The East India Company in North America (fw)

[Bala Pillai <bala@malaysia.net>]

The East India Company in North America
http://www.theeastindiacompany.com/archives/north_america.html

              Although its Charter only gave the East India Company a
monopoly on trade to the east of the Cape of Good Hope, the sheer scale of
its enterprise meant that the Company had a significant influence on the
newly emerging American colonies. Indeed the American historian Henry
Newton Stevens maintained that the Mayflower which participated in the
third voyage of the Company was the same ship that later was to take the
Pilgrim Fathers on their voyage from Plymouth.

The Virginia Company In the early days of the seventeenth century the small
circle of influential merchants in the City of London who formed the East
India Company in 1600 had their fingers in a number of other trading pies.
The Governor of the East India Company in its first decade, Sir Thomas
Smyth, was also the first Governor of the Virginia Company founded in 1606,
and the two Companies shared their headquarters in Smyth's house, along
with that of the Levant Company. The Virginia Company was the first British
colonial enterprise in North America, following on the naming of that state
after the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth I. The Virginia Company founded the
colonial port of Jamestown on Chesapeake Bay, now a Colonial Heritage site.

Captains from Hudson to Kidd One of the key issues at the time of the
foundation of the Company was the search for the "North West Passage" over
the top of North America to the Indies, considered of vital interest
because of the continued dominance of the sea routes east by the Spanish
and Portugese. The Company financed expeditions in order to find the
supposed passage, and on one such voyage the Captain, Henry Hudson, was
cast ashore to die by his mutinous crew in the bay which now bears his
name. Forced to share the sea-lanes on the more conventional route to China
and the Spice Islands, the Company had little contact with America until it
had successfully established its trade in India; then private traders or
"interlopers" based in New England caused many headaches for the Company by
joining in with the trade and, as the Company saw it, interfering with
their monopoly. The situation was aggravated by the activities of American
pirates on the trading lanes between India and the Middle East. Eventually
the Company gave a contract to the newly-appointed Governor of New York to
get rid of this menace. He found a well-armed ship and an experienced
commander named Captain Kidd, who soon, far from suppressing piracy, became
one of its most notorious practitioners until his capture and execution in
1701.

The Yale brothers The second-generation American bothers, Elihu and Thomas
Yale, forged notable careers for themselves in the Company's service. Elihu
rose to become Governor of Madras, and from there in 1689 he sent Thomas on
what was the Company's first direct trading mission to China, paving the
way for the eventual opening up of that unknown country to the Company's
traders. Although his brother was later disgraced, Elihu returned to
America with the fortune that he had earned in India, donating part of it
to his old school, which, in gratitude, renamed itself " Yale College" in
1718.

The Union Jack and Stripes The story of the origin of the Stars and
Stripes, the American flag, forms an essential part of every schoolchild's
education in the United States, but it is not commonly known that the
inspiration for Betsy Rose's gift to Washington was the flag of the East
India Company, which consisted of a Union Jack and stripes. Even now the
state flag of Hawaii is the same as the East India Company's flag -- a
memorial to the Company's involvement in the voyages of Captain Cook, who
was to die there.

Colonies lost and won Two events marked the low point of the Company's
involvement with the fledgling independence movement in the American
colonies. One, the infamous Boston Tea Party in 1773, was a direct result
of the drawback of the government in London of duties on tea which enabled
the East India Company to dump excess stocks on the American colonies, and
acted as a rallying point for the discontented. The other, the defeat of
General Cornwallis at Yorktown in 1781 resulted in American Independence;
Cornwallis himself was later to serve with great distinction in the
Company's service in India, and it was said of him that whilst he lost a
colony in the West, he won one in the East.

Whilst the East India Company brought new goods and fashions to Europe,
America was never far behind. The light cottons of India were well-suited
to the humid summers of the South Eastern states, and calicoes, chintzes,
silks, spices, coffee, cocoa and Chinese earthenware as well as tea all
found their way across the water, mainly shipped by private traders from
the Company's warehouses in London. Even after Independence the East India
Company remained a highly competitive importer of goods into the United
States, resulting in occasional flare-ups such as the trade war between
1812 and 1814.