The company that governed - a study of the British East India Company in seventeenth century India

Abstract: The British East India Company was an enterprise that was engaging in trade in India for over two hundred years. During this time period, the British took political power and started to govern in India. In this thesis I have, by the use of textual analysis, studied the East India Company’s political power and how they were governing the cities of Madras and Bombay during the mid-seventeenth century in India. I have analyzed their reasons for governing with help of Marxist-Leninist theories about imperialism. My purpose has been to bring a different point of view to the debate about the East India Company’s ambiguous nature, by incorporating Marxist-Leninist theories in the analysis. With help of the theories, I have come to the conclusion that the aim for the East India Company was to make financial profit. It was necessary for them to transcend from a commercial firm to a governing institution in order to expand their market, take control of workers and to make profit.