THE CORPORATION THAT CHANGED THE WORLD

HOW THE EAST INDIA COMPANY SHAPED THE MODERN MULTINATONAL

NICK ROBINS

CONTENTS

1. The Hidden Wound 2. This Imperious Company 3. Out of the Shadows 4. The Bengal Revolution 5. The Great East Indian Crash 6. Regulating the Company 7. Justice will be Done 8. A Mercantile Sovereign 9. Unfinished Business

The Hidden Wound

The introduction of the East India Company The honourable East India Company was formed in London in 1600 and it played a historical role as the first Multinational, more importantly creating a huge empire in the world. The author has, by thoroughly exposing the illegalities, tyrannies, immorality, rapacity, frauds and every kind of misfeasance practiced by this Company in its inglorious history, has proved how this Company can be called anything but Honourable. It came to be popularly called John Company. HISTORICAL The John Company was founded in London in 1600 by a 15-year monopoly charter given by the Crown, with 24 Directors. As a joint-stock company, it had initially 125 share-holders and a capital of 72000 pounds. East India company (Britain) forces under Robert Clive defeated the Nawab of Bengal at plassey in 1757. After capturing the trading base in Calcutta they company loaded the treasurys gold and silver on to a fleet of 100 boats. This worked as a major launch pad for East India Company in India. East India company monopolies the market by driving out Asian, Dutch and French merchants. The most important policy of east India Company is that it always took care of its shareholders and kept them happy and satisfied and its sheer size of operation made the company historically significant on a global scale. 1857-1858 generally known for Indian mutiny in Britain and first war of independence in India. In the year of 1858 company was effectively nationalized with all its right and responsibilities taken over by British raj.

NITESH BHADADRA

This imperious company

The East India Company was one of the primary engines of this interchange. Erected by the East India Company as its chapel in 1654, this was where the Company's directors, workers and sailors went to care for their souls. By 1620, the Company was managing a fleet of 10,000 tonnes, operated by over 2,500 sailors and maintained by 500ships' carpenters. After 1637, the Company stopped building and owning its own ships, and leased them from a variety of ships' masters. Once completed, the Company's ships would sail down past Deptford, turn into the Channel and head for Asia. Twenty years later, in 1833, its treasured monopoly over the tea trade with China was also eliminated. The East India Company was one of a number of companies granted a royal charter by the British state to take advantage of the opportunities opened up by the age of European expansion and exploration. A succession of companies - including the Company of Royal Adventurers (1663) and the Royal African Company (1672) - were also founded to exploit the slave trade. What makes the English East India Company special is the way it bridged the medieval concept of the corporation as an essentially public body with the industrial model of enterprise acting primarily in the interests of its shareholders. Where the East India Company differed was in its fusion of the institutional structure of the public corporation with the financial mechanism of joint stock ownership. Unlike earlier regulated companies, the East India Company was established as 'one body corporate and politick'. The limited liability endowed the Company with a special dynamism, substantially reducing the risks for investors compared with the usual partnership model of ownership.

Only in 1657 did the Company become a permanent joint stock corporation, a 'continuous unlimited investment taking place without reference to individual voyages' This provided the basis for shares in the Company to be valued and exchanged at its headquarters in Leaden hall Street For the Company, its share price peaked in 1693, and then fell for the next five years as successive parliamentary inquiries exposed corruption and proposed potentially disastrous remedies. Buoyed by the surge in share prices that followed the end of the Napoleonic War in 1815, the Company's shares reached a third peak of 298 in April 1824 On 30 April 1874, the stock was liquidated and Company's financial heart stopped beating As one commentator put it in 1767, the Company was a 'national object' and 'the members of it bound to attend to the interest of the public as well as their own' .This bargain with the state also had a limited life, and the Company's charter had to be renewed at regular, usually 20-yearintervals. Like today's multinationals, the Company often succeeded in winning sizeable tax breaks, placing it at a distinct advantage compared with local traders .Not surprisingly, in both cases, the Company was a constant target for state action to divert some of its booty into public coffers. A rush of speculative ventures towards the end of the seventeenth century resulted in over 140 joint stock companies by 1695. The explosion in stock market listings during the first six months of 1720 brought another 174 companies to market. The exclusivity made the Company all the more notable in the Georgian economy of the eighteenth century. The Company was a corporate colossus, alone accounting for between 13and 15 per cent of all Britain's imports between 1699 and 1774.Everyseventh pound of goods brought into Britain would be carried on Company ships, unloaded company docks and sold in Company auctions, a phenomenal presence in the Enlightenment economy. But few, if any, can match the individual might of the East India Company.

The English Company shared many structural features with its Dutch rival, the VOC. Like the England that gave it birth, the Company operated as a limited, property-based democracy, one that was run by and for its shareholders. In turn, only shareholders with over 2,000in stock - the mercantile aristocracy - could put themselves forward as candidates to be a director. Until1709, the chairman went by the name of governor and directors were known as committees .Power was controlled within a relatively narrow group of affluent merchants on the Court of Directors. The ambitious Company man had to use his position as a platform for patronage and private trade. Compared with Dutch VOC, the English Company proved more adept at moving into new markets, shifting from pepper to textiles and then to tea.

MANVENDRA SINGH CHAUHAN SORABH VEHGAL

Out of the Shadows

THE ODOUS OF THE SPICY ORIENT The VOC (Verenigde Oostindische companies from 1606 to 1799) was a European organization the arbiter Of European trade relation with Asia. This is the efforts of England in both scale and scope of its operation. In 1595 Dutch was the first north European country sending its fleets to the East. After this England had launched its own East India country two years early the Dutch send its fleet. it is quickly achieve a dominant position by East India company .it become first joint stock to trade share on an open market.it is starting its Asian trade from Cochin on Malabar coast of India to Ayutthaya in Thailand, Banda Near in the Moluccas and on to Canton in China step by step the VOC achieved mastery of Asian trade. It is managing to fleets more than hundreds of ships and returning a fortune of 6 founding cities. Jan Pieter zoon Coen who has established Batavia (modern Jakarta) is the capital of VOC in Asia. But in 18th century it was fail to diversify its product range and weaken from internal administrative fraud so the VOCs Asian operation became untenable following the Anglo-Dutch war in 1780 and 1799.

Commercial supplicant
The EIC was launched by England in seventeen and eighteen centuries. It starts importing luxury goods from India to Europe. At that time in Europe only the market and lot of competitor of paper and other spices so they want to some other market apart from Europe , Vasco da Gama is the Portuguese who arrive in the Indian Ocean the fleet off Calicut in May 1498 and Columbus in America for the search off other market and stated trade .

Losing the spice race

The lot of competitor of EIC in Indian market like Dutch, Portugal. The EIC progressively lost the spice race this is the main cause of Anglo- Dutch battle to secure of control of local spice production. The EIC was the new in market in

comparison of others .they cut the price of paper, silk, by almost two third so its affect EIC total revenue. Winning the calico war William Hawkins in 1608 got permission from Mughal Emperor Jahangir to trade with EIC. They started trade from Surat. For England maintaining Mughal was a constant struggle. IN 1640 a bill was introduced in parliament to abolish all exclusive privileges over foreign trade. A bid for domination Sir Josiah Child was one of the best executive in companys history .he bore in 1630 .he started his career as a food supplier to the navy under Cromwell. In 1670 he became the member of victualing syndicate for the royal navy along with another rising star Thomas Papillion. In 1671 Child became a shareholder in EIC for the first time and within two year he held 2% of the entire stock. Throughout the 1680 he was either governor or deputy governor Childs influence stretched to Londons embryonic financial market, where he had the reputation as the original of stock jobbing know today for his desert island story of Robinson Crusoe. Child put in place a radical plan to implement his vision .the first step he taken that to make a new alliance with the crown to guarantee the companys privileges at home .next he broke with former partner Thomas Papillon. Having secured the position in England, Child then implemented the second part of strategy; commercial conquest abroad .In India over in Gujarat the company raided Mughal shipping, provoking the capture of Surat and Bombay in 1689.

KUMAR GAURAV PUNEET SHIVHARE

BENGAL REVOLUTION
THE BENGAL REVOLUTION This revolution refers to all the means of an East India Company by which they grabbed the power of dominancy over the market of Bengal. This was mostly achieved under Robert Clive who came in India as a British writer/soldier but went back as one of the richest man of England. COMPANY AT ITS INITIAL STAGESAt the initial stages the east India co. followed the pattern of patron- client relationship with rich Indian merchant being the inter face Britain and India. For the 1st half of the 18th century the companies attention was focused on the price that was Bengal the Indian sub-continent was then the workshop of the world accounting for almost a quarter of global manufacturing output in 1750 compared with just 1.9% of the Britain . COMPANY TOWARDS SUPREMACY In 1717 the company managed to win imperial backing for this position through the famous Farman, emperor FARRUKHSIYAR as part of this decree, the companies president at Calcutta was given un precedent authority to issue passes (dastaks) , which would then exempt shipments from paying duties but after the emperor of faruksiyar the company began to infringe the boundaries of expectable business for ex. The companys president began issuing passes to its executives enabling them to engage in private trade at duty free trades. Worse, it also sold the passes to Asian merchants. Thus they started gaining an income stream that legally belonged to the NAWAB This fraud was caught by sirajudualla who claimed the company to defraud the Mughal ex-chequer of rupees 15 million since 1717. Protesting to the companies president nawab alibardi khan claimed them for the abuse of passes and attempted to force the company to make additional duty payments in 1727, 1731, 1732,1736,1740,1744 and 1749.Besides these the company had also developed a better relation with the local brokers like jagat seth and amirchand claiming that they are only worried about their interest and not about the companies.

THE ROAD TO PLASSEY Ali bardi khan grandson sirajudualla came to power in April 1756 .he was very suspicious towards the growing military dimension of the companies settlement in Calcutta, he also objected the defensive ditch that he had been constructed to protect the city against Maratha raids 1740s. The company president Roser drake and executives like Richards belcher recognized that it had given Nawab sufficient cause to be agree with English, thus they refuse to accept the Nawab turn the demolition of fortification the ban on sell of passes to Asian traders an end to harbouring the Nawab enemies. As the consequence the Nawab sent his forces to capture Calcutta but unknown to sirajudualla the company was rapidly constructing a counter offensive deploying the forces sent with Clive for the Hyderabad expedition along with royal navy ships under the command of Admiral warson soon the company won the war and the company retook Calcutta the following month. As per the treaty the Alinagar the company was in powered to mint its own point and extends the use of passes to its private trade CLIVEs forces bombarded and captured the chandarnagor and made their biggest rivalry French to get outside and thus the company share price rose by 12% and this is how the first obstacle to the companys domination of the Bengal economy had now fallen. In 1760 MIR JAFAR was toppled by the company and his son in law MIR KASSIM became the new Nawab, he tried to stop the cancer of private trade. For this he joins forces with Nawab of Awadh and the Mughal emperor shah alam2 to challenge the company to control over the Bengal but they this time also lost the war and after all of Bengal was at the companys mercy and the nawab was no longer any thread as a result the transfer of 24 pargans following paillasse had added 58,000 pounds in taxes to the companys revenues and finally on 12th august 1765 the emperor granted the company the diwani rights for Bengal, Bihar and Orissa in return for an annual tribute of Rs. 2.6 million equivalent to 325,000 pounds when all the costs of Nawab administration had been deducted , clive calculated that Bengal annual tax revenue of Rs. 25 million there would still be a clear gain to the company of rupees 12 million or 16,50,900 pounds which creates of profit margin of some 49%.

SAURAV RAJ RAHUL KUMAR

THE GREAT EAST INDIA CRASH

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REGULATING THE COMPANY

EAST INDIA CRASH The East India Company traded mainly in cotton, silk, indigo dye, saltpeter, tea, and opium. The Company also came to rule large areas of India, exercising military power and assuming administrative functions, to the exclusion, gradually, of its commercial pursuits; it effectively functioned as a megacorporation. Company rule in India, which effectively began in 1757 after the Battle of Plassey, lasted until 1858, when, following the events of the Indian Rebellion of 1857, and under the Government of India Act 1858, the British Crown assumed direct administration of India in the new British Raj. One question arose in front of East India that where to store all that Indian loot. But back in England the company safely supplied the imports from the east in storage across the city of London. When east India company lost its professional battle in 1833 the remain storage were sold out. In 1742, fearing the monetary consequences of a war, the British government between 1756 and 1763, the Seven Years' War diverted the state's attention towards consolidation and defence of its territorial possessions in Europe not agreed to extend the deadline for the license. The war took place on Indian soil, between the Company troops and the French forces. In 1757, the Law Officers of the Crown delivered the opinion distinguishing exclusive trade. The Seven Years' War (17561763) resulted in the defeat of the French forces, limited French imperial ambitions, and stunting the influence. In the 18th century, Britain had a huge trade deficit and so in 1773, the Company created a British monopoly on opium buying in Bengal. As the opium trade was illegal in the industrial revolution in French territories. By the Regulating Act of 1773 (later known as the East India Company Act 1772), the Parliament of Great Britain imposed a series of administrative and economic reforms and by doing so clearly established its sovereignty and ultimate control over the Company. The Act

recognised the Company's political functions and clearly established that the "acquisition of sovereignty by the subjects of the Crown is on behalf of the Crown and not in its own right." When the companys directors learn The Company continued to manage the tea trade on behalf of the British Government ed of this nov At the time of the American Revolution the East India Company flag was identical to the Grand Union Flag. REGULATING ONE OF MISRULE AND TYRANNY FROM 1757 (PLASSEY) TO 1857 (INDIAN MUTINY): Following Plessey, Clive received personal benefits totalling 234,000 pounds. This was plunder. He became one of the richest men in England. Later, Clive told the Parliament, I stand astounded at my own moderation! Macaulay called Clives corruption un-British. King George III protested against Clives fleecing of India. Warren Hastings rule as Governor General (1773-84) that followed Clives era proved an equal disaster for Bengal and for the Company. Hastings tenure witnessed droughts in 1781 and 1782 and a famine in 1784. Yet, he gave no tax relief for farmers resulting in unrest. His annual plunder of manufactures and produce of India was estimated to be 1.2 million pounds. Hastings resorted to corruption and extortion from the rulers of Awadh. Edmund Burke set in process in the Parliament an impeachment trial against Hastings. Strangely Hastings was acquitted of all the charges in April 1795! Lord Cornwallis assumed power in 1786 as the new Governor General. He defeated Tipu Sultan in 1792 and got possession of Malabar from the latter. Lord Wellesley captured Agra, Delhi and Gujarat from the Marathas in 1803. The next four decades saw wars of acquisition in Afghanistan, Punjab, Sind, west of Nepal and Burma. At the time of the India Act of 1784, the Company had control over 7% of the geographical area of the sub-continent which rose to 62% in 1856. The Indian Mutiny of 1857 crowned the downfall of the Company. The germs for the mutiny lay in the increasingly racial and administrative arrogance of the ruling Britishers in India. RAHUL VERMA SHRUTIKA TYAGI PRABIR NAYAK

Justice will be done

The trees of destruction ALIPUR a place in KOLKATTA which is south of FORT WILLIAM, a lush green suburb BELVEDRE HOUSE where WARREN HASTINGS and PHILIP FRANCIS decided to talk on most extraordinary boredom battles in the corporate history. SEND MORE MONEY HASTINGS was declared as the governor general in 1772. His motive was to restore order and return the company with profits. Corruption and spiralling military expenditure had turned the diwani windfall to liability. Revenue earned from land taxation formed the lions share of the diwani. Hastings in order to reduce revenue farmed out the task of revenue collection for a five year- period and replaces it with various auctions. HASTINGS commercialisation increase revenues from 20% with dividends between 1772 and 1776.he establish a monopoly over the trade of opium, salt, and salt petrel as a way to increase revenue. He quoted opium as a precious article of luxury and permitted for the purpose of foreign trade. Earlier the opium was sold for Rs 3 now it is being sold for Rs 1 or 2. However the auction price is Rs 6. He opted the similar situation for salt. He in order to satisfy the companys directors looked outside Bengal using company private army as leverage. He took control of Awadh and allahabad . In 1775 he took control of Varanasi. He hired soldiers for further 50 million to help Awadh annex rohlikhand. FUNDAMENTAL JUSTICE HASTINGS financial management brought an air of desperation n the company. The new regulation act brought an change that each presidency had supreme powers guided by consensual council. The council consist of 5 people by majority vote. There were also councillors appointed by the parliament. Among them where general john clavering, Philip Francis, and George manson arrived in Kolkata in October 1774. Hasting banned on long standing private trade. Francis along with clavering and manson wanted to overthrow hasting believing him to be corrupt. The

three councillors in 1775 backed accusation of corruption being levelled at hasting by rajah nand kumar a local aristocrat in 1770 Bengal and was the enemy of Hastings the fraud case was brought to court many years later. CLIVE had an infamous forgery of treaty with AMIR CHAND back in 1757. CLAVERINGS death left FRANCIS again isolated he wrote to the prime minister that companys rule in Bengal as guilty of injustice in its fundamental principle. FRANCIS position was in minority and joint hands with HASTINGS during Maratha war. in 1781 HASTINGS awarded the opium contract to Stephen sluvian and later sold to john benn for rs 3,50,000. It was again sold to WILLIAM YOUNG for RS 1, 50,000. HASTINGS send two ships BETSY and NOSSUCH to CHINA loaded with 3450 chest of opium, undercover which news was shocking for the directors in London. THE CONTINUAL DRAIN BURKE born in Dublin 1729 was the father of modern conservatism for his passionate defence of the ancient regime during the French revolution. In 1779-80 he launched a campaign for economic reform seeking to the corrupt use of public money by the royal court. BURKES own position was also shifting as were intensive investigation became clear. Various territories in south abused their position to make series of private loans to local rulers notably the rajah of tanjore and Nawab of arcot. It leads to an adieus debts amounting to more than 3 million pound. BURKES indignant not only harmed the Indian traders and producers but revealed to fail in providing long term benefit to the company. In 1780 HASTINGS told the directors the gap is too great and there would have to be total suppression in their investment in the year ahead the companys commercial system lay in ruins.

SANJEEB GHOSH AMIT KUMAR

A MERCANTILE SOVEREIGN
The crossroads at Bank marks the centre-point of Londons financial world. To the north lies the Bank of England, the Old Lady of Thread needle Street, who once vied with the East India Company for the position as the most influential corporation of the eighteenth century? On the eastern edge stands the Royal Exchange in whose cellars the Company often stored pepper. Just across the road is Change Alley where the Banks and the Companys shares were traded with such exquisite zeal. Further east along Cornhill is Leadenhall Street, the site of East India House. And under a modest archway to the south is 3 Lombard Street, the offices of Matheson & Co., a London outpost of Jardine Matheson, the giant Hong Kong based conglomerate. Founded in July 1832, Jardine Matheson headed a new generation of aggressive enterprises that aimed to replace the Company in the Asia trade. William Jardine had been a doctor on the Companys ships, but left to pursue a business career in 1817 at the age of 33. Eight years his junior, James Matheson was also from Scotland and had gone straight into private trading in 1815. The Canton Register to act as a mouth piece for his aggressive free trade views, urging the end to the Companys monopoly For by the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Company was in inexorable decline as a commercial concern. The reforms of the 1770s, 1780s and 1790s had punctured the Companys autonomy as a business and breached its monopoly of the Asia trade. Instead of merchants and traders, a succession of soldiers and aristocrats ruled the Companys possessions, accentuating the burgeoning militarisation of its operations in India. Clive and Hastings had shown how the successful deployment of the Companys private army could reap corporate and private benefits. In south-west India, Wellesley brought the 30-year conflict with Mysore to a crushing close. Known as the terror of Leadenhall Street, the small principality of Mysore under first Hyder Ali and then his son, Tipu the Tiger, had rattled the security of the Madras Presidency for decades GovernorGeneral Wellesley would next turn his attention to the Marathas, winning Agra, Delhi and Gujarat in 1803; conflict with the confederation would only be conclusively resolved in 1818. In the process, however, he consumed 2.5 million in bullion shipped to India by the Company to pay for its trading operations, and plunged into chronic deficit. As a result, the Companys debts soared from just 9 million in 1792 to 30 million in 1809, adding the extra burden of interest repayment to the load that the Indian taxpayer had to support.

The loss of the India trade marked the pinnacle of the Companys commercial operations, with sales at auction yielding over 8 million in 1814, four times the level in 1757. Thereafter, sales steadily declined to less than 4 million in 1833.20 throughout; however, one commodity remained steady: tea. Winning market dominance in Bengal, however, enabled the Company to move upstream and monopolise the source of opium supply. As we have seen, in 1781, Warren Hastings sent two ships, the None such and the Betsy, to smuggle opium into China. Hastingss escapade proved to be a failure. But opium would subsequently become a central part of the Companys commercial strategy. Using its market power to compel Bengali riots to cultivate opium at below the cost of production, the Company harnessed its monopoly position in such a way that it was making 2,000 per cent profit by the time each chest of 63 kg was sold in China. Just five years after the Company closed its factory in Canton, fullscale war broke out between Britain and China. Tensions started almost immediately, with the Royal Navy bombarding the forts that guarded the entrance to Canton in August 1834. The new generation of free traders led by Jar dine Matheson openly defined the Chinese authorities. When the Companys charter came up for renewal once more in June 1853, the coalition government of William Gladstone and John Russell aimed to make a few administrative changes and extend a largely satisfactory arrangement for a further 20 years. Presenting his case to Parliament, the President of the Board of Control, Charles Wood, urged his listeners to understand the difficulties Britain faced. In India, he declared, you have a race of people slow to change, bound up by religious prejudices and antiquated customs. There are in fact, all obstacles to rapid progress.39 To address these obstacles, Wood proposed to cut the number of directors from 24 to 18 and simultaneously raise the directors salary from 300 to 500. The Companys financial footprint extended equally deep into the twentieth century. Writing in 1908, Romesh Chander Dutt was furious at the way in which the people of India had not only supplied the troops for their own conquest, and financed the Companys acquisition of the subcontinent through heavy taxation, but had also paid for the Companys nationalisation. And the Indian people are virtually paying dividends to this day, he wrote, on the stock on an extinct Company in the shape of interest on Debt!60 This ghostly drain eventually ended in the depths of the Second World War when Britains massive expenditure in India finally extinguished the historic debts of both Company and Raj. Long after its demise, the Company continued to shape the economies and societies it had left behind. MUDIT GOYAL

UNFINISHED BUSINESS
There have been a lot of heroes in the history of East India Company like Clive, abbey, Eyre coyote, Curzon whose statues have been still standing to tell us about the achievement of the company. Consistently, throughout its career, the East India Company generated a mix of emotions from admiration through fear to outright hatred. There have been many clashes regarding the company, some in favour and the other against it. Its 275 year long life is that there was not one company but many. First it was a joint stock company to blue chip in 1750s, let alone the administrative agent of empire in the 1850s.its progress was also anything but smooth. it was almost wound up in 1657 and the rest came down in 1709.from this continual metamorphosis ,four sides to east India company emerge most clearly: the company as entrepreneur, its role as a revolutionary force in world history, its tendency to imperial dominion, and its accountability as a corporation for its actions. These four faces are examined in turn. With a single-minded pursuit of personal and corporate gain, the company and its executives eventually achieved market dominance in Asia, ruling over large swathes of India for a profit and breaking open Chinas economy. But the company also shocked its age with the scale of its executive malpractice, stockmarket excess and human rights abuse. For me, the parallels with todays corporate leviathans soon became overpowering, with the East India Company outstripping Wal-Mart in terms of market power, Enron for corruption and Union Carbide for human devastation. Parliamentary enquiries, and on to government intervention and outright rebellion. From the right to the left of the political spectrum, those who lived with the company saw the Corporation as a fundamentally problematic institution. Adam Smith, Edmund Burke and Karl Marx were all united in their critique for quite different reasons of this imperious company. For Smith, the corporation was one of the great enemies of the open market, while for Burke it posed a revolutionary threat to the established order in Britain and India. Every rupee of profit

made by an Englishman, Burke told Parliament, is lost forever to India. And for Marx, writing seventy years later as the company was on its last legs, it was the standard-bearer of Britains monocracy, a more terrible creation than any of the divine monsters startling us in the Temple of Salsette near Mumbai. What made the companys story so inspiring for me is the way that its bid for unbounded economic power was repeatedly met by individuals such as these who struggled to make it accountable? As a result, the company provides eternal lessons on how (and how not) to confront corporate excess through protest, litigation, regulation and, ultimately, corporate re-design. For Britain, the task is to correct the recent upsurge of imperial romanticism which portrays the company almost exclusively in terms of exotic consumption. Twentieth-century decolonisation was never accompanied by a full audit of the real impacts of imperial conquest. The result is that we continue to confer prestige on soldiers, merchants and others whose conduct even contemporaries reviled. A prime example is Robert Clive, whose statue still has pride of place outside the Foreign Office in Whitehall in spite the almost universal criticism of his conduct in Bengal. 2007 will be the 250th anniversary of Clives victory at Plassey, as well as the 60th anniversary of Indian independence. What better moment to place Clives statue in a museum where it belongs and replace it with a monument to someone whose conduct really expresses the best of British relations with the rest of the world.

ANKITA CHUGH KOKIL PANDEY

SUMMARY

THE CORPORATION THAT CHANGED THE WORLD AUTHOR NICK ROBINS BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF AUTHOR: Nick Robins works in the City of London, running socially responsible investment funds. A historian by training, he has nearly 20 years experience in corporate responsibility issues, and writes widely for magazines such as Resurgence, the New Statesman and Ethical Corporation. He has also written some other interesting books like Turbine Steamers of the British Isles, The Last Steamers, The cruise ship and The British Excursion ship. The book The Corporation That Changed the World is a popular history of one of the world's most famous companies. Founded in 1600, the East India Company was the forerunner of the modern multinational. Starting life as a trader in Asian spices, the Company ended its days running Britain's Indian empire. In the process, it shocked its contemporaries with the scale of its violence, corruption and speculation. This is the first-ever book to expose the Company's social record. Robins reveals a hidden story of tragedy and intrigue. War, famine, stock-market bubbles and even duels between rival executives are all to be found in this new account. For Robins, the Company's legacy provides compelling lessons on how to ensure the accountability of today's global business. A Review of the Book: THE CORPORATION THAT CHANGED THE WORLD: How the East India Company Shaped the Modern Multinational Authored by NICK ROBINS Published in 2006. Review by Dr. V.S.Gopalakrishnan., This book makes for easy and compelling reading. The Honourable East India Company was formed in London in 1600 and it played a historical role as the first Multinational, more importantly creating a huge empire in the world. The author has, by thoroughly exposing the illegalities, tyrannies, immorality,

rapacity, frauds and every kind of misfeasance practiced by this Company in its inglorious history, has proved how this Company can be called anything but Honourable. It came to be popularly called John Company. HISTORICAL The John Company was founded in London in 1600 by a 15-year monopoly charter given by the Crown, with 24 Directors. As a joint-stock company, it had initially 125 share-holders and a capital of 72000 pounds. It went through three phases: 1) 1600 to 1757, the year of the Battle of Plessey. 2) 1757 to 1857 when the Indian Mutiny took place. 3) 1858 when the British Government took over the functions and authority of the Company to 1874 when the Company was legally dissolved. To recover a sense of the companys physical presence, author decided to take the investigation out of academia and encounter the companys heartlands in Britain and India. The book has a narrative structure, but moves between past and present. THE HIDDEN WOUND describes the contested legacy, and explores the very different ways which remembered in Europe and Asia. THIS IMPERIOUS COMPANY explains the company metabolism, examining its systems of governance and finance, as well as the inherent tensions that led to its downfall. Its initial trajectory as a seventeenthcentury spice trader is laid out in OUT OF SHADOWS, along with the catastrophic consequences of its first bid for market supremacy in the 1690s. Eventually, the company managed to engineer the takeover of Bengal in the middle of the 18th century: the causes and consequences of this momentous event are discussed in THE BENGAL REVOLUTION. THE GREAT INDIA CRASH describes how incompetence and negligence combined to produce a stock market crash and one of the Indias worst famines. REGULATING THE COMPANY reviews Adam Smiths ferocious critique of the corporation and places it in the context of the wider movement of the public protest, parliamentary activism and outright rebellion that sought to end the companys abuses in the 1770s. Yet, justice was still not done, and JUSTICE WILL BE DONE examines how Edmund Burke tried to place responsibility at the heart of the companys charter. But the imperatives of empire and not ethics won the day. A MERCANTILE SOVEREIGN explores how the British state successfully transformed the Company so that it progressively shed its commercial functions and become the profit making agent of the British crown in India. Finally UNFINISHED BUSINESS looks at how a more

honest encounter with the companys legacy can be achieved, and what lessons can be drawn for todays encounter with the global corporation. A peculiar amnesia continues to hang over the role that corporations such as the East India Company had in the creation of the modern world.

(PUNEET SHIVHARE)