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The British East India Company was a joint-stock company that held a company monopoly over trade between the British Isles and India (as well as much of the rest of Asia) from the early 1600s to the late 1800s. Smith relentlessly criticizes the British East India Company for its greed, brutality towards native peoples, and poor governance. When Smith published The Wealth of Nations, the East India Company had already conquered much of South Asia and begun ruling it as a repressive dictatorship; it would only grow more cruel and powerful over the following decades, until the first Indian War of Independence led the crown to take it over directly.
British East India Company Quotes in The Wealth of Nations
The The Wealth of Nations quotes below are all either spoken by British East India Company or refer to British East India Company . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Book 5, Chapter 1 Quotes
Frequently a man of great, sometimes even a man of small fortune, is willing to purchase a thousand pounds share in India stock, merely for the influence which he expects to acquire by a vote in the court of proprietors. It gives him a share, though not in the plunder, yet in the appointment of the plunderers of India. [...] About the prosperity of the great empire, in the government of which that vote gives him a share, he seldom cares at all. No other sovereigns ever were, or, from the nature of things, ever could be, so perfectly indifferent about the happiness or misery of their subjects, the improvement or waste of their dominions, the glory or disgrace of their administration, as, from irresistible moral causes, the greater part of the proprietors of such a mercantile company are, and necessarily must be.
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Some merchants defend the government’s establishment of monopolies for joint-stock and regulated companies as a necessary step to supporting foreign commerce, but Smith sharply disagrees. He sees these companies as corrupt, wasteful, and unnecessary: in a country wealthy enough to conduct international trade, he argues, merchants will come together to form a company on their own. Above all, there is no need for the government to step in and issue a monopoly to any such company. If a company can’t survive on its own, he insists, then it simply shouldn’t. Smith takes the British East India Company as a key Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consec
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British East India Company Character Timeline in The Wealth of Nations
The timeline below shows where the character British East India Company appears in The Wealth of Nations. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Book 1, Chapter 8
...and desperation can take over the population. Bengal is like this because of how the British East India Company “oppresses and domineers” it.
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Book 4, Chapter 7
Indeed, the Dutch East India Company has destroyed most of the spice trees and slaughtered the local population to maintain its...
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...other monopolies and restrict production, against the interests of the country (and the company). The British East India Company is particularly corrupt, although the organization’s structure is more at fault than its officers’ character....
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Book 5, Chapter 1
The first East India Company failed due to competition, but Parliament allowed it to continue trading with some of its...
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Book 5, Chapter 2
...merchants because they have poor business sense. Indeed, merchants also make poor sovereigns, as the East India Company ’s financial troubles show.
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Book 5, Chapter 3
Lastly, not only do the East India Company ’s territories rightly belong to the crown, but they are also much wealthier, more populous,...
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