A government which, through might of arms, was the most powerful

in Asia, a

government the revenue of which was greater than that of Britain, a government which ruled over more people than the present government of the United Stated, a government owned by businessmen, the shares in which were daily bought and sold. As Macaulay said it is strange, very strange. The day of the East India Company seem remote, prodigiously remote, and so they arein every way except in the real passage of time. Even in my own lifetime there were former servants of the Company still alive. Although, it receives little attention now, this remarkable institution was a matter for constant comment and controversy not so long ago. It is nearly seventy years since the last history of it was published in its own country. What was so special about this Company? Well, at the end of its powers it was responsible, directly or indirectly, for nearly one-fifth of the worlds population. Dr C. Northcote Parkinson made it seem straightforward enough, in his admirable definition: How was the East India Company controlled? By the Government. What was its object? To collect taxes. How was this object attained? By means of alarge standing army. What were its employees? Soldiers, mostly, the rest, civil servants. Where did it trade to? China. What did it export from England? Courage. And what did it import? Tea ! That is fair enough. But lurking behind the shelves upon shelves of correspondence in the India Office Library, London, with their intricate records of the public company which ruled over territories from St Helena to Singapore and beyond, there is an ambiance less easy to define and peculiar to the Company. Various forces, coming together had brought it into being. By decree from the Church in Rome, the extra-European world had been divided between Spain and Portugal. But Europe was in a ferment of rising capitalism. Companies of merchants had been formed to develop trade. The Dutch were pertcularly active and had rounded the Cape; they had made contact with the archipelago of southeast Asia. The whole area around the Indian Ocean had been considered the preserve of Portugal and Portugal was now a satellite of Spain. In the West, fifteen years before, an Englishman had actually attempted to found a colony in North America, to which the Spanish laid claim but Spain had been defeated at the Armada in 1588. Perhaps most important of all, Philip II, king of both Spain and Portugal, the most powerful ruler in the world, had died

in 1598. With Philips death, the bonds which had been half restraining the urge of Europeans to expand round the world finally broke. The East was important because from there came the supply of pepper and spices; spices such as cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon and also ginger, were of value and great importance as partial preservatives of food and additives to a European population accustomed to fresh meat for only a few months in the year. Meat eaten at that time would have been largely unacceptable to modern palates, but without spices much of it would have been virtually inedible. Spices had a considerable place in life; men were prepared to die in search of them and many did, no gift was more acceptable and to be well supplied was a mark of status; wealth could be measured in spices. They were also the basis of many medicines. But the East was also widely believed to contains fabulous wealth and riches apart from spices and it was this also which tempted the more adventurous and ambitious merchants in Lisbon, Amsterdam, Antwerp and London. The more down to earth merchants were concerned also. London merchants had formed the Levant Company as a source of supply from the East. They had bought supplies of spices, silks and luxuries from the middlemen of the Eastern Mediterranean. They had even tried to open up a land route from the Middle East across Russia. But now the Dutch, allies of the English in the war against Philip, were importing direct from the East, round the Cape. The Levant Company could not compete and was in mortal danger. For this reason, many members of the company began to agitate for a new company which would trade direct with the East, as the Portuguese had long done and the Dutch were now doing; it would have, among the subjects of the Queen, an exlusive right to do so ; it was a time when Elizabeth was granting monopolies almost every time she raised her pen.