Just over 400 years ago, a group of London merchants arrived here on the Indian coast hoping to do some peaceful trading. Those early pioneers dreamt of making huge profits.
Over 200 years the Company they formed grew into a commercial titan. Its wealth rivalled that of the British State. It had its own army. And eventually ruled over 400 million people.
Its trade was vital to Britain’s commercial success and it revolutionised the British lifestyle.
Dr. Andrea Major:
The East India Company changed the way we dress… Um it changed the way we eat - it changed the way we socialise.
Dan:
And, by accident, created one of the most powerful empires in history.
But the company’s rise was followed by a dramatic descent into profiteering and corruption. And eventually a chilling story of unchecked greed with devastating consequences.
By the early 19th century Britain through the East India Company was the dominant authority in India - but the next few yearswould see a significant change in the Company’s role - the end of their trading monopoly saw them become colonial administrators rather than merchants.
This new role as ruler of India would herald a new attitude towards their subjects.
Over time, the British would grow more distant and aloof.
Neglecting its relationship with the people of India – carefully cultivated over the previous centuries – would prove a terrible mistake and threaten the Company’s very existence.
Andrea:
They increasingly see a need to separate themselves from the people that they’re ruling and to create a sense of British prestige around themselves as the ruling race and, and the people who are in charge.
Dan:
Where earlier Company men had embraced local and religious customs, now people were growing alarmed by them. Especially Britain’s growing number of Christian missionaries, who had been arriving in India in small numbers, against the Company’s wishes.
The Company believed that the people of India should be left to practice their own religions otherwise they could grow hostile and that would jeopardise Britain’s position on the subcontinent.
But it wasn’t up to the Company any more with ultimate control over its activities in India, the British Government found itself lobbied by some powerful Christian representatives.
In 1813 the British government gave way and forced the Company to give Missionaries full access to India. Sending a dangerous message to its people that the British planned to convert them to Christianity.
Missionaries were just one of the Parliamentary impositions the Company was forced to accept in order to stay in India.
Just twenty years since Parliament extended its prized Royal Charter, it was up for renewal again.
Every time the East India Company’s Royal Charter had come up for renewal there were calls to end its commercial monopoly on trade with India. But it had survived intact for more than 200 years. But this was now the era of free trade and Parliament decided to end that privileged position. That meant that the East India Company’s servants were no longer here to trade, to make money through buying and selling, but as colonial administrators, running its vast territories on behalf of the British Crown.
The 1813 Charter Act marked a complete shift in the Company’s role.
After some 200 years in India, they were no longer here as merchants but as rulers. And this new position would have a tangible effect on the behaviour of the British in India.
Margaret:
Britain was going through a massive industrial revolution; it was becoming one of the richest and the, perhaps the richest country in the world, and the British in India, I think, reflected that change. They no longer saw themselves as people who’d chosen to live in India and had to muddle along and just get on with the locals. They now saw themselves as part of a superior, advanced, progressive civilisation, and they saw themselves increasingly as detached from India.
Dan:
The respect for Indian culture that had characterized previous generations had completely vanished. It was no longer acceptable for an East India Company servant to speak like or dress like an Indian. They had to now wear European dress and the army soon followed suit.
European customs and manners were emphasized. A huge gulf was opening up between the British governing elite and the Indian subjects.
As the British entered the new self-assured Victorian age their attitude towards the Indians hardened. They were convinced of their own cultural superiority and they believed that India needed all the help it could get. India was a barbaric place and its civilization was stagnant.
From now on, Company servants and officers who came to India were influenced by this conviction of moral and racial superiority. British women.
To our ears, their views seem shockingly racist.
The refusal to learn local languages. Dismissing Indians as savage barbarians incapable of elevated thought. These were ignorant views, and ones which ironically confined the British into narrow life that many of them found so boring. But perhaps even more than being stupid and racist, these views were dangerous, because if that chasm opens up between the rulers and the ruled, then there’s fertile ground for conflict.
Few of these Brits had the urge or the need to look outside the confines of this artificial, little bubble. Often the only natives they did meet were their own servants. They tried to recreate their old British lives, eating British food three times a day, planting British seeds in their gardens and wearing ridiculous British clothing as they went out in the hot Indian sun.
It was an obstinate, desperate attempt to keep a little piece of Britishness alive, here in the heart of India.
As administrator of India, the East India Company was allocated a pot of money by the British government for the “intellectual improvement of the people" - but no-one could best decide how to use it.
No-one, that is, until the arrival of one man – Thomas Babington Macaulay – law maker on the newly created Supreme Council of India. And his legacy has left a profound mark on sub-continent.
These poor young men have got exam week on at that moment. Its bringing back all sorts of horrible memories of my own time at school.
Macaulay – like many other prominent Victorians – assumed that British culture was basically the highest form of human civilisation.
And he was desperate to try and bestow some of that on the Indian subjects. He envisaged a education system that would create, as he said “… Indians in blood and colour but English in taste, opinions, morals and intellect.” And the first thing to do was teach them all English.
Macaulay’s Act - the Minute on Education - was passed in February 1835. And almost immediately the children of India’s elite beganlearning English as their main language.
But changing attitudes of the British towards the Indians affected military life as well as the civilian world.
The Indian army had grown to become a bit of a source of worry for many in the East India Company, what had begun as a few security teams guarding the Company’s forts around India, had grown into one of the largest standing armies in the world. More than 250,000 troops, larger than most European armies at the time. And that was 96% composed of native Indian troops, known as Sepoys.
Keeping these Sepoy troops loyal was critical to the Company’s survival. So what would happen if this huge native army turned on them?
Saul:
The problem with the Indian army at the time is that it’s set up that if you have any ambition, any, any get up and go, any drive, you will leave your regiment early on for probably civil employ or staff employ, and the reason you did that is because they were better paid and so the residue left in the regiments, the people who had close daily contact with the Indian soldiers were the refuse. Were the worst of the lot and they didn’t tend, these men were disgruntled, they were bored and they didn’t tend to treat their, their Indian soldiers very well.
Dan:
Just as throughout the rest of British India - in the Company’s three armies, a racial gulf had opened up between the officers and their Indian troops.
Now any team, but particularly an army, needs that trust and respect between those who are giving the orders and those who are carrying them out. If you were an East India Company sepoy, why would you follow an officer into battle who’s openly disdainful of you? In fact, why would you do anything he said at all?
The Sepoys no longer trusted their East India Company’ officers. They were appalled at their degrading treatment and they were very suspicious about the future intentions of the Company. What was needed to turn this very tense situation into a full blown crisis was a spark.
Appropriately enough that spark was provided by the sepoys’ rifles.
In the mid 19th century a sepoy would have lots of cartridges in his cartridge pouch.
He had to bite off the end, pour it down the barrel of the rifle of the barrel, then put the cartridge itself and the bullet into the barrel, ram it down with a ramrod and then it would fire at the enemy.
The big problem came when a rumour spread like wildfire throughout the sepoy forces, that the British were greasing these cartridges with pig or beef fat.
For them it was completely intolerable to insert anything that had been near a pig or a cow into their mouth. At a stroke the culturally ignorant, distant British decision-makers, had managed to alienate not just the Hindus, but also the Muslims of their vast Indian army.
In fact, realizing their error, the East India Company never issued these cartridges to the Sepoys.
But it was too late.
The scene was set for the East India Company’s gravest challenge yet. An episode that’s become known to the British as the Indian Mutiny but to Indians it was the First War of Independence.
After several isolated incidents the uprising began for real when the troops at Meerut rose up and then headed for Delhi.
On 11th of May 1857 the city fell.
Saul:
The rebellion is really a mixture of of dissatisfied groups in India. The biggest dissatisfied group are, of course the soldiers, and because they’re professionals and they’re armed, they are the most dangerous. You will see in any revolution you’ve got a problem if your army turns on you. But also they were joined by a lot of disgruntled civilians. People who, for various reasons, weren’t happy with East India Company rule, and of course that included a lot of people whose principalities had been taken away from them, a lot of people who felt that they had something to gain by seeing the back of the British.
Dan:
The East India Company was about to pay a heavy price for allowing its relationship with India to break down.
Right across northern India, native troops rebelled against their British officers, often killing them and their families.
There were serious disturbances at the strategically placed towns of Benares, Allahabad and Lucknow. These were situated between Delhi and the administrative capital, Calcutta.
If they fell it would seriously imperil the entire British position in northern India. Even the supposedly reliable garrison of Cawnpore, was in revolt.
The East India Company was unable to restore order or prevent acts of savage retribution. The situation spiralled out of control.
The Company had fatally bungled its response to the uprising. Having been forced, bit-by-bit, to give up its privileges throughout the previous century, it was finally on its knees.
Saul:
The mutiny is the beginning of the end for the East India Company because it shows quite clearly to the British Government that the East India Company is no longer capable of governing India. It’s quite clearly made mistakes, probably chiefly in the way it runs its army, but also in its civil administration. And the amount of lives that have been lost, the amount of treasure that’s been expended, can only mean one thing and that is that the India has to be formalised, has to become a part of the British Empire.
Dan:
The government AND the British people had had enough of the rapacious, profiteering East India Company. On the first of November 1858, British India was finally and inevitably handed over to government of Queen Victoria.
Video summary
Dan Snow describes how the position of the East India Company came under threat from forces at home and in India, resulting in India eventually being given to Queen Victoria.
In England, people began to call for India to be 'civilised'.
William Wilberforce was best known for his successful campaign to abolish the slave trade and his desire to 'save the souls of India'.
He pressured the government to force the East India Company to allow missionaries to enter India, which they did in 1813.
This sent a message to the Indian people that the British government had sanctioned an assault on their culture and religions.
The same act also removed the Company’s trade monopoly (in an era of Free Trade), so the Company’s main duty was to administer its territories on behalf of the British crown.
Tolerance and willingness to learn about Indian culture disappeared and the gap between British and Indians grew.
In the new era of Victorianism, the British viewed India as barbaric.
Due to Babington Macaulay’s Education Act in 1835 English became taught in schools instead of native languages.
This led to fear and suspicion amongst Indians.
Furthermore, the Company began to lose control of the Sepoy army as relationships between Britons and Indians disintegrated.
Finally, this led to mutiny and a War of Independence, resulting in the dissolution of the Company.
Teacher Notes
Pupils could use this short film to tackle an enquiry into why the East India Company was disbanded in 1858.
They could be asked to look at its relations with the British government, its changing role in India, its attitudes to Indian culture, and the significance of the Indian Mutiny.
This short film will be relevant for teaching KS3 history in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and Third / Fourth level in Scotland.
History KS3: Customs and Culture. video
A short film which describes how the British embraced Indian culture both through changes in fashions and culture.
History KS3: From Greed to Famine. video
The riches accrued from the Company’s success gave men such as Clive enormous influence in Parliament and society. However, events in India meant that it wouldn’t last.
History KS3: From Merchants to Rulers. video
After the crash, the British government took over the Company, expanded its territories and built an empire.
History KS3: The Rise of a Trading Colossus. video
A short film which describes the development of the East India Company, which grew from a trading enterprise to possess the powers of a small state.
History KS3: The Seven Years War. video
A short film explaining how the East India Company overcame opposition from the French to gain control of India.
