2024-08-15 14:58:34
New Delhi: The country is celebrating its 77th anniversary of independence today. After nearly 200 years of slavery, India was freed from the slavery of the British on 15 August 1947. The British came to India as traders and gradually captured the whole country. There was a multinational company behind the British rule in India, which was known in India as the East India Company or Company Bahadur. However, the multinational companies of that era, i.e. MNC, were not like today. European colonialism started with them many centuries ago. At that time, MNC did not mean luxurious offices, employees with high salaries and boardroom battles, but that era was of blazing guns and bloody wars. After all, how did the East India Company capture the whole of India? India was considered one of the richest economies in the world. The British came to India as traders and gradually made themselves powerful by taking advantage of the internal rift among the native kings. They captured many princely states one after the other and ruled us for about 200 years. The East India Company was started in the 1600s with 250 investors. This company, formed with an initial investment of £68,373 in those days, and the British government looted £45 trillion from India. According to British economist Angus Maddison, in the year 1700, India’s share in the world’s income was 27% while Europe’s share was 23%. But in 1950, India’s share was reduced to just 3%.
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How did EIC start?
The EIC began in the 1600s when Queen Elizabeth I granted a charter to ‘The Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies’. It is commonly known as the East India Company. At this time, the Dutch and others dominated world trade. To break this, the British had their eyes on India. It is believed that in the 16th century, India’s share in the global economy was 27%. According to an estimate, in the year 1600, the annual revenue of Emperor Akbar’s treasury was 17.5 million pounds, while two hundred years later in the year 1800, the value of the entire treasury of Great Britain was 16 million pounds.
To gauge the risks in India, the company sent Captain William Hawkins to India. His ship reached Surat in 1608 after travelling 10,000 miles. He obtained permission from the Mughal emperor Jahangir to trade in India. But the East India Company did not limit itself to trade. It developed itself as a political and military power. The Battle of Plassey (1757) in Bengal and the Treaty of Allahabad in 1765 increased its power in India considerably. Experts say that at its peak, the English East India Company was the largest company of its kind ever. It was bigger than many countries. It ruled over a large part of India.
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Private army
From the beginning, the company operated an armed security service to protect its ships and warehouses, which grew into a private army. When the new Nawab of Bengal seized the company’s base at Calcutta in 1756, the private army defeated the nawab’s larger army at the Battle of Plassey the following year, although the company’s Robert Clive used deceit and bribery to achieve this. This was the first case of the company seizing control of a territory in the Indian subcontinent. By the end of the 18th century the company controlled 90% of Bengal’s trade. Within a decade it began sending money from India to England.
Money was pouring in for the company’s shareholders. The British government was also earning a huge amount of money annually from the trading bases in Madras and Bombay. The East India Company rapidly became the world’s largest trading entity. By the early 19th century, the company’s army had 250,000 soldiers, which was larger than the armies of many countries. Its officers were British and many regiments recruited only Europeans. But the majority of this army was Indian. Eventually the relationship between the company and the British Parliament grew and eventually evolved into a public-private partnership.
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How did the company rule end?
The historic Treaty of Allahabad in 1765, following the Battle of Buxar, gave the company greater access to revenue and commercial profits from India. This treaty crippled India’s local industry. The company paid local people 20 to 40% less than the open market prices and introduced a brutal tax system. By 1803, the East India Company had captured almost the entire subcontinent. The company was making rapid progress in India, but at the same time several factors were emerging that ultimately put an end to the company’s rule in the country.
The company’s rule in India began with the Battle of Plassey and ended with India’s first war of independence in 1857. This war led by Mangal Pandey is also known as the Sepoy Mutiny. Due to this, the British rule in the country did not end but the company’s rule ended. After the Government of India Act of 1858, the British government took the rule of India directly in its hands. In this way, the East India Company lost all its administrative powers in India. In the year 1874, the Parliament of Britain formally dissolved the EIC by an Act. With the end of the Company Raj in the country, the British Raj began which lasted for the next 93 years. Finally, on August 15, 1947, India became free from the slavery of the British.