By 1623, the British East India Company had established factories in Surat, Broach, Ahmedabad, Agra, and Masulipatam. Finally, “an order came for our release, it was then about six o`clock in the morning. As the door was open inwards and the dead piled up against it, covering all the rest of the floor, it was impossible to open it effortlessly; It was therefore necessary that the dead be taken from the few who lived there and who had become so weak that the task, although a condition of life, was not accomplished without extreme difficulty. At a quarter past six in the morning, the poor remnants of 146 souls, no more than three and twenty, came out alive from the black hole. The bodies were dragged out of the hole by the soldiers and thrown into the trench of an unfinished rapture, which was then filled with earth. In 1634, the Mughal emperor Jahangir extended his hospitality to English traders in the Bengal region,[31] and in 1717 completely renounced customs duties on their trade. The main activities of the company at that time were cotton, silk, indigo dyeing, saltpeter and tea. The Dutch were aggressive competitors and had meanwhile extended their monopoly on the spice trade in the Straits of Malacca by the displacement of the Portuguese in 1640-1641. With reduced Portuguese and Spanish influence in the region, the EIC and VOC entered a period of intense competition, leading to the Anglo-Dutch wars of the 17th and 18th centuries. The adventurers met again a year later, on December 31, and this time they succeeded; the Queen granted a royal charter[13] to “George, Earl of Cumberland, and 215 knights, aldermen and burghers” under the name of governor and company of London merchants, who traded with the East Indies. [13] For a period of fifteen years, the Charter granted the newly formed company a monopoly[21] over English trade with all countries east of the Cape of Good Hope and west of the Strait of Magellan. [ref.
needed] All merchants who violated the charter without the company`s licence could lose their ships and cargo (half of which went to the crown and the other half to the company) and imprisonment for “royal pleasure.” [22] Madras was the first major shopping centre founded by the British. Founded in 1639 and originally known as Fort St George, it was located on a five-mile harbourless beach on the east coast of India and was rented for £600 a year. One hundred years later, it had become a city of 300,000 inhabitants. [Source: Pico Iyer, Smithsonian magazine, January 1988] In the first two decades of the 17th century. In the nineteenth century, the Dutch East India Company or Vereenigde Oostindische Company (VOC) was the richest trading company in the world with 50,000 employees worldwide and a private fleet of 200 ships. It specializes in the spice trade and pays its shareholders an annual dividend of 40%. [32] In the 18th century, Britain had a huge trade deficit with China. Therefore, in 1773, the company created a British monopoly on the purchase of opium in Bengal, India, by prohibiting the licensing of opium growers and private cultivation. The monopoly system introduced in 1799 continued with minimal changes until 1947.
[58] Because the opium trade was illegal in China, the company`s ships could not transport opium to China. Thus, opium produced in Bengal was sold to Calcutta, provided it was sent to China. [59] At the beginning of the 18th century. In the nineteenth century, the East India Company was one of London`s largest employers, exchanging money, firearms and equipment such as watches in exchange for Indian cotton, spices, silk, indigo, precious stones and opium. Trading posts such as Calcutta, Madras and Bombay had become self-sufficient cities with garden districts, warehouses and British courts. The “officials” who worked here were defended by “military servants.” The façade, as originally designed by Jacobsen, is known from engravings and a detailed wash drawing by Samuel Wale from 1760. Its five bays had three floors, with an attic hidden behind the balustrade of the cornice.[13] A huge commission of Doric pilasters under an academically correct frieze of triglyphs demonstrates the solidity of the East India Company[14] and the seriousness of the intention: the goal of the directors is “resolutely down to earth – to create trust and impress shareholders”. [15] The structure was surprisingly deep and offered large meeting rooms and director`s offices, as well as a hall, courtyard and garden, all of which could be used for receptions. The directors` courtroom featured a marble fireplace with bearded figures supporting the shelf of the fireplace, and an exuberant bas-relief panel, Britannia receiving the riches of the East, under a pediment, work of Michael Rysbrack (1728-30).
[16] [17] In the directors` courtroom, six paintings by George Lambert adequately illustrate the most important East India Company “factories”: St. Helena, Cape Town, Fort William, Kolkata, Bombay, Madras and Tellicherry; The East Indies men in the foreground were painted by marine artist Samuel Scott. [18] The sculptures inside were made by John Boson. [ref. needed] The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British India and its Dependencies, first published in 1816, was sponsored by the East India Company and contains extensive information on the EIC. After receiving the blessing of Queen Elizabeth I, five ships set sail for the Spice Island in the Dutch East Indies. The Dutch refused to sell spices to British ships sailing to the west coast of India so that they would not return empty-handed. In 1689, a Mughal fleet under the command of Sidi Yaqub attacked Bombay. After a year of resistance, the EIC capitulated in 1690 and the company sent emissaries to the Aurangzeb camp to ask for a pardon. The envoys of the society were to bow down to the emperor, pay high compensation, and promise better behavior for the future.