874.[4] It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the South and Southeast Asia), and later with East Asia. The company gained control of large parts of South Asia and colonised parts of Southeast Asia and Hong Kong. At its peak, the company was the largest corporation in the world by various measures and had its own armed forces in the form of the company's three presidency armies, totalling about 260,000 soldiers, twice the size of the British army at the time.[5]

Originally chartered as the "Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East-Indies",[6][7] the company rose to account for half of the world's trade during the mid-1700s and early 1800s,[8] particularly in basic commodities including cotton, silk, indigo dye, sugar, salt, spices, saltpetre, tea, and later, opium. The company also initiated the beginnings of the British Empire in South Asia.[8][9]

The company eventually came to rule large areas of present day Bangladesh, Pakistan and India, exercising military power and assuming administrative functions. Company-ruled areas in the region gradually expanded after the Battle of Polashi(Plassey) in 1757 and by 1858 most of modern India, Pakistan and Bangladesh was either ruled by the company or princely states closely tied to it by treaty. Following the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857, the Government of India Act 1858 led to the British Crown assuming direct control of present day Bangladesh, Pakistan and India in the form of the new British Indian Empire.[10]

The company subsequently experienced recurring problems with its finances, despite frequent government intervention. The company was dissolved in 1874 under the terms of the East India Stock Dividend Redemption Act enacted one year earlier, as the Government of India Act had by then rendered it vestigial, powerless, and obsolete. The official government machinery of the British Empire had assumed its governmental functions and absorbed its armies.

In 1577, Francis Drake set out on an expedition from England to plunder Spanish settlements in South America in search of gold and silver. Sailing in the Golden Hind he achieved this, and then sailed across the Pacific Ocean in 1579, known then only to the Spanish and Portuguese. Drake eventually sailed into the East Indies and came across the Moluccas, also known as the Spice Islands, and met Sultan Babullah. In exchange for linen, gold, and silver, the English obtained a large haul of exotic spices, including cloves and nutmeg. Drake returned to England in 1580 and became a hero; his circumnavigation raised an enormous amount of money for England's coffers, and investors received a return of some 5,000 per cent. Thus started an important element in the eastern design during the late sixteenth century.[11]

The biggest prize that galvanised English trade was the seizure of a large Portuguese carrack, the Madre de Deus, by Walter Raleigh and the Earl of Cumberland at the Battle of Flores on 13 August 1592.[17] When she was brought in to Dartmouth she was the largest vessel ever seen in England and she carried chests of jewels, pearls, gold, silver coins, ambergris, cloth, tapestries, pepper, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, benjamin (a highly aromatic balsamic resin used for perfumes and medicines), red dye, cochineal and ebony.[18] Equally valuable was the ship's rutter (mariner's handbook) containing vital information on the China, India, and Japan trade routes.[17]

In 1596, three more English ships sailed east but all were lost at sea.[13] A year later however saw the arrival of Ralph Fitch, an adventurer merchant who, with his companions, had made a remarkable nine year overland journey to Mesopotamia, the Persian Gulf, the Indian Ocean, India and Southeast Asia.[19] Fitch was consulted on Indian affairs and gave even more valuable information to Lancaster.[20]

On 22 September, the group stated their intention "to venture in the pretended voyage to the East Indies (the which it may please the Lord to prosper)" and to themselves invest 30,133 (over 4,000,000 in today's money).[21][22] Two days later, the "Adventurers" reconvened and resolved to apply to the Queen for support of the project.[22] Although their first attempt had not been completely successful, they sought the Queen's unofficial approval to continue. They bought ships for the venture and increased their investment to 68,373.[citation needed]

They convened again a year later, on 31 December 1600, and this time they succeeded; the Queen responded favourably to a petition by "George, Earl of Cumberland and 218 others,[23] including James Lancaster, Sir John Harte, Sir John Spencer (both of whom had been Lord Mayor of London), the adventurer Edward Michelborne, the nobleman William Cavendish and other aldermen and citizens.[24] She granted her charter to their corporation named Governor and Company of Merchants of London trading into the East Indies.[13] For a period of fifteen years, the charter awarded the company a monopoly[25] on English trade with all countries east of the Cape of Good Hope and west of the Straits of Magellan.[26] Any traders there without a licence from the company were liable to forfeiture of their ships and cargo (half of which would go to the Crown and half to the company), as well as imprisonment at the "royal pleasure".[27]

In March 1604, Sir Henry Middleton commanded the company's second voyage. General William Keeling, a captain during the second voyage, led the third voyage aboard Red Dragon from 1607 to 1610 along with Hector under Captain William Hawkins and Consent under Captain David Middleton.[32]

Early in 1608, Alexander Sharpeigh was made captain of the company's Ascension, and general or commander of the fourth voyage. Thereafter two ships, Ascension and Union (captained by Richard Rowles), sailed from Woolwich on 14 March 1608.[32] This expedition was lost.[33]

Initially, the company struggled in the spice trade because of competition from the well-established Dutch East India Company. The English company opened a factory (trading post) in Bantam on Java on its first voyage, and imports of pepper from Java remained an important part of the company's trade for twenty years. The Bantam factory closed in 1683.[citation needed]

English traders frequently fought their Dutch and Portuguese counterparts in the Indian Ocean. The company achieved a major victory over the Portuguese in the Battle of Swally in 1612, at Suvali in Surat. The company decided to explore the feasibility of a foothold in mainland India, with official sanction from both Britain and the Mughal Empire, and requested that the Crown launch a diplomatic mission.[34]

Company ships docked at Surat in Gujarat in 1608.[35] The company's first Indian factory was established in 1611 at Masulipatnam on the Andhra Coast of the Bay of Bengal, and its second in 1615 at Surat.[36][35] The high profits reported by the company after landing in India initially prompted James I to grant subsidiary licences to other trading companies in England. However, in 1609, he renewed the East India Company's charter for an indefinite period, with the proviso that its privileges would be annulled if trade was unprofitable for three consecutive years.[citation needed]

Upon which assurance of your royal love I have given my general command to all the kingdoms and ports of my dominions to receive all the merchants of the English nation as the subjects of my friend; that in what place soever they choose to live, they may have free liberty without any restraint; and at what port soever they shall arrive, that neither Portugal nor any other shall dare to molest their quiet; and in what city soever they shall have residence, I have commanded all my governors and captains to give them freedom answerable to their own desires; to sell, buy, and to transport into their country at their pleasure.For confirmation of our love and friendship, I desire your Majesty to command your merchants to bring in their ships of all sorts of rarities and rich goods fit for my palace; and that you be pleased to send me your royal letters by every opportunity, that I may rejoice in your health and prosperous affairs; that our friendship may be interchanged and eternal.

The East India Company's fortunes changed for the better in 1707 as Bengal and other regions under Mughal rule fell into Anarchy with the death of the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb.[42] A series of large scale rebellions and the collapse of the Mughal taxation system led to the effective independence of virtually all of the Mughal's pre-1707 fiefs and holdings, with their capital Delhi routinely under the control of either Maratha, Afghan or usurper General's armies. The EIC was able to take advantage of this chaos, slowly wresting direct control of the province of Bengal and fought numerous wars with the French in the Carnatic wars for influence and control of the east coast. The Company's position in the Mughal court as it fell apart made it possible to sponsor different players on the continent as they individually contended with others, steadily amassing an ever larger position on the continent for themselves.[citation needed]

In the 18th Century, the primary tool of the Company's profits in Bengal became taxation in conquered and controlled provinces, as the factories became fortresses and administrative hubs for networks of tax collectors that expanded into enormous cities. The Mughal Empire was the richest in the world in 1700, and the East India Company tried to strip it bare for a century thereafter. Dalrymple calls it "the single largest transfer of wealth until the Nazis."[42] What was in the 17th century the production capital of the world for textiles was forced to become a market for British made textiles. Mansions of statues and their jewels, untold material wealth, was moved from the palaces of Bengal to the townhouses of the English countryside. Bengal in particular suffered the worst of Company tax farming, highlighted by the Great Bengal famine of 1770, which even inspired a reprisal from the King in response to the brutality.[42] Meanwhile, the primary tool of expansion for the company was the Sepoy. The Sepoy was a locally raised, mostly Muslim, western trained and equipped soldiers that changed warfare in present day South Asia. Mounted forces and their superior mobility had been king on the regions battlefields for a thousand years, cannon so well integrated the Mughals fought with cannon mounted on elephants: all were little match to line infantry with decent discipline supported with field cannon. A few thousand company sepoys, time and again, took on vastly superior Mughal forces numerically and came out victorious; sieged fortifications. Often deapite poor command to the point that the Afghan, Mughal and Maratha forces started building and supporting their own western style forces, often French equipped, as the chaos widened and the stakes were raised to varying success. In the end the company won out, generally through as much diplomacy and state-craft(fraud and deception). The gradual rise of the EIC within the Mughal network culminated in the Second Anglo-Maratha War, where the Company successfully ousted the Empire's official protectors in the Maratha, the Maratha high water point in their rise to power, and installed a young Mughal Prince as Emperor with the Company as the de jure protectors of the Empire from their position of direct control in Bengal. This relationship was repeatedly strained as the Company continued its expansion and exploitation, however it lasted in some form until 1858 when the last Mughal Emperor was exiled as the Company was disbanded and its assets were taken over by the British Crown.[42]

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