The East India Company

Short History Of...

Noiser

History

4.8 • 4.1K Ratings

🗓️ 13 July 2025

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Over 400 years ago, a bold commercial venture was established to allow an ambitious group of English merchants to send ships halfway around the world in search of spices, skills, and profit. It was known as The East India Company. Over the next 250 years, the Company grew into one of the most powerful and controversial enterprises in history. At its height, it had the powers of a sovereign state - fighting wars, extracting wealth, and changing the fate of nations. But how could a private company be allowed to wield so much control? What are the consequences when capital rules without conscience? And what does its rise and fall reveal about the economic and political empires that shape our world today? This is a Short History Of The East India Company. A Noiser Production, written by Sean Coleman. With thanks to Dr Mark Williams, a Reader in Early Modern History at Cardiff University, who has published widely on the English East India Company. Get every episode of Short History Of... a week early with Noiser+. You’ll also get ad-free listening, bonus material and early access to shows across the Noiser podcast network. Click the subscription banner at the top of the feed to get started. Or go to noiser.com/subscriptions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:27.5	For more information, go to amazon.com.uk.U.K. slash prime. It's early spring 1770 in Bengal, eastern India.
0:38.3	A young woman walks wearily barefoot along a dusty road.
0:43.3	In her arms, her baby cries.
0:46.3	Faintly now, the sound is more breath than voice.
0:50.3	She rocks him with one hand and shields his face from the sun with the other. Her own skin
0:57.2	is cracked from heat and hunger, her lips parched and dry. But still she walks on, past fields
1:06.1	where nothing grows, trees stripped bare of fruit and bark, and bodies lying motionless in the shade.
1:13.6	Some are merely asleep, but from the smell of rot carried on the hot wind, she knows that others will not wake again.
1:22.6	The ground is as hard as rock. The crops in the fields all around are withered, betrayed by rains that never came last year.
1:31.5	Even the wells have run dry.
1:36.0	Up ahead, a queue of hollow-eyed men and women snicks towards a low stone building with wooden
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