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THE EAST INDIA COMPANY, 1790S–1830S Introduction The CHAPTER ONE DEFENDING THE MONOPOLY: THE EAST INDIA COMPANY, 1790S–1830S Introduction The history of the EIC can be divided into two different phases. In the first 150 years, the Company was a monopolistic trading organisation for the East India trade, with limited political and military functions. In the rest of the period, the Company developed its roles as an administrative institu- tion for India and, at the same time, gradually ceased its commercial func- tions. The Company’s effective acquisition of Bengal after the battle of Plassey brought about changes within the organisation. With the expecta- tion of huge revenues from the land, India was no longer only the Company’s private interest but became the national interest of Britain. Nevertheless, as the Company struggled to manage its commercial activities in the tradi- tional framework of the East India trade, it gradually lost its monopolistic trading activities and, eventually, its political operations as well. To provide the background of the provincial lobbyists’ two campaigns against the renewal of the Company’s Charter, this chapter will focus on the experi- ence that the Company had in its internal and external politics and com- mercial activities in Asia and at home from the 1790s to the 1830s. It will also provide an overview of the relationship between the state, non-Company private traders and provincial manufacturers, and their debates over the future of the monopolistic trade during this period. The Company in a New Phase and the Growth of Private Traders The grant of diwani of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa by the Mughal Emperor in 1765 added a new role to the Company’s activities. They were to collect the landed revenues, expected to generate between £2 million and £4 million annually to the Company.1 In the eighteenth century, the EIC was one of the state’s main sources of financing; thus, it recognised that the military and 1 H.V. Bowen, “Investment and Empire in the Late Eighteenth Century: East India Stockholding, 1756–1791”, in The Economic History Review, New Series, Vol. XLII, No. 2, 1989, p. 187. 8 chapter one political events in Bengal were significant for the Treasury.2 However, it was soon proved that the traditional and successful framework in which the EIC had been operating its trading activities for many years was no longer expedient in the new phase and required reforms since it was facing several crises in India and at home. In the following decades, the EIC suffered severely from the conse- quences of Clive’s conquest of Bengal. The Company showed its inability to cope with the new political and economic situations, both in India and at home. The Court of Directors failed to control the rapid expansion of the Company’s territories in India against their wishes or to regulate the mis- conduct of Company servants, which became a target of criticism in Britain. Since few Directors understood India’s local matters, there was a gap between the perceptions of the Directors in London and the reality in India.3 Moreover, the will of the Company was not unified in the administrators’ struggle for power.4 The Directors had several different occupational back- grounds and commercial interests. John Bourne’s work identified the Directors’ seven main backgrounds: bankers, ship-owners, so-called ‘free merchants’, City merchants, retired servants of the EIC, maritime service with the EIC, and the Indian bar.5 Their occupations were strongly related to the Company’s commercial activities. The merchants of the City were involved in the sales of East Indian products in Britain and in other European countries and in the supply of merchandise for export to India. The ‘free merchants’ (or free traders), who secured the EIC’s permission to engage in the intra-Asia trade, were an indispensable element of the Company’s operation in the East Indies. The financiers provided capital and insurance to the Company’s trading businesses. Those who were related to the shipping businesses also supplied the Company with the ships and personnel necessary for voyages. Furthermore, in the second half of the eighteenth century, the shares of those who had worked as 2 H.V. Bowen, “No Longer Mere Traders: Continuities and Changes in the Metropolitan Development of the East India Company, 1600–1834”, in H.V. Bowen, M. Lincoln, and N. Rigby (eds.), The World of the East India Company, 2002, p. 26; J. Keay, The Honourable Company: A History of the English East India Company, 1993, p. 379. For example, William Pitt (the Elder), who formed a cabinet in June 1766, regarded the revenues as “a kind of gift from heaven” for the repayment of debts amassed during the Seven Years’ War. 3 P. Lawson, The East India Company: A History, 1993, pp. 104–16. 4 P.J. Marshall, Problems of Empire; Britain and India 1757–1813, 1968, Introduction 1. 5 J.M. Bourne, “The Civil and Military Patronage of the East India Company”, unpub- lished PhD thesis, Leicester University, 1977, pp. 38–49. He defines ‘free merchants’ as “mer- chants who had secured the EIC’s permission to proceed to India (necessary before 1833), but who did not belong to the Company’s service”..
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