
The East India Company, the original corporate raiders - pepys
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/04/east-india-company-original-corporate-raiders
======
newyankee
It is actually amazing how little British folks today know about their own
historical misdeeds, they may accept the issues towards USA and other
countries but tend to downplay atrocities magnitudes higher in India and other
countries

India is important because it was the crown jewel of the British empire and
was completely destroyed of its soul by the colonialists with very clever
mixture of politics, military and other methods

~~~
apsec112
AFAICT, the British Empire gets much more criticism for its various evils than
other historical empires do. Very few people in the West, for example, even
know about the ethnic cleansing of the Greeks under the Ottoman Empire
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_genocide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_genocide)),
and that was less than a century ago. Probably the worst European colonialists
were the Belgians, of all people, under King Leopold II
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free_S...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free_State)).
And I've virtually never heard anyone talk about all the wars and conquests in
India before the British came. The Mughal Empire was not conquered with
sunshine and rainbows, etc.

~~~
BlackJack
The Mughal's did bad things too, but some of their kings like Akbar at least
tried to integrate society and not cause religious strife. The Mughal Empire
did a lot of bad things in India, especially nutcases like Aurangzeb, and
Indian people recognize those bad things.

The problem, as I understand, is that a lot of British people don't know all
the bad things the Empire did, or don't learn about it the way German people
learn about the Holocaust and the Nazi's. Same thing might apply to Belgium -
I was appalled to visit Brussels and see a park called "Leopold Park" [1] in
the center of the city.

Edit: Turns out this park is named after King Leopold I, the first king of
Belgium, and before the Congo atrocities. See
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15314232](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15314232)
for the person who educated me :)

On a more personal level, as an Indian person who grew up in the US, I always
thought Churchill was a badass dude and a good wartime leader. It wasn't until
Middle School that I learned about the WW2 famines and all the stuff he said
about Indian people. He hated Indians and was extremely racist. His decisions
directly lead to the death of millions of people in India. He's no better than
Hitler or any of those dictators in my view, and it's mind boggling that
people idolize him as the Lion.

Tangent aside, a lot of people did bad things (globally), but saying the
Ottomans are bad or the Belgians are bad doesn't absolve the British Empire of
its crimes. I don't think we need reparations or blame anybody today, since we
all understand bad things happened, but more people should be educated about
what happened and how to make sure it never happens again.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Park](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Park)

~~~
chimeracoder
> Churchill's decisions directly lead to the death of millions of people in
> India. He's no better than Hitler

It gets even more ironic than that. During the 1940s Bengal famine, things
were so bad that the _Axis_ powers offered to step in and send humanitarian
aid. Churchill not only refused, but he tried to prevent the newspapers from
printing news of the offer, so that people wouldn't know how truly unnecessary
their starvation was.

Lest I be mistaken, this is not to say that the Axis powers were somehow
anything other than evil themselves. But it does highlight the level of
hypocrisy of the British to claim the moral high ground when their own leader
was intentionally starving millions to death out of spite. (And yes, it was
spite - read what Churchill himself said on the topic).

~~~
DoubleCribble
Being neither British nor Indian, I'd always thought of the British as not
horrible colonialists of India, that is until I listened to Malcolm Gladwell's
Revisionist History podcast.
[1][http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/15-the-prime-
minister...](http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/15-the-prime-minister-and-
the-prof)

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adamnemecek
Even though they mention it, I came across this chart a while back that shows
just by how much bigger it was than the recent largest corporation

[https://i.pinimg.com/736x/14/4a/6c/144a6c7feb3823f5fd4baa562...](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/14/4a/6c/144a6c7feb3823f5fd4baa562445ce57
--asian-continent-east-india-company.jpg)

It seems to have originally come from here

[https://i.pinimg.com/736x/14/4a/6c/144a6c7feb3823f5fd4baa562...](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/14/4a/6c/144a6c7feb3823f5fd4baa562445ce57
--asian-continent-east-india-company.jpg)

~~~
chimeracoder
> Even though they mention it, I came across this chart a while back that
> shows just by how much bigger it was than the recent largest corporation

FYI, that's the _Dutch_ East India Company, which was separate from the
British East India Company, which this article is about.

The British East India Company was actually much _larger_.

~~~
jorams
> The British East India Company was actually much larger.

Do you have any sources for that? Most things I can find mention the opposite.
For example, from Wikipedia[1]:

> Between 1602 and 1796 the VOC sent almost a million Europeans to work in the
> Asia trade on 4,785 ships, and netted for their efforts more than 2.5
> million tons of Asian trade goods. By contrast, the rest of Europe combined
> sent only 882,412 people from 1500 to 1795, and the fleet of the British
> East India Company (EIC), the VOC's nearest competitor, was a distant second
> to its total traffic with 2,690 ships and a mere one-fifth the tonnage of
> goods carried by the VOC.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company)

~~~
btilly
The reason for the disagreement is that they were big at different times.
During the lifetime of the Dutch company, it was far the bigger. But the
British company conquered India, held it for decades, and then supplied
Britain during the Industrial Revolution.

The British company had the bigger long-term impact. And probably did a lot
more business in the end. But not while the Dutch company existed.

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deepGem
Relevant : Dr Shashi Tharoor's talk on this matter

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7CW7S0zxv4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7CW7S0zxv4)

~~~
krona
It's a debate. Here is the rest of it:
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2Q4CdDrPSMX7vOk3nVNC...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2Q4CdDrPSMX7vOk3nVNC8Ce852FKYXgy)

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NiklasMort
somehow relevant: TV Series "Taboo" Very good one, explores the time and
doings of the East India Company (not as a main theme)

~~~
bherms
I only partially enjoyed the show... The sets, costumes, etc were all
phenomenal. The story/dialogue at times was a bit boring at times, and
overdone at times.

Either way, it's cool to see that the East India company was real, and about
as terrible as the show makes them seem.

~~~
baq
I just wanted to say that your post implies that the East India Company could
be thought of as fictional and that shocked me. I mean, I've learned about it
in school, so I also had no idea it existed before that (I'm not English), but
it's concerning that it isn't taught.

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eternalban
They had an interesting flag:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_East_India_Company](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_East_India_Company)

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jacquesm
Corporate militarization is doing pretty good in the modern age. Academi,
formerly Xe Services formerly Blackwater is a pretty good example of such an
entity but there are many other companies that had their own military section
or that managed to co-opt the military of the country where they were
operating (Shell Oil for instance).

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ak39
If Indian history is up your alley, I heartily recommend William Dalrymple's
set of three impressively researched and written books:

1\. The White Mughals

2\. The Last Mughal

3\. Kohinoor

I began reading The Last Mughal just as I had left Delhi and Agra and I
regretted not starting it before my visit.

Dalrymple knows his onions.

~~~
thevardanian
William Dalrymple gives a good outside in perspective, but lacks to give the
perspective of the people in India, and how they feel about their own history.

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CrasVestibulum
I fondly hope for a reverse wealth drain from UK to India at the same scale or
more.

~~~
mlinksva
Indeed, or at least the dissolution of imperial legacy culture through
domination by the populations and cultures of ex-colonies. Independence was a
mistake. It only cemented global apartheid. There is still time to demand
democracy instead, starting with imperial states granting the residents of
former colonies the full rights of citizens unconditionally.

~~~
briane80
If you hate our culture so much why do you want citizenship?

~~~
arrayjumper
A case can be made that since the British looted foreign countries to create
their infrastructure it is only fair that the citizens of those countries be
allowed to enjoy the fruits of their ancestors' labours.

~~~
oh_sigh
A case can be made for a lot of things. That isn't the same as saying a _good_
case can be made for it.

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throw2016
Democracy is meaningless if lobbyists are allowed to run rampant. You elect
representatives once very 4-5 years and these guys are working 24/7 everyday
to get their way with billions of dollars at play.

What's the point then of elections if its continuous lobbying with periodic
interruptions that merely change the player?

Add revolving doors, favours to family and friends, media propaganda and
modern democracy ceases to be meaningful and looks like lip service.

~~~
r00fus
There's a theory that modern democracy is equivalent to bread & circuses. An
efficient way to keep the hoi palloi occupied while they're being looted.

I mean, we have more oversight on casinos than voting machines, and more
interest in who's first-round in the sports drafts than who's standing in
elections.

It takes a carefully crafted culture to keep a democracy defanged enough to
not get in the way of the wealthy and powerful yet legitimate enough to defray
mass revolts.

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known
Portuguese created the first European settlement in India as per
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Indian_history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Indian_history)

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eggie5
why do the English get naming rights on East India Company instead of the
dutch???

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smegel
More like the original Corporation as a Nation.

