The East India Company

In Our Time: History

BBC

History

4.4 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 23 June 2003

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the private trading company that helped forge the British Empire. At its peak, its influence stretched from western India to eastern China via the farthest reaches of the Indonesian archipelago. It had a fleet of 130 twelve hundred tonne ships and commanded an army of 200,000 troops that came to dominate the Indian subcontinent. It funded governments, toppled princes and generated spectacular amounts of money from trading textiles and spices. But this wasn’t an empire, it wasn’t even a state, it was a company. The East India Company, founded in 1600, lasted for 258 years before the British state gained full control of its activities. In that time it had redrawn the map of India, built an empire and reinvented the fashions and the foodstuffs of Britain. But how did the East India Company become so powerful? How did it change both India and Britain and how was the idea of a company running a country ever accepted by the British Crown?With Huw Bowen, Senior Lecturer in Economic and Social History at the University of Leicester; Linda Colley, School Professor of History at the London School of Economics; Maria Misra, Fellow and Tutor in Modern History at Keble College, Oxford.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thanks for downloading the NRTIME podcast for more details about NRTIME and for our terms of use
0:05.4	Please go to bbc.co.uk forward slash radio for I hope you enjoy the program
0:11.4	Hello, I did speak its influence stretch from Western India to Eastern China via the furthest reaches of the Indonesian archipelago
0:18.4	It had a fleet of a hundred and thirty twelve hundred tons ships
0:22.4	commanded an army of almost two hundred thousand troops and came to dominate the Indian subcontinent
0:27.7	It funded governments toppled princes and generated spectacular amounts of money from trading in textiles drugs and spices
0:35.0	But it wasn't an empire. It wasn't even a state
0:37.9	It was a trading company the East India company founded in 1600
0:42.4	It lasted for two hundred and fifty eight years before the British state gained full control of its activities
0:47.4	In that time to do you draw the map of India provoked an empire into existence and reinvented the fashions and foodstuffs of Britain
0:54.8	But how did the East India company become so powerful?
0:57.4	How did it change both India and Britain and how is the idea of a company running a country ever accepted by the British crown?
1:05.0	When we discuss the East India Company, I'll in the colleague Professor of History at the London School of Economics
1:10.0	Hugh Boen, Senior Lecture in Economic and Social History at the University of Leicester and Mario Mesre
1:14.6	Fellow and tutor in modern history at Keyber College, Oxford
1:17.6	In the Colleap, Queen Elizabeth established the East India company by a royal charter on the last day of 1600
1:23.7	Why did you do it? What sort of company was it? What was it? What was it all about?
1:28.2	Well, East India company is a joint stock company, which means that sort of different merchants pull their resources
1:35.2	They share the risks they share the potential profits and they do so because this is a dangerous trade
1:43.2	And the company initially sets out
1:46.7	Looking not at India, but the East Indies by which is meant what is now
1:52.4	Indonesia mainly and they're interested in spices
	...

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