The Real East India Company: How Ancient India Led The Way In Global Commerce

Every Indian student will know that Robert Clive, an employee of the British East India Company, played a pivotal role in establishing British imperial rule in India. However, the British did not initially come as a conquering power but as traders seeking to develop commercial relationships across borders. As early as 1585, almost two centuries before Robert Clive became famous after the Battle of Plassey, Ralph Fitch, a British trader, came to Mughal Emperor Akbar’s court, with entreaties seeking trade relations. 

The East India Company made this trade a systematic and well-oiled machine, funded by shareholders in London, jockeying for trading routes and markets against their French, Dutch, and Portuguese rivals, much as modern multinational companies spar over market shares in emerging markets. However, what was really at stake was not just profits or share prices but the lives and liberty of millions, for what began as a trading relationship was replaced by the dark shadow of colonialism, as the British Empire used the East India Company as a proxy to establish its foothold in India. 

The Mughal Emperor, before whom Ralph Fitch had prostrated himself, humbly seeking trade permits, was reduced to a mere figurehead. When Robert Clive left India in 1767, he said to the Company Directors about the Mughal Emperor that “the power formerly belonging to the soubah of those provinces is totally, in fact, vested in the East India Company. Nothing remains to him but the name and shadow of authority.” India was not the only nation to face the scourge of colonialism that came in the garb of commerce. China suffered through the Opium Wars, and the Dutch East India Company paved the way for colonial oppression in Indonesia.

Fast forward to today, when global commerce is a fact of life, and multinational trade and companies are an integral part not just of economies but of our daily lives. Some of the skepticism about globalisation traces its roots back to the memories of what global trade had meant to our economies and societies in the past, when it had acted as a Trojan Horse for cultural, economic, and political domination.

Does it have to be that way?

Is global commerce and multinational trade inevitably tinged with vested interest and an ambition to dominate?
Ancient Indian history can be a lighthouse that shows that trade and multinational commerce can be a force for good, bringing people together for mutual gain and cultural exchange. India has long traded with other civilisations and empires. As early as Harappan times, Indian wares were finding their way to faraway Mesopotamia. Later, India had a flourishing trade with Rome, with Indian spices and wares much sought after in the Roman Empire and seemingly commanding a huge value, resulting in a significant balance of payments surplus that led Pliny the Elder to complain that the trade with India would “take one hundred million sesterces from our empire per annum at a conservative estimate.”

However, the true value of trading with India became apparent closer to home in Southeast Asia. The sprawling temple complex of Angkor Wat, and the echoes of the Ramayana found across the region, from Thailand’s Ayutthaya to Bali in Indonesia, attest to the fact that Indian traders were bringing with them not just the hardware of exported goods but the software of culture. While this was nurtured and protected through the presence of a strong navy, as attested to by the reports of Megasthenes, who described the creation of a powerful navy under emperor Chandragupta Maurya (reign 322-298 BCE), the Indian kingdoms never interfered politically or militarily with their trading partners, instead spreading culture, language, and shared values. Under Ashoka (reign 272-232 BCE), this took on a new impetus with Buddhist missionaries spreading the message of hope and peace, building off the strong trade and cultural foundations that had already been laid to places like Sri Lanka, Cambodia, and Thailand.

Many ports and cities across ancient India had this cultural exchange and trade imprinted on their local traditions and way of life. Odisha, known as Kalinga in ancient times, was a key center of trade with Southeast Asia. To this day, these old traditions are still celebrated in the annual Bali-Jatra (journey to Bali) festival in Odisha.

India’s commercial and cultural imprint on the world was interrupted by the onset of colonialism, but in recent times, with the impetus given to creating the ‘Made in India’ brand, the economy booming, and India seeking to regain its place in the world as a major economy, we would do well to heed the lessons of the past. Economies have expanded, fortunes have been created, and trading routes have been established by many ‘East India Companies’ in the past. However, they often came at the cost of the liberty of their partners, who became subjects. India’s ancient past shows that there is an alternative way of creating transnational trade- exporting goods that are highly valued and using them to build bonds based on shared values, traditions, and culture, instead of treating trade as a mechanism of domination. The world sorely needs unity, driven not just by the pursuit of economic gain through mutual trade but through shared values, and to help create this unity, we have a lot to learn from our forefathers in ancient India.

Aaditya Sengupta Dhar

Guest Author