The East India Company

Abstract

The motives, mechanisms, and the impact of the East India Company’s rule over India (from the mid-eighteenth to mid-nineteenth century) are analyzed. The key motive behind East India Company operations in India was the extraction of economic resources. The central mechanism of establishing rule was coercion used to defeat resistance by the traditional Indian elite. As for the impact, the evidence is overwhelming that the activities of the East India Company in India benefited Britain at India’s expense. The British gained from the East India Company via the transfer of Indian resources for private and public uses. The East India Company also helped establish a colonial pattern of trade during the first half of the nineteenth century. The negative impact on India was transmitted especially via the misuse of Indian savings—savings that may have been invested more productively within India—and via the destruction of indigenous manufacturing.