Srini RamaKrishnan [23/02/12 13:18 +0100]:
On Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 12:47 PM, Suresh Ramasubramanian
<sur...@hserus.net> wrote:
But by that same logic the brits with all their opium, cotton etc from
india would have crashed and burned long back, not after labor era
socialism, the loss of their colonies etc
They've gone into a slow decline, or haven't you noticed? The pound is
Yes. Post labor era socialism, post the loss of their colonies in the 40s
and 50s. And an economy that was drained by world war II.
The east india company did go bust after a while but that was more due
to mismanagement and costly local wars than an influx of wealth
The East India company like the Spanish conquistadors was chopped off
at the knees by the monarch because it got too big for its shoes.
hah no. rather way off I'm afraid.
remember, the british government and the crown were very large shareholders
in the EIC, seats on the board and such.
take a look at the share price of the EIC ..
1753 - £195
1757 - £140 (Third Carnatic War begins, also 7 years war elsewhere)
1761 - £145
1763 - £175 (End of Seven Years War and 3rd carnatic war)
1765 - £150 (Clive resumes Governorship)
1767 - £280 (Clive quits Governorship & beginning of Mysore war)
1769 - £280
1772 - £225 (Hastings as Governor General)
1773 - £140
1774 - £140 (Famine in Bengal)
1777 - £170
1781 - £150
1782 - £127 (Hastings condemned in parliament)
1785 - £130 (Hastings leaves for England)
1789 - £170
1793 - £200
1797 - £165
1801 - £200
1805 - £190 (Napoleonic Wars upto 1813)
1809 - £190
1813 - £165
1817 - £200
1821 - £230
.... so on and forth till 1857 when an enron like crash took place.
Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan in the 1750s and 1760s. Then the bengal famine in
the 1770s. A gradual recovery after that, mainly because of the industrial
revolution and more raw material exported out of India to fuel it .. the
1857 mutiny was what put a stop to the EIC, which was found incompetent to
actually govern the country, having treated it simply as a money spinner
and ignored all the political crises they faced. That caused the british
government to effectively nationalize the EIC and bring India under crown
rule. Not as much "too big for their boots" as "too incompetent and
greedy to be worth all the trouble and expenditure to the crown".
Remember, the company had its own army in India, and they were joined by
king's troops when the 1857 mutiny spiraled out of control.
Even after 1857, they retained the reasonably lucrative tea trade from
India till 1873, and the company was finally wound up in 1874.
Those figures are from Niall Ferguson's excellent book "Empire, How britain
made the modern world", by the way ..
