Question

Read the excerpt given below and answer the question that follows:

“From the mid-18th century, it was a European Corporation, the East India Company - run from the City of London by merchants and accountants, with their ledgers and careful accounting - that ran amok and seized and subjugated a fragmented and divided India in what was probably the supreme act of corporate violence in history.” -William Dalrymple

1. What term is used to describe the East India Company’s act of running India’s trade and finance from the city of London? How did it work?
2. What was its impact on the artisans and craftsmen?
3. The author has described the East India Company’s act as ‘Corporate violence’. What term was used by Dadabhai Naoroji for such an act? Describe how it worked?

Answer 1

1. • Term: “Corporate colonialism” (the East India Company running India’s trade and finance as a commercial corporation based in London).
   • The Company operated like a profit‑seeking firm, taking political and military control of territory to secure monopolies, extracting raw materials and revenue, directing Indian trade to feed British industry, and ensuring Indian markets were opened to cheap, machine‑made British manufactures while Indian goods faced high duties abroad. This combination of monopoly trade, revenue extraction, tariff manipulation and military/political power channelled India’s wealth and resources to Britain.
2. Impact on artisans and craftsmen: Their traditional cottage and handicraft industries collapsed: hand‑spinning and hand‑weaving lost markets as cheap British factory textiles flooded India; Indian exports of finished textiles declined sharply; and the disappearance of princely patrons and rising rural distress further destroyed demand. The result was widespread loss of livelihood, unemployment and the decay of artisanal skills.
3. • Term: “Drain of Wealth.”
   • Naoroji argued that British rule caused a steady transfer of India’s surplus to Britain, through payments like salaries, pensions and profits remitted to Britain, military and administrative expenditures charged to India (the “home charges”), and trade arrangements that shipped raw materials out and repatriated profits, leaving India with little proportional return and causing impoverishment. In short, India’s resources and earnings were regularly siphoned off to Britain.