The East India Company : was established in London in 1600 as a joint-stock company of English merchants, who received, by a series of charters, exclusive rights to English trade with the “Indies”, defined as the lands lying between the Cape of Good Hope & the Straits of Magellan. In 1608 it decided to establish factories in India & in 1609 sent Captain Hawkins to meet Jahangir who, at first was willing to permit the Company to settle at Surat, finally refused due to the hostile activities of the Portuguese there & dissatisfaction of native merchants. In 1611, the Company avenged itself on the local merchants & the Portuguese until Jehangir sanctioned their permanent settlement in Surat in 1613. Then sent a soft-spoken shark, Sir Thomas Roe who managed to delude Jahangir at Ahmedabad & before Roe left in 1619, the Company had besides Surat, sneaked into Ahmedabad, Bharuch & Agra. In 1687, its Directors were advising the soldiers, administrators, traders, missionaries “to establish a polity of civil & military power, & create & secure such a large revenue to secure both...as may the foundation of a large, well grounded, secure English dominion in India for all time to come.” This policy gave birth to the Octopus which the Govt. of Great Britain gladly inherited & fostered from 1858directors. “A small event of far-reaching importance,” writes Karandikar “was the arrival at Calicut in May 1498 of a few Portuguese ships under Vasco de Gama. The spread of the power of Portugal along the western coast of India, the subsequent arrival of the Dutch, the French & the English, the transfer of Bombay by the Portuguese to the English, &, Anglo-French rivalry in India as part of their rivalry for world supremacy [led to] the assertion of English superiority over the French by the middle of the 18th century, & the penetration of the English bacilli into Bengal, the right lung of India, in 1757, which is the fateful battle of Plassey.” Clive (1725-74) sowed the seed & by 1818 Gov.-Generals Warren Hastings, Cornwallis, Wellesley, Minto-1, Hastings-2, Amherst, Auckland, Ellenborough to Hasting-2, accomplished it by annexing the Moghul & the Maratha dominions. All that remained were Afghanistan, Punjab, Sindh, & Myanmar. The Amīrs of Sindh had to conclude a treaty with William Bentinck, rather reluctantly, on 20th April 1832. Auckland Gov.-Gen (1836-42) who practically ignored the sufferings of the people in the Great Famine in 1837-38, forced a new treaty on the new king of Oudh, deposed the Rajah of Satārā for ‘treasonable intrigues with the Portuguese’, deposed the Nawab of Kurnool & annexed his kingdom for ‘an attempt to wage war against British Empire. In 1838 he invaded Afghanistan & violated the treaty with Sindh by taking an army through its territories. In1839 he bullied the Amīrs of Sindh to pay a sum of 3 lacs for the maintenance of his force in their territories & placed Sindh ‘formally under British protection’. Auckland’s successor Ellenborough (Gov.-Gen. 1842-44, who had just completed his third term as President of the E.I. Co.’s Board of Control) imposed on Sindh the yoke of British authority by sheer force & appointed Charles Napier commander of the British force in Sindh. Napier provoked a war with the Amīrs & destroyed their army…. ‘If the Afghan episode is the most disastrous in our annals, that of Sindh is morally even less excusable.’ While trying to defend the policy General Napier has admitted in his Diary: “we have no right to seize Sindh, yet we shall do so, & a very advantageous, useful, humane piece of rascally it will be’. Strangely enough, East India Co.’s Court of Directors, while condemning the policy of annexing Sindh, did nothing to undo the wrong. Napier was appointed the first Governor of Sindh, & he tried hard during his rule of four years to consolidate British authority in the province.” On 30th March 1849, Lord Dalhousie, on his own responsibility, annexed Punjab by a proclamation. He declared, ‘However contrary to our past views & to our present views, annexation of Punjab is the most advantageous policy for us to pursue.’ The uprising of 1857 was the first organised challenge to British role in India, which held the country in its tentacles like an octopus (see The Mutiny). With the India Act of 1858 the East India Company & its Board of Control were replaced (they had ceased to exist as a legal entity in 1873) by a single new department of state, the India Office, which functioned, under the Secretary of State for India, as an executive office of the Government of the United Kingdom, alongside the Foreign Office, Colonial Office, Home Office & War Office. The uprising had taught not a few lessons to the Octopus: Except the Sikhs & Gurkhās who had remained loyal, all known martial races were excluded from the Army & disarmed along with those suggestible to revolt, they were artfully supplied debilitating intoxicants, owning a spear or sword became illegal – in fact, says a nationalist source, they were ferreted out & confiscated along with metal-shod lāthis & long-bladed knives, & Hindu-Muslim unity was set down as the most serious menace to the continuance of British power in India. [Based on Karandikar: 5-16; Buckland; R.C. Majumdar et al’s Advanced History of India; S. Bhattacharya]
... and political chaos in India. The East India Company was on its way to the complete control of Bengal, India's most populous province. At the same time important areas of the Deccan came under the control of the East India Company. From favourable locations on coasts -Madras, Bombay and Calcutta - the East India Company started tapping the interior resources of India's well... said in his report on the battle: 'Mir Jafar, Rai Durlabh and Yar Lutuf Khan gave us no other assistance than standing neutral.' These three were secretly in league with the East India Company. This battle gave the East India Company control over Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. Immediately after the Battle of Plassey, Moghul emperor Shah Alam granted Dewani of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa to the British... the Portuguese, who were the first Europeans to establish themselves in India and the last to leave. They arrived as early as 1498 via the ocean route discovered by Vasco-da-Gama. But it was the East India Company, chartered by the British crown and ultimately responsible to the parliament, that launched British rule in India. The British East India Company was established on 31 December 1600 AD, under ...
... the educated bourgeois classes. Unscrupulous defiance of moral principle and the reckless exploitation of the masses that characterised the early activities of the traders made the rule of the East India Company hateful to the people. The proselytizing activities of the Christian missionaries were greatly resented all around. The deliberate destruction of Indian manufacturer and handicrafts aggravated... The western poligars, led by Puli Thevar of Nelkatumseval, forged local alliances and then a grand alliance as they revolted against Mohammed Ali. Of necessity he had to seek assistance from the East India Company, and after many battles the revolt was finally put down in 1761 by Yusuf Khan, who had been nominated the Governor of 'Madura' and 'Tinnevelly' in 1758 by the British, despite Nawab Mohammed... They were appointed as generals of the Sivaganga military and the brothers left an indelible impression on the history of Tamil Nadu. In the year 1772, the English military of the East India Company, under the command of Lt. Col. Bon Jour attacked the state at Kalayar Kovil. During the war, Raja Muthu Vaduganadhar lost his life in the battlefield. But the Maruthu brothers managed to escape ...
... nature, the result of the acquisition of political power by the East India Company and the absorption of India into the growing British Empire. As Mr Dutt shows in his able Economic History of British India , this political change had the gravest effect on our economic life. In the first place we had the economic policy of the East India Company which, so far as its export trade was concerned, accepted... products were famous; our carving, our inlaid work and our gossamer cloth. Coming now to the earlier part of the last century, what do we find? The carrying trade had passed from the Arabs to the East India Company and with it, too, the control of nearly all our exports, especially those in indigo, iron and steel, and the newly imported industries in tobacco, tea and coffee. But there was still a large... accepted manufactures indeed, but paid an equal, if not greater, attention to raw materials. Even our internal trade was taken from us by the policy of the East India Company; there were heavy transit duties on all inland commerce and there were commercial Residents in every part of the Company's possessions, who managed to control the work of the local artisans, and so thoroughly that outside their factories ...
... measurable distance of a second revolutionary outbreak. The East India Company had been content with its plunder and pillage, and did not care much to interfere with the social and religious life of the people; but since the Mutiny of 1857, the attitude of the British Raj, which took over the administration of India from the East India Company, was characterised by racial arrogance, distrust, and ... the baptism of fire. The enormous drain of India's wealth and material re- sources, 94 the ruthless exploitation and economic strangulation that went on almost unabated since the days of the East India Company, the deliberate destruction of Indian industries and handicrafts in the interests of the British industrialists and tradesmen, annexation of some of the Native States by fraud and force, the ...
... Bengal was much more wealthy than was Britain," wrote the British historian William Digby in 1901. Already in 1853, John Sullivan, Collector of Coimbatore and founder of Ootaca-mund, had told the East India Company that he was in favour of returning a large part of Indian territory to native rulers "upon principles of justice, and upon principles of financial economy.... They [the people of India] have... and the trader. The Indian historian Romesh Dutt paints this harrowing picture: "The facts which were deposed to at the celebrated impeachment of Warren Hastings [first Governor-General of the East India Company] relating to the collection of rent from Page 285 the impoverished tenantry [of Bengal] are sufficiently dismal. It was stated that the defaulters were confined in open cages... purchase the more exquisite privilege of being exploited by British capital." As the Englishman grew fat on accumulations made in India, the Indian remained as lean as ever. When in 1813 the East India Company brought a few cosmetic changes to its Charter, it invited testimonies from its officers in India. Most were naturally convinced that they were bringing enlightenment and material progress to ...
... The Role of South India in the Freedom Movement The Sepoy Mutiny and South India The Background For more than 150 years the East India Company (John Company) had raised its own armed forces. The three administrative areas of India, the Presidencies of Bombay, Madras and Bengal, each maintained their own army with its own commander-in-chief. The... regiments were officered by Europeans, with a stiffening of European NCOs. Attached to this formidable force were Queen's regiments, actual units of the British Army lent by the Crown to the East India Company. In 1857 the total number of soldiers in India was 34,000 Europeans of all ranks and 257,000 sepoys. The Causes There had been a British presence in India for more... Battle of Colachel in defeating the Dutch forces. In 1748, Major Stringer Lawrence, Page 43 a veteran of action in Spain, Flanders and the Highlands, was hired by the East India Company to take charge of the defence of Cuddalore. He laid the foundations of what was to become the Indian Army. Training the levies to become a militia, the Madras Levies were formed into ' ...
... came to India originally as traders through the East India Company during the rule of Jehangir in the 16th century. The chief aim of the British at that time was to make an impact on the Dutch hold on the spice trade and to establish a lasting outpost. But the company soon established its military and political dominance in India. By 1834, the East India Company was no more a trading company; it became... on each and every aspect of her life. The company was very successful till the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. The mutiny ended a year later when The India Act (1858) was passed; this act abolished the East India Company and vested all power with Queen Victoria. From that time onwards, it was the British Government that governed India through the Indian Civil Service. However, the British were not the first ...
... amounted in thirty years, at 12 per cent compound interest, to the enormous sum of £723,997,917 sterling; or at a low rate, as £2,000,000 for fifty years, to 8,400,000,000 sterling! 22 The East India Company was always inclined to put the prosperity of India in the future tense, and as for its administration, was it not described by Burke as "one of the most corrupt and obstructive tyrannies... followed by other papers, and Indian journalism was born. Private English schools were established as early as 1717 at Cuddalore (near Pondicherry), in 1718 at Bombay and in 1720 at Calcutta. The East India Company having assumed, after 1813, educative and cultural (and not alone police) functions, and having shed its commercial monopoly, attempts were made to revive Oriental learning through Government ...
... from the British East India Company, erupting as a scandal in the British Parliament. The East India Company took advantage of the situation and plundered the wealth of the people in the name of tax collection. Page 35 In 1792 the Nawab entered into an agreement with the East India Company in which he delegated to them the authority to collect tribute from the Indian princes ...
... days. You must remember that when India entered the last decades of the nineteenth century, Indians had very little say in the administration of their country. After the Revolt of 1857, the East India Company was dissolved. Instead, the British Government directly assumed power over the Indian territories. A new political office was created in London, that of the Secretary of State for India, who ...
... let us first look at some of the developments that took place immediately after the Mutiny. Soon after the Mutiny, the British Government effected major changes in India. In 1858, the East India Company was abolished. It was decided that India was to be ruled by the Crown; in other words the king or queen of the United Kingdom was to rule India under the advice of the British Government. The ...
... was the famed Maharani Swarnamayi Devi. And where stood Kantomudi's grocer store that had offered refuge to Hastings the Maharaja set up a charitable dispensary. Hastings did a lot for the East India Company saving it from financial ruin. He brought the rule of law in the country and set up the police-organisation. The reputation of the British for upholding honesty and justice was very high at ...
... years willingly admitted the sovereignty of a handful of English merchants and within a century went into an inert sleep under the shadow of their paramount empire." By the 1800s, when the East India Company had secured Page 66 its grip on the country, when de Lesseps had dug the Suez Canal, when steamships began plying between Europe and India, many Europeans had come. And under ...
... (is it much better today?), and would rather listen to these worthy scholars led by the prestigious Max Muller (whose research work, interestingly, was commissioned and generously paid for by the East India Company) than to India's own savants and seers. Swami Dayananda Saraswati was perhaps the first to reject the Aryan invasion theory, emphasizing that the word arya referred in the Veda to a ...
... Before British rule, there was no private property in land. The self-governing village community handed over each year to the ruler or to his nominee a share of the annual produce. The East India Company put a stop to this and introduced a new revenue system superseding the right of the village community over land and creating two new forms of property on land - landlordism and individual peasant ...
... Sannyasins. In another of his novels —Dew' Choudhurani — he weaves his tale on real-life folk heroes, Devi Choudhurani and her guru Bhavani Pathak, some of whose deeds were chronicled by men of the East India Company. Page 256 by Capt. Thomas in 1772 near Rangpur, leaving only a few survivors. Warren Hastings, the then Governor General of India, extolled (!) them. "These Sannyasis appear ...
... too began by setting up a trading centre at Surat (1666), on India's west coast. They got permit for trading during Aurangzeb's reign, who ruled a part of India from 1658 to 1707; exactly as the East India Company had got theirs when his grandfather Jehangir reigned. But all of them recognized the advantages of a foothold on the Coromandel coast. "The need for expansion of commerce pushed them [the Dutch] ...
... twenty-fourth generation. Kaliprasad Ghose was K. D. 's father. Not much is known about him except that he seems to have had a good knowledge of English and worked as a civil servant in the East India Company, with a salary of Rs. 300 a month. The Ghoses had some property, land and a house. When K. D. was twelve years old, his father died. His family became impoverished. His mother, Kailasbasini ...
... Sufism VII (i) Arrival of Europeans in India. East India Company (ii) Conflict and chaos of the 18th century Page 196 VIII (i) Triumph of the British over Rivals in India (ii) War of Independence of 1857 (iii) Rani Lakshmibai, Nanasaheb and Tope IX (i) Renaissance in India and struggle for Freedom (ii) Raja Ram Mohun Roy... Page 197 (xxxix) 15th August 1947 Birth of Free India 15th August 1947: Sri Aurobindo's 75th Birthday: Sri Aurobindo's message on the birth of Free India. X (i) Jawaharlal Nehru and Free India (ii) The new Constitution of India 1949 (iii) India adopts Planning (iv) Problems of contemporary India (a) National integration (b) Poverty and... (d) Modern India and the world of sports 8. The Theme of Perennial India: (a) The greatness of India and continuity of Indian culture (b) A diagnosis of the weakness of contemporary India (c) How to build new India (d) India and the ideal of human unity Part III An in-depth study of the one of the following themes: (a) Tolerance ...
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