reading 8 - week 4 Flashcards
East India Company is
British
'’a state in the disguise of a merchant’’
- Edmund Burke
British East India Company 18th/19th century transformed into a Company-State and merchant-empire
!became a territorial power in South Asia mid-18th century, was already a form of gov. earlier
history/expansion of power East India Company
- 1600s: government over its own employees and corporators: claimed jurisdiction over English trade
- second half C17: colonial proprietor (governing growing network of plantations)
*did gov.-like things: laws, taxes, protection, punishment, stateliness, diplomacy, regulate eco, relig. and civic life + wage war
!not a unique function and form: had similar contemporaries (incl. most obvious progeny: British Empire in India)
envisioning a more composite and decentered constittuion for early modern empire
- undermines traditionally stark divisions ‘‘trading’’ and ‘‘imperial’’ eras in Asia
- rethinks dynamics of transition ‘‘first’’ and ‘‘second’’ British empires: points to a more continuous, gradual, contingent story with evo. of empire part of transformation to modern forms of state, sov.
the concept corporation
- corpus politicum et corporatum
- communitas perpetua
common purpose = to bind a multitude of people together into a legal singularity: a body that can maintain rights, policy standards and behavior, adminster over and on behalf of the collectivity
- goes back to Roman law
- England had many corporations, e.g. education, public works, universities, charities, overseas English commerce, colonization
- legally: early modern national state + monarch were also forms of corporation
- corporations had complex legal personalities with certain rights/resistances and also obligations/prohibitions
- corporations were immortal (existed longer than individual members) + got stronger with age
!corporations were also fellowships/associations: a form of society / social character -> corporations unique identities, franchise, ceremony, priveleges, rituals
*often they also resisted the crown (Hobbes saw them as threat to sovereignty)
*East India Company was a corporation
the idea of ‘‘corporation and association’’ vs modern assumptions nation-state as ultimate political and social community
Westphalian model of sovereignty + Weber’s notion of the state are more of a myth than reality / more prescription than description
!no exclusivity of a transcendent national state: fellowships, corporations, associations antagonistic to the ‘‘absolutist state’’ (von Gierke)
early modern world defined not by singular, sovereign monocracies but:
intersecting empires, pluralistic legal cultures, and a variety of shapes/forms of hybrid and competing jurisdictions
e.g. early modern England: no clear hierarchy, but matrix of commonwealths, churches, associations, communities, officeholders, agencies, families with multiple constitutional foundations
'’a Europe of composite monarchies’’
- J.H. Elliott
system of conglomerate, diverse, and overlapping forms of political power
- characterized imperial polities across Eurasia
!also in European overseas empires: not governed by states, cooperation/competition with companies, corporations, conquistadores, religious networks, etc. (+ often had at least some autonomy)
East India Company as a form of political community and polity
- could construct laws, constitutions, orders and ordinances to govern
- '’perpetual succession’’: corporate immortality
- 1657: fixed, permanent capital stock by 50 years (-> stocks and shareholders)
- led by a Court of Committees (24 large stockholders) with governor (2-year terms)
- decisions and policies based on unity and unanimity (nemine contradicente): everyone had to sign
- hierarchical system of councils bound together by constant circulation of people, things and documents
- gov. abroad: ships/factories/settlements headed by captain/agent/president/governor that sat at the head of a council (also based on unanimity)
- claims to jurisdiction over the entire Eastern Hemisphere (was beyond their charters and powers from home, often framed with grants treaties, alliances, agreements with Asian polities
= flexible and robust form of political power: ability to borrow and balance sources of authority and legitimacy
fucntioned as the commercial, political and diplomatic intermediary between England and Asia
company leaders could forge an autonomous political system dependent on multiple pol. rel. and thus entirely subject to none -> form of structural autonomy and corporate sovereignty
(farman)
East India Company saw it as somewhat analogous to English charters and patents
- Mughal imperial
- provided certain protections and exceions from legal and financial obligations and impositions (e.g. customs duties, restrictions on mov. goods and people)
- could establish political legitimacy + leverge against rivals
= shows some commonality and translatability across early modern Eurasian political cultures
the spice trade: who had the monopoly
Portugal: discovered a way around Africa + took over spice routes and spice centers
challenge : people in the east wanted silver and gold for their spices
War in Holland: affected attitude and circumstances sea trade:
- early 17th, late 16th NL mostly shippers
- then trade became a menas of waging war
war gave NL opportunity to be in diff eco. situation: more trade and capital (Spain got (what is now) Belgium -> merchants mostly fled to Amsterdam)
why did they form the VOC
- United East India Company
Holland had diff east indian companies, NL worried about position in trade: merchants were competing with eachoter
diff companies were afraid they would become tools of the state and of war and would lose their profit -> got special arrangement: merchants’ share of the company became sellable (start stock markets) in Amsterdam so that they could always get their money out
middle class taking over in Holland
small country with rich trade -> merchants bring in so much money -> have relatively more political influence than in other European countries (where there was more of a top-down approach)
Dutch organization/succes vs English
- NL = very precise (e.g. science for maps and navigation etc.) + start with more larger scale shipping
- English = more ad hoc
in the beginning the Dutch had the advantage
