What did the British East India Company do to India?

The Brits came, they saw, they were amazed, they plundered, rendered the local economy rootless, they left. A single statement that summarizes the British East India Company's (and later the British Raj's) stay in Indian sub-continent from 1700s to 1947.

When trade and politics are completely intermixed, there is no way a trader can remain solely one, and a politicians can afford not to trade. The brutal death of Indian economy under British rule is a proof of the above axiomatic truth. The East India Company found India very rich, and left it poor beyond imagination!

Despite the Company officers' blatant corruption, genocidal tendencies and ruthlessness, the British Monarch and Parliament allowed it to continue so for decades, as it was fuelling their Industrial Revolution. Thus, the East played the biggest role in enriching the West.

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Various pointers to what actually happened -

• It is important to understand the background of Europe in the 15th century. All the newly emerging nation-states were assuming that the only way they could stay ahead of the rest was for them to hoard as much gold and silver as they could.
• This meant international campaigns aided by the State's military. Economists define it as Mercantilism. It ended up becoming competitive mercantilism due to severe struggle among the various European nations themselves.
• Once that demon was set free, global conflict was inevitable. Continent after continent, region after region, became prey to the greedy and rapacious European powers (companies and state agents both). There was little separating commercial actions from political ones.

So the simple observation is - the only thing that could have prevented the BEIC from taking over India was if Queen Victoria would never have granted the royal charter for trade in the East to them, and there would have been no competitive Mercantilism at all.

• Once the charter was granted, and the BEIC set out to conquer the East, India was the richest fruit, that became low-hanging due to our own complicated sequence of reasons, and facilitated the BEIC's takeover of entire subcontinent in the years to come.
• And once that was achieved, history took on an entirely new colour, in decades to come. Even relatively minor incidents like the Black Hole of Calcutta (which is minor if it were true indeed) were used to morally justify the BEIC's ambitious to become the rulers.

The entire history of East India Company in India and its so-called intentions is a mix of blatant racism, genocidal murders, looting and societal division.

• It was the Company’s plunder that first de-industrialized India and then provided the massive finance that fueled Britain’s own industrial revolution, with which it dominated entire Europe and the World.
• The conspiracy that BEIC and its masters indulged in has perpetrated such deep-ingrained beliefs that the poverty of today's India is due to the unproductive Indians and their climate. The destruction by the British is blissfully overlooked.
• One of the biggest mass-murderers in history - the honourable PM Winston Churchill - escaped unscathed in history's gaze due to this fraud that was so successfully perpetrated.

Any intellectual who still has any doubt left, should carefully read this brilliant source - in search of the East India Company, the world’s first transnational corporation

Clive knew what he was doing. Indians grossly misread his intention. Just look at the eyes of the elephant. If only it could speak!

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