Modernity is many things. Urbanisation, industrialisation, technologization. At its simplest, it’s a project of supposed improvement, science, and progress. As a project, then, modernity seeks to expand itself. If improvements can be made, they should be made. The natural earth is modernity’s garden.
Exploration was at the heart of the modern expansionist drive that began in earnest in the 17th century. But why then? Why not before? What shifts in psychology led to this new attitude in Europe about an unexplored world?
We can sometimes see shifts in the most unexpected places.
Take this 1658 book, William Percey’s The Complete Swimmer.
In it he writes ‘there are two only chief ends, which are the only inducements to all actions in the whole words; and these are pleasure and profit; yea these are the mayn and only objects whereon all Creatures animal or rational fix their eyes; the wheeles upon with [sic: which] all our Actions turn’
For Percey, even when it came to swimming, the motivations were simple. Not honor, virtue, achievement, sacrifice, the common good; but pleasure and profit.
This was new.
In the same year, thousands of miles away, the Taj Mahal had just been completed.
A few years before this, the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes had written that all action was the pursuit of Power.
Others started to talk of utility – what is most useful to me – but the shift was towards self-interest.
In 1747 Jean-Jacques Burlham wrote that ‘Now let man reflect but ever so little on himself, he will soon perceive that every thing he does is with a view of happiness’
By 1776, Adam Smith could write that ‘“It is not from the benevolence (kindness) of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.
Since, the scientific revolution it was beginning to be assumed that human nature was calculable, scientific, had simple principles, that people act in rational and predictable ways.
Happiness, pleasure, utility, whatever it was, was pursued, stored up, or, to use a word that the utilitarian Jeremy Bentham invented in 1817, maximised.
For the Ancients and the Christians, traditional ideas of human psychology emphasised honour, virtue, restraint, contemplation as things to be pursued for a good life. Until the modern period, when philosophers had asked the question – how is happiness achieved – virtue was usually part of the answer.
As modernity approached, a new philosophy began to replace this.
Machiavelli had argued that all was power, that we all have ‘insatiable appetites’ that could be continually fed without limits.
For Hobbes, we seek power because it assures us of pleasure.
Throughout the 17th century, the word ‘interest’ becomes increasingly popular.
In 1579 interest meant: “that which is to or for the advantage of anyone”
In 1622 it had come to me “regard to one’s own profit and advantage”
Importantly, Interests have no limit – they can be pursued with no ceiling.
As one periodical claimed in 1730 “The love of power is natural; it is insatiable; almost constantly whetted, and never cloyed by possession.”
After Hobbes and Machiavelli, many philosophers began to reinterpret morality as strategies for pursuing pleasure and utility, maximising gain and minimising pain, being utilitarian and individualist.
John Stuart Mill wrote in the nineteenth century that ‘Pleasure is the only thing desired; therefore pleasure is the only thing desirable.’
1599: London
Around 60 years after Machiavelli had published his treatise on power,
A rag-tag group of merchants gather in London in an old timber building. Many of them were from the middling classes, or of humble origins; clothiers, leather workers, a couple of soliders and sailors. They Mayor of London was also present. They were to agree to petition Queen Elizabeth to start a company to the trade in the East Indies.
The company was something new – a joint stock corporation; anyone could invest.
Such a vast, risky, lengthy, and expensive business enterprise would be difficult to pursue on ones own.
The company was granted a monopoly on trade in the East for fifteen years. They purchased ships, collected gold bullion, iron, tin and cloth to exchange with the locals, and in 1601 set off from the Thames in search of pepper, nutmeg, cloves, textiles, indigo, and cotton that would fetch a high price back home.
India
The new East India Company began setting up bases in a vast and wealthy sub-continent ruled by a powerful Mughal Empire.
At the time, India had a fifth of the world’s population and was producing a quarter of its manufacturing output. England, by comparison, was producing just 3%.
Mughuls
The Mughal capitals were the commercial centres of the world. The empire was rich and powerful, with 4 million armed men at their command. Delhi was larger than Paris and London combined.
One poet wrote that
Delhi is not a city but a rose Garden,
Even its wasterlands are more pleasing than an orchard.
Shy, beautiful women are the bloom of its bazaars,
Every corner adorned with greenery and elegant cypress trees.
The Mughal empire at this time was stable, advanced, and conscientious. Above all, it was rich.
One European traveller described the Emporer’s birthday. It took place in a ‘very large and beautiful garden, the square within all water, on the sides flowers and trees’, the Emperor was ‘laden with diamonds, rubies, pearles, and other previous vanities, so great, so glorious! His head, necke, breast, armes, above the elbowes, at the wrists, his fingers each one with at least two or three rings, are fettered with chaines of diamonds, rubies as great as walnuts – some greater – and pearles such as mine eyes were amazed at.’
Europeans traded in India with the Mughal consent.
In 1632, when the Emperor discovered that the Portuguese had been building without their permission and trying to convert locals to Christianity he had them attacked and expelled. 400 Europeans were captured, tortured, and many enslaved.
Emperor Aurangzeb said that ‘the English were a company of base, quarrelling people and foul dealers.’
But colonial trading posts grew quickly. The traders, taking in demand goods back to Europe, rapidly found wealth. Within 30 years, the population of Bombay had grown to 60,000.
Robert Clive
Robert Clive was born in a village in Shropshire in England in 1725. He had a reputation of being an unruly and violent child and a penchant for fighting at school. His uncle described him as having a ‘temper of fierceness and imperiousness, so that he flies out upon every trifling occasion.’
Despite his nephews boisterousness, he tried his best to ‘help forward the more valuable qualities of meekness, benevolence and patience,’ in him.
When he was a teenager, Clive began running protection rackets around his village, ‘now levying blackmail on anxious shopkeepers trembling for the security of their windows; now turning his body into a temporary dam across the street gutter to flood the shop of an offending tradesman.’
Luckily, his father, a well-connected man, managed to secure the young man a job as a clerk at the East India Company, and in 1743, at 18 years old, Clive left for India.
As Clive was growing up in England, the Mughal Empire was being rocked by a series of succession disputes and growing instability.
In 1719 alone, 4 different emperors occupied the throne. The Marathas – a growing coalition of mainly Hindu princes and aristocrats – attacked the Mughal Empire and de-stabled the territory to the East.
AS the Empire shrank and fractured, India entered into a period of instability. Everyone carried weapons, men fought for the highest bidder, states, princes, and war-lords declared themselves independent, a period of anarchy ensued.
It was in this environment that The East India Company began to flourish. Europeans made use of new military tactics and more sophisticated weaponry unavailable to the natives.
Clive despised India. HE was homesick, he had no interest in the culture, the langauges, the religion or the philosophy, as many of his fellow Europeans did. He attempted suicide multiple times
But he quickly proved himself an effective fighter, then an innovative military leader. HE often attacked in thunderstorms or took advantage of an early morning fog.
Gentlemanly Capitalism
Back in Britain a shift in power was occurring too.
The traditional aristocratic landowners who help power in parliament were being challenged by a growing bourgeoisie. Old money and new money collided.
The result was not one beating the other, but an amalgamation of the two: a gentlemanly capitalism where new money played by the rules of the old game.
The corridors of power in London merged an elite, privately educated culture, with deep ties to the church hierarchy and the military class, with new money that needed to expand, to find new markets to capture and new goods to invest capital in.
The Square Mile of the City of London became a fraternity, a privileged club, a network of contacts.
The ‘gentleman’ class dominated the institutions of government, including, of course, the Colonial Office.
Finance
A financial revolution was taking place too. The Bank of England was founded in 1694 so that the government could borrow to improve the naval fleet required to protect merchants.
The British Government could borrow vast sums of money because of the stability at home. A stock exchange and merchant banking system began to develop too.
As the economist J.A. Hobson wrote, ‘finance is the governor of the imperial engine.’
Imperialism became the mode of expansion, the inevitable shape of the pursuit of pleasure, of utility, of profit, Colonialism became a process, as the historians P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins write, of ‘transmitting impulses from a particular source of energy.’
EMPIRE
In 1757 at the Battle of Plassey, Clive emerged victorious over the Bengal Mughal ruler, Siraj-ud-Daulah. It was the first time in world history that a stock company had declared war on a prince.
Ghulam Husain Salim, an eminent historian of the time, remarked that ‘the chess board of time presented a new game.’
The victory firmly secured the Company’s dominance in the region.
Clive’s ambition, aggression, and recklessness drove the company towards complete domination of the sub-continent
Dominance exempted the English from any local taxes on goods, any import or export duties
After the battle Clive quickly earned £234,000 (around £22 million in todays money) instantly making him one of the wealthiest men in Europe. He was 33 years old.
Edmund Burke wrote at the time that ‘it is supposed that the General can realise £1,200,000 in cash, bills and jewels; that his lady has a casket of jewels which are estimated at least at £200,000.* So that he may with propriety be said to be the richest subject in the three kingdoms.’
Ne purchased an estate in shropshire, a townhouse in London, then another estate, then a weekend retreat.
Rumour even had it that his wife’s pet ferret had a diamond necklace worth over £2500
Mia Jafar, the puppet Emperor the company had installed on the throne, even presumed that the Company’s ruler was a single person, a prince or sovereign back in England, rather than a business. He wrote in a letter that it is my ‘earnest desire to see you… which exceeds myself to your heart, the repository of friendship.’
The Company was granted the rights to tax the 20 million people of Bengal. Now, Bengal – India’s richest province – would be run from an office in London, and employ 20,000 Indian soldiers
(Benjamin West painting – Shah Alam)
Taking advantage of their dominance, The British proceeded to loot and asset-strip. Bengal descended further into anarchy and impoverishment. British merchants spread out across the province, bullying, extorting, and stealing from locals.. Even money – gold coin – started to be in short supply as so much of it was shipped back to Europe.
One commentator at the time complained that ‘The morals of this nation, otherwise so worthy of respect, have here become prodigiously depraved, which cannot but cause distress to any decent and thoughtful observer. British soldiers and traders permit themselves all sorts of liberties in the pursuit of private profit or in the hope of impunity. I have seen some so far forget their duty, that they beat to death unfortunate Indians to extract money not owed to them. The country lies groaning under the Anarchy, laws have no power of sanction, morals are corrupt to the ultimate degree, the people groan under a multitude of vexations, all caused by the decay and confusion into which this once-great empire has fallen’
Mir Qasim, complaining to a Company official wrote that the English ‘forcibly take away the goods and commodities of the merchants for a fourth part of their value; and by way of violence and oppression they oblige the farmers to give five rupees for goods that are worth but one.’
Hussain Khan wrote at the time that ‘The English have a custom of coming for a number of years, and then of going away to pay a visit to their native country, without any of them shewing an inclination to fix themselves in this land. And as they join to that custom another one of theirs, which every one holds as a divine obligation: that of scraping together as much money as they can in this country, and carrying these immense sums to the Kingdom of England; so it should not be surprising that these two customs, blended together, should be ever undermining and ruining this country, and should become an eternal bar to it ever flourishing again.1’
It was this plundering, exploiting, and negligence that set the scene for one of history’s most tragic catastrophes.
Famine
In 1768 the weak monsoon left India dry
In 1769 no rain fell at all.
The mud crusted then turned to dust.
The price of rice steadily rose. In 1770 70% of the harvest was lost
In the city of Mushidabad alone 500 were dying on the streets every day. In Calcutta, 76,000 perished in three months.
Around a 1/3 of the Bengal population died in 1770 famine – 1.2 million people.
Bodies floated down rivers. Reports came of people selling their children
One writer said that dogs, jackals, vultures and every bird and beast of prey grey fat and unweildy on the flesh of man.
Traditionally, the rules of India had managed bad harvests with reserve grain systems and public relief measures.
Although some Company officials helped there was no wide spread or official program of support. Most of the company men cared little, and continued to enforce tax collection, hanging those who resisted.
One Company official wrote that he counted forty dead bodies from his bedroom window one morning, besides them hundreds more groaning in agony.
Outside the poor cried for help: ‘‘Baba! Baba! My father! My father! This affliction comes from the hands of your countrymen, and I am come here to die, if it pleases God, in your presence. I cannot move, do what you will with me.’
HE wrote that ‘as the vultures and other birds take out the eyes and intestines, whilst the other animals gnaw at the feet and hands; so that very little of the body remains for the Cutcherry people to carry to the River; notwithstanding, they had a very hard time of it. I have observed two of them with a dhooly carrying twenty heads and the remains of the carcasses that had been left by the birds of prey, to the river at a time’
Back In London, the EIC share price continued to rise and the board celebrated by rewarding themselves the largest dividend they’d ever had.
In that worst famine year, £100 million worth of goods in today’s money was transferred from India to London.
The historian Mike Davis writes ‘the newly constructed railroads, lauded as institutional safeguards against famine, were instead used by merchants to ship grain inventories from outlying drought stricken districts to central depots for hoarding…In Madras city, overwhelmed by 100,000 drought refugees, famished peasants dropped dead in front of the troops guarding pyramids of imported rice.’
In short, millions perished as a result of free-market economics and imperial mismanagement.
Parliament
While this was going on, business continued as usual.
The relationship between parliament and the company, a public-private partnership, was crucial. Seats in parliament -rotten boroughs – were bought my returned businessmen, and parliament continued to protect the company.
In fact, as the historian William Dalyrymple argues, the company probably invented corporate lobbying, bribing officials and buying off figures like the attorney general.
This eventually led to a case against the company.
The government Elimiated customs duties and tarrifs within the burgeoning Empire, meaning the powerful merchants could trade without interference, buying cheaply from India, manufacturing cheaply in Britain with advanced techniques and selling back to other countries.
In the eighteenth century, India had been a net exporter of textiles to Europe, by the nineteenth century this had been reversed, as it was importing 2/3rds of its textiles from Britain.
Local textiles industries had been destroyed.
Marx wrote that ““Those family-communities were based on domestic industry, in that peculiar combination of hand-weaving, hands-spinning and hand-tilling agriculture, which gave them self-supporting power. English interference having placed the spinner in Lancashire and the weaver in Bengal, or sweeping away both Hindoo spinner and weaver, dissolved these small communities, by blowing up their economical basis”
There was no increase in India’s per capita income from the Battle of Plassey in 1757 to 1947.
Countries like the US and France had imposed protective import tariffs during the British Industrial Revolution so that they catch up and copy Britain’s technology.
India was not allowed this benefit.
And While British businessmen built railways and telegraph systems to transport resources out of the country, countries like Japan and Thailand copied the newly emerging European technologies for their own countries benefits.
In the same period, 80,000 Africans were being transported to the Americas, 42,000 of these from British companies.
Conclusion
It wasn’t the British government, or the British people, that conquered India, but an unregulated private corporation, with profit as their sole motive.
Clive was the richest self-made man in Europe. The company continued to make money in illicit ways – including a booming opium trade forced upon China through warfare.
And It would be a mistake to assume these were simply men of their time.
Writer and politician of the time Horace Walpole wrote that the Famine was caused by the monopoly of the East India Company.
A Gentlemans Magazine article wrote that the Company could repeat ‘the same cruelities in this island which have disgraced humanity and deluged with native and innocent blood the plains of India… Down the that rump of unconstituitional power, the East India Company, the imperious company of East India merchants!’
In the summer of 1772, the company was a topic of scandal in the London press. Even plays in London took on the subject of the newly rich returning merchants. One thinly disguised satire of Clive included the lines
Touchit: We cunningly encroach and fortify little by little, till at length, we are growing too strong for the natives, and then we turn them out of their lands, and take possession of their money and jewels. Mayor: And don’t you think, Mr Touchit, that is a little uncivil of us? Touchit: Oh, nothing at all! These people are little better than Tartars or Turks. Mayor: No, no, Mr Touchit; just the reverse: it is they who have caught the Tartars in us.
A scottish historian of the time, Alexander Dow, wrote that the Bengal carcus was almost picked to the bone:
‘In the space of six years, half the great cities of an opulent kingdom were rendered desolate; the most fertile fields in the world laid waste; and five millions of harmless and industrious people were either expelled or destroyed. Want of foresight became more fatal than innate barbarism; and [the company’s servants] found themselves wading through blood and ruin, when their object was only spoil. A barbarous enemy may slay a prostrate foe, but a civilised conqueror can ruin nations without the sword. Monopolies and an exclusive trade joined issue with additional taxations … The unfortunate were deprived of the means, whilst the demands upon them were, with peculiar absurdity, increased … We may date the commencement of the decline from the day on which Bengal fell under the dominion of foreigners.
Eventually, the company was placed under the supervision of parliament. A court battle had ensued and In a speech in his defense, Clive declared that ‘a great prince was dependent on my pleasure; an opulent city lay at my mercy; its richest bankers bid against each other for my smiles; I walked through vaults which were thrown open to me alone, piled on either hand with gold and jewels! Mr Chairman, at this moment I stand astonished by my own moderation.’
He was cleared but one MP argued that the government must ‘make some attempt to rescue so many un happy, industrious natives of the country from the yoke of this government they now live under.
In 1774, Clive committed suicide in London.
Within 50 years, the East India Company had grown an army of 200,000 men (twice the size of the British Army) and ruled almost all of India from a boardroom in the financial district of London.
By the 1750’s the Company accounted for an 1/8 of Britains import trade. An Empire within an Empire, was one of its directors called it, or ‘the grandest society of merchants in the universe.’ It was the most advanced capitalist organisation to have ever existed, nothing as powerful has existed ever since.
IN 1830, parliamentarian James Buckingham declared that ‘the idea of consigning over to a joint stock association the political administration of an Empire people with 100 million souls were so preposterous that if it were now for the first time proposed it would be deemed not merely an absurdity, but an insult to the meanest understanding of the realm.’
William Dalrymple calls it ‘the supreme act of corporate violence in world history’
One Mughal officer asked, ‘What Honour is left to us when we have to take orders from a handful of traders who have not yet learned to wash their bottoms?’
Sources
David Wooton, Power, Pleasure, and Profit: Insatiable Appetites from Machiavelli to Madison
Dipak Basu, Victorian Miroshnik, Imperialism and Capitalism
Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts
P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins, British Imperialism 1688-2015
William Dalrymple, The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company
Bernard Semmel, The Philosophic Radicals and Colonialism