In European history, there have been many companies known simply as the East India Company. They were the emerging colonial powers of the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, etc. in the 17th century after the colonial expansion of Portugal and Spain. An institution established by the state to deal with some matters in the colonial areas. They are the British East India Company (1600) (British East India Company), the Dutch East India Company (1602), the Danish East India Company (1616), and the Portuguese East India Company (1628), the French East India Company (1664) and the Swedish East India Company (1731).

The Honorable East India Company (The Honorable East India Company), the coat of arms of the British East India Company< /p>

The British East India Company or "British East India Company", (British East India Company), referred to as BEIC, EHIC, sometimes also known as John Company (John Company), is a joint-stock company. 1600 12 On March 31, Queen Elizabeth I of England granted the company a royal charter, giving it the privilege of trading in India. In fact, this charter gave "The Honorable East India Company" (The Honorable East India Company) the privilege of trading in East India. The monopoly lasted for 21 years. Over time, the East India Company changed from a commercial and trading enterprise to the actual master of India. Until it was relieved of administrative power in 1858, it also acquired assisting governance and military functions.

Edit this paragraph to create a foothold

The British East India Company was founded in 1600. Its original full name was "The Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies". ). It was composed of a group of entrepreneurial and influential businessmen. These businessmen received the 15 company flags of the East India from 1600 to 1707 given to them by the British royal family on December 31, 1600

The company has a trade patent charter of 125 years. The company has 125 shareholders and a capital of 72,000 pounds. In 1613, the British established a trading post in Sutra in western India, and soon in Sutra in southeastern India. A commercial center was established in Madras. In 1698, the East India Company purchased Calcutta, located at the port of the Ganges River in the Bay of Bengal, from the Mughal emperors of India. Although the village of Calcutta was small, it played a very important role. The surrounding area was rich in rice and jute. Rivers criss-cross the rivers and the plains stretch as far as the eye can see. The East India Company set up a trade headquarters here to continuously transport India's grain and industrial raw materials back to Britain, earning huge profits from it.

Edit this paragraph Accelerating expansion

The East India Company became stronger and stronger, and gradually occupied the above-mentioned Madras, Calcutta and another city, Bombay. Three districts were established here, each with a The provincial governors were under the jurisdiction of the governors, turning these places into bases for further encroachment on other parts of India. The East India Company trained mercenaries, which were ostensibly owned by the feudal princes of India. However, these feudal princes were violently occupied and plundered by the British troops of the East India Company in India.

The "protection" of the British Army actually served the British. It was commanded by European officers and played an extremely important role in the British occupation of India. It can be said that without this mercenary army, the British would have It was impossible to conquer India. The East India Company carried out crazy colonial plunder in India. In addition to the above-mentioned robbery of the Bangladesh treasury, when it captured the capital of Mysore in 1799, it also robbed royal treasures worth 15 million pounds. The British through the East India Company in India Another method of plunder is to monopolize the opium, salt and tobacco trade. Among them, opium revenue accounts for about one-seventh of the company's total revenue. It forces Bangladeshi farmers to grow opium and then smuggles it to China for sale, making huge profits from it.

Edit this paragraph Opium trade

In the 18th century, China’s demand for opium was very high, and in 1773, the East India Company obtained the exclusive rights to the opium trade in Bengal. However, due to the Indian Company ships banned from transporting opium

to China, so the opium produced in Bengal must first be sold in Calcutta, and then transported there to China. Guan Tianpei fought a naval battle with the British army in Chuanbiyang

. Although the Chinese Communist Party has always banned the import of opium, The ban on smoking was reiterated in 1799, but the company still smuggled opium from Bangladesh to Guangzhou and other places in China through traders and intermediaries, with an average of 900 tons per year. Opium was continuously imported into China, causing a huge Sino-British trade deficit. , although China exported tea, silk and porcelain, it still failed to prevent the massive outflow of silver. In 1838, the amount of opium imported into China was as high as 1,400 tons. China had to impose the death penalty on smugglers and sent the imperial envoy Lin Zexu to supervise the ban on opium. The ban on smoking and the subsequent elimination of cigarettes triggered the Opium War in 1840, which eventually led to China leasing Hong Kong Island to Britain.

Edit this paragraph Monopoly and resistance

The result of the Seven Years' War was the French army The defeat dealt a blow to France's imperial dream and weakened the influence of the Industrial Revolution in France. The British commander, Major General Robert Clive, won an unexpected victory in India, defeating the French army there and retaking Fort St. George. .In the Treaty of Paris in 1763, France's influence in India was limited to a few unarmed trading points such as Pondicherry, Mahi, and Yanam. Although these small trading points remained in French hands for the next two hundred years, France The desire for Indian lands was shattered, which for the East India Company eliminated a major economic rival. Instead, the Company now had a disciplined and experienced army. The British East India Company prompted After the Boston Tea Party, the United States was able to protect its interests from Bengal to Calcutta from its base in Chennai without the influence of any other colonial power. At the same time, the local rulers still Resistance to the rule of the East India Company. In 1757, Clive defeated the last resistance force supported by France at the Battle of Plassey. This victory worsened the relationship between Britain and the Mogul Empire. In Orange After Emperor Bu was deposed, the Mughal Empire was already in the process of fragmentation. After the failure of the battle with the Company, the Mughal Emperor gave up his rule over Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. Clive thus became the first A British governor in Bengal. The legendary Mysore king Tipu Sultan also caused some trouble for the British army. He was an ally of France and continued to resist the East India Company in the four Anglo-Mysore wars. In 1799, the British army occupied Mysore and Tipu Sultan was killed. After that, the company continued to gradually weaken the local resistance and occupied Bombay and its surrounding areas. During these wars, Arthur Wellesley, and later The first Duke of Wellington first showed his talents, which was the starting point of his road to the Peninsular War and the Battle of Waterloo. In this way, Britain occupied the entire South India, East India and West India. The final resistance came from Delhi, Oud, The local forces in Rajputana and Punjab. The Company effectively prevented these principalities from uniting against the British by exerting pressure, sowing discord, and providing dubious protection. From 1757 to 1857, the Indian National Revolt, the East India Company continued to strengthen its Rule, it became more and more like a country and less like a trading enterprise.

Edit this paragraph’s negative effects on India

Once it became a British colonial Colony, India fell into the abyss of misery. The flag of the British colonial company from 1707 to 1801

The biggest disaster brought by colonial rule to India was the destruction of India's traditional handicraft industry. Before the middle of the 18th century , the handmade cotton textile industry is the industry with the most "comparative advantage" in India. However, before the industrial revolution at the end of the 18th century, the Indian handicraft industry, which had been brilliant in the world for thousands of years, has since failed to recover. British colonial rule dealt a heavy blow to the Indian handicraft industry. Millions of craftsmen lost their source of livelihood, and a large number of people died of starvation. The population of Dhaka dropped from 150,000 in the mid-18th century to 30,000 to 40,000 in 1840. "This kind of disaster is almost unprecedented in the history of business. Unique. The bones of weavers have bleached the plains of India." A governor of East India once said. British colonial rule also caused famine in India. The British East India Company levied excessive taxes in order to make money, and during its rule in eastern India Soon after, the land tax was nearly doubled, causing successive years of famine. The Bengal Famine in 1770 alone starved to death 10 million people, accounting for about one-third of the population of Bengal! "Between 1769 and 1770 , used by the British

Hoarding all the rice and refusing to sell it at a shockingly high price created a famine." Before the arrival of Western European colonists, India had always been one of the most prosperous and wealthy regions in the world. After becoming a British colony, India has become a "backward country" despised by Westerners. Starting from the 1860s, the East India Company began to decline. In 1813, the East India Company's trade monopoly on India was cancelled. In the same year, the British It also canceled its trade monopoly with China. After the East India Company's trade privileges with China were cancelled, the British merchants who came to trade in the Thirteenth Bank of Guangzhou changed from being unified and organized by the East India Company to individual traders. The British *** Special Envoy Officials negotiated business matters with the Chinese Communist Party, turning the original negotiation between merchants into a negotiation between political parties, thus planting the seeds of the conflict between China and Britain. After various powers were abolished, The East India Company was on the road to bankruptcy. In 1858, after the East India Company spent its entire life amassing enough wealth for Britain, it was kicked out. The East India Company was officially canceled by the British government, and the British government began. Directly ruled India until 1947.

Edit this paragraph The company collapsed

The bankruptcy of the East India Company was not accidental. There were three reasons for it: 1. Corruption and smuggling among company employees became common, which made the company president Income dropped sharply. 2. Due to the company's excessive expropriation of the Indian people, the Indian people continued to revolt. To suppress the uprisings, the company needed to spend a lot of money. This created a vicious cycle and plunged the company into multiple crises. 3. East The Indian Company is a representative of commercial monopoly capital, and industrial capital has grown rapidly in Britain, and commercial capital has gradually lost its former status. This is also the main reason for the company's collapse. The East India Company's administration of India became a British civil servant The prototype of the system. After the company's monopoly was broken in 1813, the company gradually separated from the trading business. After the Indian National Revolt in 1857, the company also handed over its management affairs to the British ***, and India became a British direct colony. 1860 In the mid-1990s, all the Company's property in India was delivered to ***. The Company only assisted *** in the tea trade (especially with St. Helena). The Company came into force in January 1874 after the East India Company Dividend Redemption Act. It was disbanded on the 1st. "The Times" commented: In the history of mankind, it has completed a task that has never been shouldered by any company and may not be shouldered in future history. In 1987, a coffee businessman established a A limited company named "East India Company", and in 1990, it applied to use the coat of arms of the original East India Company as its trademark. However, the Patent Office stated that "a company using this coat of arms cannot call itself 'East India Company'" ', but in 1996, the company established its own website. The company still sells coffee from St. Helena under the name "East India Company" and has published a book introducing the history of the East India Company. However, it should be noted that although the company claims to have been founded in 1600, it has no legal relationship with the original company.

Edit this historical imprint

1. Expansion of Great Britain Imperial territory. 2. Colonial plunder and accumulation of commercial capital. 3. Strategic locations, including Afghanistan to the north, Southeast Asia to the south, and China to the east. Become a strong strategic support point. 4. Deepen colonization and become a sales market for British industrial products. , supported the development of domestic capitalism, thus promoting the wave of colonization. 5. Crowded out other colonial powers in Europe. 6. The rule of the East India Company accumulated experience for the direct rule and management of the future imperial government.

The East India Company is not the same as today's multinational companies. They both obtained the East India Company's British headquarters building from their own ***

It is a military-political-economic colonial institution that obtains exclusive rights to trade and possesses an army (including a fleet), establishes political institutions in the colonies, and conducts brutal political rule, economic plunder, and even slave and drug trafficking in the colonies. They emerged and existed from the end of the 16th century to the first half of the 19th century, and played an important role in the primitive accumulation of capitalism in various countries. At the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th century, Portugal, Britain, the Netherlands, Denmark, France and other countries successively established operations in India, Indonesia, Malaysia and other countries in the Eastern Hemisphere. came to Asia and other places to establish the East India Company. As for why they were named "East India Company", this is the same as Columbus mistakenly naming the Americas.

In 1492, Columbus sailed to the West Indies in Central America today, mistaking it for India and mistaking the local natives for Indians (today the Native Americans are still called Indians, in English (India is the same word as Indian). Later people found out that they were wrong (Columbus himself refused to admit that he was wrong until his death), but they still made the mistake and called the real India (even some Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia) "East India". The islands in the American Caribbean are called "West Indies", which is where the names of the above-mentioned colonial companies come from. Why did the Netherlands, Britain, and France all set up the East India Company in the Eastern Hemisphere? This is because from the 17th to the 18th century, these three countries were the world's largest. Among the major colonial powers in the world (and Spain, but it mainly expanded in the Western Hemisphere), their competition in the Eastern Hemisphere was particularly fierce. The establishment of the East India Company was an important manifestation and means of their competition. In the end, Britain won. The East India Company is also the most famous. With the development and gradual completion of the Industrial Revolution, free competition and free trade have become the strong demands of the emerging industrial bourgeoisie. This kind of privileged company can no longer adapt to the requirements of further development of capitalism. In the mid-18th century, It has been disbanded by various countries.