Course:History 344 Nasty Families/Estates and gentry income/India

As the Elizabethan era was reaching a close in the beginning of the 17th Century, the British East India Company was granted its royal charter (1600). At this time there was an aura of energy and optimism over the country which drove men to explore and conquer as yet unreached areas of the globe. The lure of wealth from spices and other goods from the East Indies correlated well with British Naval powers. In London, the East India Company came to symbolize British struggle with other powers such as the Portuguese, Dutch and French and as the Company began to consolidate their control over the continent, forcing the other nations out, it became a national victory. For the British in the seventeenth century, there was never a master plan for the conquest of India, there was no decision that the goal of British policy was the control of the entire Indian subcontinent. Instead there was a series of tactical decisions made in response to local and sometimes unexpected crises. When the fighting was over, the company found its self with additional land, responsibilities and revenues as well as the monopoly of power in India. Elaborate indigenous administrative structures were already in place for taxing agriculture in most of the areas that the British took over. The British used these land revenue and taxes in order to further extend their reach into India. The local governor generals and other leading figures in India were usually in India as military conquerors rather than men there to outreach in order to secure trade for industry at home. Their expansionary activities entailed a 'reversion to primitive mercantilism, using force of the threat of force in order to get what they want. In many of the areas that the Britain controlled they maintain supremacy in areas of vital interest, but exercised direct rule (i.e. formal empire) only where necessary, preferring to preserve dominant influence by informal means. The pervasive force behind her expansion was the need to satisfy the need of goods of industry as well as to gain the economic support of the regions taxes. At least in part, the key to the British success in India lies in their unique geographic position in India. The British had three centers of power: Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras. These virtually straddle the three corners of the subcontinent, and they enabled the British to establish a network that was unrivalled in India. This advantage, coupled with the ability of the British to adapt and innovate on the basis of a vastly superior organizational and governmental infrastructure, led them to victory in their struggle against the Indian powers.

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