![]() ![]() Furious Emperor Aurangzeb ordered attacks on EIC factories and threatened to put an end to all English trading in India. ![]() Tensions reached a head when English pirate Henry Every attacked and looted the Grand Mughal Fleet on a return pilgrimage from Mecca. Expansionist ambitions quickly brought the EIC into conflict with the previously friendly Mughal Empire. ![]() However, as often is the case with unchecked power, the EIC would transform the nature of this defensive decree into an offensive one. The initial motive for this was so that the EIC could expand commercial production through building new factories, and protect those new investments from colonial rivals that might threaten the security of their trade. In the late 17th century the East India Company was invested by decree of King Charles with the ability to pursue autonomous territorial acquisitions and to command fortresses and troops. However, over the course of the 17th century, the EIC scored a series of victories over European rivals with trading interests in the region and had lucrative roots in the cotton, silk, indigo dye, saltpetre and tea industries. Initially, the EIC had to play second fiddle to the more established European powers. The company's first foray into India was in 1612, when British merchants met with Mughal Emperor Jahangir and established a treaty that gave them limited use of land and resources in exchange for European goods. The East India Company was originally formed by a group of colonial merchants interested in breaking the monopoly of trade that Spain and Portugal held in the East Indies. Our updated collection, The East India Company: Laying Foundations for the British Colonial Domination of India, 1752-1774, covers the most pivotal period of British forays into the Indian subcontinent, during which the East India Company (EIC), acting as sovereign representative of the British Crown, gradually defeated the native Mughal and Maratha Empires and laid claim to the vast resources and labour power of the Indian subcontinent. This was the culmination of many decades of British encroachment on the territories of the native Mughal and Maratha Empires in the region, and marked new era of brutal colonialism and incompetent administration which had first manifested almost a century before. In 1858, large swathes of the Indian subcontinent were officially subjugated under the British Crown and became known as the British Raj (translating literally in Hindi to ‘British Rule’). Shaping the Jewel in the Crown: How the British East India Company lay the Foundations for Colonial Subjugation of India. ![]()
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