World History

The English East India Company: Original Corporate Raiders

Here is a long but excellent essay about the East India Company by William Dalrymple, author of several books about India, including The Last Mughal.

Dalrymple reminds us of the greed and brutality that members of the East India Company employed in conquering India and extracting its riches.

In many ways the EIC was a model of corporate efficiency: 100 years into its history, it had only 35 permanent employees in its head office. Nevertheless, that skeleton staff executed a corporate coup unparalleled in history: the military conquest, subjugation and plunder of vast tracts of southern Asia. It almost certainly remains the supreme act of corporate violence in world history. For all the power wielded today by the world?s largest corporations ? whether ExxonMobil, Walmart or Google ? they are tame beasts compared with the ravaging territorial appetites of the militarised East India Company. Yet if history shows anything, it is that in the intimate dance between the power of the state and that of the corporation, while the latter can be regulated, it will use all the resources in its power to resist.

The length of this essay makes it unsuitable as a student assignment but parts of it could probably be adapted.

Thanks to Bram Hubbell for tweeting the link to this essay.

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