What was the British East India Company?

Hello and welcome.

My name John McAleer,

and I work at the University of Southampton in the history department.

And I'm an historian of the East India Company and

Britain's empire in Asia.

And over the course of the next, few lectures,

I want to explain the history of the East India Company to you,

a corporation that many historians have suggested

changed the world.

It certainly changed the lives of millions of people in

Britain and in the Indian subcontinent.

And we're going to be covering the course of the East India

Company's commercial and imperial and political

career over two and a half centuries.

Because this was a company that brokered Britain's relationship

with Asia from about sixteen hundred until its final

downfall and demise in eighteen fifty eight.

Now, many of you watching this,

lecture will have also watched the Pirates of the Caribbean, series of films.

And if you've done so,

you'll know then that the East India Company is the shadowy

corporate villain that chases the hero or antihero of those

films, Captain Jack Sparrow.

So you'll be already familiar with the East India Company in

some guys or other.

And even if you haven't watched,

the Pirates of the Caribbean series of films,

I'm willing to wager that at some point in your life,

you'd have used shampoo, you'll have worn pajamas,

or you'll have heard the words bungalow or or tea or other

words imported East India Company along with the goods,

and and commodities that its ships brought from Asia to

Britain.

In other words, your life has been touched by the East India Company or at

least the East India Company's legacy.

Now what I want to suggest to you over the course of the next,

four or five mini lectures is that the history of the East

India Company is actually richer, more intriguing,

more complex than anything that Disney can offer to us.

It's a history of, wealth and power and the pursuit of

profit, and everything that goes along with that,

both the upsides but also the downsides and and the negatives.

It's a story that changes, as I said,

the lives of millions of people in Britain,

in Asia, and across the world more generally.

In Britain, for example, it changes what we eat.

It changes what we wear. It changes what we drink.

It changes some of the words that we use.

I've already mentioned some of those shampoo, bungalow,

and so on and so forth.

And And it also, I think,

changes attitudes in this country to other parts of the

world, to other peoples and other societies.

And the East India Company is absolutely crucial in laying

the foundations of the nineteenth and twentieth

century British Empire in Asia.

So this is a big, big story,

for us to try and get a grip of get a grip of.

It's a company that can mint its own money,

that can strike its own coins.

It's an unusual organization that has has its own army and

has its own navy to back up its commercial and its political power.

Now what is this thing, the East India Company?

Well, it's a private British corporation,

founded in sixteen hundred,

and based in the heart of the city of London.

Its headquarters in the city of London,

were based in Leadenhall Street, and that's,

about four miles away from Westminster,

about four miles away from the traditional,

kind of headquarters of the British Empire, if you want.

And yet the East India Company's headquarters in the

city of London was the place where that empire of the

company in Asia was run for two and a half centuries.

So they said the company changed the lives of millions

of people across three different continents,

had a massive impact on the kind of development of of

history over those over those centuries.

And you don't just need to take my word for it.

You can listen to the words of contemporaries,

of historical figures in in the day that the company existed.

So David MacPherson, is an important kind of,

writer and author.

He he's a political economist.

He he writes about, the history of politics and and economics.

And he tells us in eighteen o five in one of his big books

that the East India Company was the most flourishing commercial

organization that ever existed.

Its fleets, its fleet of ships,

was bigger than that of many sovereign East India

Company, this commercial British organization based in

London, is actually, kind of, as important as many,

countries around the world.

And so, it's a kind of as important as

many, countries around the world at that at that time.

So that's really the the the subject that we're going to be

covering over the next series of of mini lectures.

We're going to start by looking at the early days of the

company, its early years of existence,

the first century of its activities in Asia where it's

focusing principally on spices,

trying to locate and purchase and transport spices from

Southeast Asia.

Then we're gonna move on and think about the company's

century centuries of being a cloth merchant to the world

where it's focusing on India.

And we're gonna also think about the way in which the

company changes from being just a commercial power into being a

kind of territorial and imperial power in South Asia.

And then we're going to finish,

our consideration of the commercial,

career of the company by thinking about its last great

commodity, which is the tea trade,

and the associated opium trade with China.

And then in the final mini lecture,

I'd like to talk about the downfall and demise of the company.

What happened?

How did this great commercial organization that MacPherson

and others talk, talk about in such glowing terms, How did it,

come to its knees by the middle of the nineteenth century?

So that's what we're going to cover over the next,

couple of lectures.