Changes

==The Company==

==The Company==

Founded in [[1600]] by 101 English subscribers who pooled their funds into a joint-stock company (in which each owned equal shares of the capital), the EIC was soon afterwards granted a royal charter granting it a monopoly on importing goods from the East Indies. Initially at least it claimed only one-tenth the capital of the Dutch East India Company, which was based at Amsterdam, a far more active center of banking and mercantile activity. The EIC moved into the Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf and soon displaced Portuguese agents as the dominant European powers there. The Company traded chiefly in [[indigo]], [[saltpeter]], [[pepper]], and [[cotton]] textiles. By the end of the 17th century, it had acquired control of ports on both coasts of India, including Fort St. George (Madras, 1639), Bombay (1661), and Calcutta (1690).<ref>Robert Tignor, [[Benjamin Elman]], et al, ''Worlds Together, Worlds Apart'', vol B, Fourth Edition, W.W. Norton & Co (2014), 473, 495.</ref>

Founded in [[1600]] by 101 English subscribers who pooled their funds into a joint-stock company (in which each owned equal shares of the capital), the EIC was soon afterwards granted a royal charter granting it a monopoly on importing goods from the East Indies. Like the Dutch East India Company which would be founded two years later, the EIC was granted a monopoly on all trade “East of the Cape of Good Hope but also in and beyond the straits of Magellan,” and (so far as English authorities had power to enforce it) access to all “Islands, Ports, Havens, Cities, Creeks, Towns, and Places” in that vast region; though they faced competition from the Dutch, Portuguese, and various groups of Asian merchants, the EIC were to have no competition from other English organizations. Also like the Dutch East India Company, the EIC was empowered to “make Peace or War with any Prince or People that are not Christians, in any Places of their Trade" - in other words, to engage in diplomatic and military actions as if they were a state unto themselves.<ref>Adam Clulow, “Like Lambs in Japan and Devils outside Their Land: Diplomacy, Violence, and Japanese Merchants in Southeast Asia,” ''Journal of World History'' 24:2 (2013), 352.</ref>

 

Initially at least it claimed only one-tenth the capital of the Dutch East India Company, which was based at Amsterdam, a far more active center of banking and mercantile activity. The EIC moved into the Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf and soon displaced Portuguese agents as the dominant European powers there. The Company traded chiefly in [[indigo]], [[saltpeter]], [[pepper]], and [[cotton]] textiles. By the end of the 17th century, it had acquired control of ports on both coasts of India, including Fort St. George (Madras, 1639), Bombay (1661), and Calcutta (1690).<ref>Robert Tignor, [[Benjamin Elman]], et al, ''Worlds Together, Worlds Apart'', vol B, Fourth Edition, W.W. Norton & Co (2014), 473, 495.</ref>

The Company gained official permission to trade at [[Guangzhou|Canton]] in [[1699]], marking the beginning of its trade activities in mainland China. Though at first the Chinese insisted on silver and gold as payment, later on the EIC managed to substitute [[opium]], grown in Bengal and other regions controlled by the Company. This (in)famously led to considerable addiction problems in China, tensions between the Chinese and British Courts, and the eventual outbreak of the so-called [[Opium War]] in [[1840]].

The Company gained official permission to trade at [[Guangzhou|Canton]] in [[1699]], marking the beginning of its trade activities in mainland China. Though at first the Chinese insisted on silver and gold as payment, later on the EIC managed to substitute [[opium]], grown in Bengal and other regions controlled by the Company. This (in)famously led to considerable addiction problems in China, tensions between the Chinese and British Courts, and the eventual outbreak of the so-called [[Opium War]] in [[1840]].