East India Company

Name: Narrative of the Voyages and Services of the Nemesis from 1840 to 1843
Author: W. D.‏ ‏ Bernard

Definition and stakes

The East India Company (1600–1874) was a British joint-stock corporation that controlled trade in the Indian Ocean, extending its influence to India, East Asia, and beyond. Beginning as a commercial enterprise, it transformed into a semi-sovereign body with its own armed forces, naval capabilities, and bureaucratic systems, shaping British colonial administration. Writers such as E.

Keble Chatterton underscored its naval expertise and military organization, while Earl of John Dalrymple Stair focused on its financial contributions to Britain. William Augustus Miles criticized its restrictive commercial policies, and George Lillie Craik observed its exceptional duration compared to other chartered companies. The EIC’s impact blends economic drive, imperial governance, and military strength, leaving a lasting imprint on the history of empire.

Quotes about “East India Company”

E. Keble Chatterton, The Old East Indiamen

“ The East India Company rose from being a private venture of a few enterprising merchants to become a gigantic corporation of immense political power, with its own governors, its own cavalry, artillery and infantry, its own navy, and yet with its trade-monopoly and its unsurpassed “regular service” of merchantmen. The latter were the largest, the best built, and the most powerfully armed vessels in the world, with the exception only of some warships. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

E. Keble Chatterton, The Old East Indiamen

“ Ships and men were required as they had never been wanted before, and it was just in this respect that the existence of the East India Company was of the greatest direct benefit to the country and the navy. It must always be to its honour that the Company which had for so long enjoyed the privilege of the Indian monopoly was on this especial occasion to have the privilege of assisting the nation in a most valuable manner. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Earl of John Dalrymple Stair, The Proper Limits of the Government's Interference with the Affairs of the East-India Company

“ The merits of the East-India Company towards the nation are great and notorious. Whilst every other country has been taxing their subjects, in order to support their East-India trade, the English East-India Company has been the support, to a good extent directly, and in a very great and eminent degree indirectly, of the British finances ”

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Source: Gutenberg

E. Keble Chatterton, The Old East Indiamen

“ It is difficult to realise all that the East India Company stood for. It comprised under its head a large shipping line with many of the essential attributes of a ruling nation, and its merchant ships not only opened up to our traders India, but Japan and China as well. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Alexander Mackenzie, Voyages from Montreal Through the Continent of North America to the Frozen and Pacific Oceans in 1789 and 1793…

“ It would be very unbecoming in me to suppose for a moment, that the East-India Company would hesitate to allow those privileges to their fellow-subjects which are permitted to foreigners in a trade, that is so much out of the line of their own commerce, and therefore cannot be injurious to it. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

E. Keble Chatterton, The Old East Indiamen

“ The East India Company thus not only built its own ships at its own dockyard, victualled them from its own stores, but conducted its own hydrography department. It was therefore positively unique in its monopolies and self-dependence. England has never had any corporation like it: and it is pretty certain it never will. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Edmond Plauchut, China and the Chinese

“ For over two centuries the East India Company enjoyed a monopoly of trade, and in their eagerness for gain its members swallowed many an affront to their own and their country's dignity, for their relations to the Chinese Government resembled those of humble suppliants to the "Son of Heaven." ”

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Source: Gutenberg

John Lothrop Motley, PG Edition of Netherlands series…

“ With a simplicity, amazing only to those who are inclined to be vain of a superior wisdom—not their own but that of their wisest contemporaries—one of the chief reasons for establishing the East India Company was stated to be the necessity of providing against low prices of Oriental productions in Europe. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Edmund Burke, The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke…

“ The East India Company is not, like the Bank of England, a mere moneyed society for the sole purpose of the preservation or improvement of their capital; and therefore every attempt to regulate it upon the same principles must inevitably fail. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

W. D.‏ ‏ Bernard, Narrative of the Voyages and Services of the Nemesis from 1840 to 1843

“ The East India Company's factory was built in 1700, not far from the present landing-place in the suburbs of Tinghai, but the exactions of the Chinese officers, the expense of the establishment, and the little prospect of carrying on a successful trade, compelled them to abandon it three or four years afterwards. ”

East India Company

Definition and stakes

Quotes about “East India Company”

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