Directors of the East India Company, 1754-1790

Abstract

For a century and a half before 1754 the East India Company had. enjoyed a monopoly of English trade with the East. The Company, under the control of a Court of Directors drawn exclusively from mercantile and financial world, had steadfastly resisted any move on the part of its servants in India towards territorial acquisition, or political involvement, and. had concentrated on the pursuit of its trade, based on its three main settlements, in Bombay, Madras and Fort William, in Bengal. However, the political instability in India accompanying the decline of the power of the centralised Mogul Empire, and the growing challenge of the Company's main European rivals, the French, in the mid-eighteenth century, forced the Company to take up arms to defend its position.

Consequently, with victories over the French in the south, and over Mogul power in Bengal, the Company, in the period from 1754 to 1790, underwent a transformation from the status of a purely commercial organisation in the sub-continent, to that of a political power with territorial responsibilities. This thesis sets out to discuss the men who became directors in the thirty-six years from 1754, how developments in the Company' a situation in the East affected the composition of the Direction, and, conversely, how changes in the constituent elements of the Court influenced the Company's policies in the East; also, how the interests and factions in the Company, which the directors represented, altered in the period, with the consequences for the balance of power at East India House; and, finally, how well equipped were the directors of these years to cope with the Company's changing role in the East; all questions of importance in this formative period, when directors of a commercial organisation struggled to deal with the problems of an increasingly political dominion.