SOAS Research Online

Abstract

Sir Josiah Child's activity in the councils of the East India Company was motivated by his interest in shipping and made possible by great wealth and the organisation of the Company. The period of his activity was one of crisis for the Company because of threats to its trade. Its main business was the transport of Indian goods to Europe by the sea route and it had a legal monopoly of the use of this route. To develop its trade, therefore, it had to attract goods to its shipping and so had to maintain entrepcts in India. These, in Child's time, were involving the Company in civics and political responsibilities. They could only be maintained, developed and defended by the Company with its permanent joint stock. In the last quarter of the seventeenth century the Company faced a threefold problem. The entrepots were threatened by the growing anarchy in India, the monopoly was threatened by interloping and the Company was attacked in England by business rivals and opponents of the royal prerogative to which it owed its existence. To survive this crisis the Company threw in its lot with the Crown and in return gained an extension of its powers, which enabled it to deal with its enemies; and these powers remained part of its structure henceforward. It emerged from a defensive action with a 'polity' in India. Child's writings on trade, polities and the community throw some light on the part he played in this crisis and on the nature of the polity with which the Company emerged from it.