India Colonial Pasts and Presents

The English business endeavor to India was assigned to the East India Company, which received its monopoly rights of trade in 1600. The company included a group of London merchants fascinated by Eastern prospects, not as good as the national character of the Dutch company. Their original fund of fifty thousand was less than one-tenth of the Dutch company's funds. Its purpose, like that of the Dutch, was to trade in spices and it primarily organized on a single journey basis. These separate voyages, funded by groups of merchants within the company, were replaced in 1612 by terminable shared stocks, which covered operations over a term of years. Not until 1657 was a permanent joint stock established.

The Indians would take little other than silver in exchange for their goods, and the export of gold was a crime to England's controlling mercantilist financial system. To solve the silver problem, the English developed a system of country trade, the profits helped to pay for the yearly investment of goods for England. Madras and Gujarat supplied cotton goods, and Gujarat supplied