International Companies in Places of Instability: The Issue of Mutual Capture

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the British more or less accidentally acquired one of the largest empires in history, the jewel of which, India, was run by a private company until 1857. The East India Company (or ‘John Company’ as it was popularly known) had begun in 1600 as a group of London merchants trading initially with Java and other parts of modern Indonesia, and when this failed because of Dutch opposition, with India. The aim was profit, not conquest, and to this extent they were no different from the modern multinationals. The causes of the expansion of the Empire are complex, but one element is significant for us. The collapse of the official government (the Moghul Empire) and the fracturing of its area of suzerainty led to immense violence and instability across the subcontinent. The area controlled by the British tended to be governed efficiently, but on its borders there was either anarchy or threat. The solution was to control those areas and create security along the borders. But as soon as the new area was settled (often ruthlessly) the same pattern appeared, and so it was necessary to go yet further afield. Empire was acquired in the service of commerce, and then commerce to finance Empire, and there was no logical end so long as the British offered more security than the surrounding area.