Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface
- Notes on the text
- List of abbreviations and short titles
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Relationships: city, state, and empire
- 3 Relationships: government and the Company
- 4 People: investors in empire
- 5 People: Company men
- 6 Methods: an empire in writing
- 7 Methods: the government of empire
- 8 Methods: the management of trade
- 9 Influences: the Company and the British economy
- Afterword
- Index
2 - Relationships: city, state, and empire
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface
- Notes on the text
- List of abbreviations and short titles
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Relationships: city, state, and empire
- 3 Relationships: government and the Company
- 4 People: investors in empire
- 5 People: Company men
- 6 Methods: an empire in writing
- 7 Methods: the government of empire
- 8 Methods: the management of trade
- 9 Influences: the Company and the British economy
- Afterword
- Index
Summary
By the beginning of the nineteenth century the East India Company occupied a position of central importance in Britain's trade and empire, and it was considered to have contributed much to the burgeoning strength of the nation at home as well as overseas. Contemporaries sometimes suggested that the Company's resources were fuelling the growth of Britain's armed forces, public finances, and money markets, as well as the wider domestic economy, and consequently this chapter seeks to establish the extent to which the Company's domestic influences were felt within an imperial state that was gradually extending its reach further into the wider world. In particular, because the Company and its overseas possessions were increasingly incorporated into the financial and strategic calculations of ministers and politicians, consideration is given to the contributions made by the Company to the state, especially when its resources were deployed during times of war. At the same time, it is acknowledged that the Company itself could not function without active assistance from the City of London and successive governments, and therefore the chapter also identifies the ways in which the City oiled the Company's financial wheels and ministers offered different forms of support. Taken as a whole, the chapter explores the ways in which the Company forged some of the domestic connections that existed between different elements of Britain's financial, imperial, and military power.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Business of EmpireThe East India Company and Imperial Britain, 1756–1833, pp. 29 - 52Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005