British East India Company

British East India Company

Introduction

The East India Company (EIC) came into existence to take part in the trade of East Indian Spice. The trade was under the monopoly of Spain and Portugal until the entry of Dutch into the region in the 1600. The Dutch maintained the same control and did not allow other nations to share the trade. The British relatively entered in this trade very late. It was 1582 when the first British pilot came to this place and it was almost a century after the Portuguese tourist, Vasco Da Gama, made his journey (Lal, 2010).

In spite of the long sea route the EIC had to make in reaching India, it did not have any effect on the profit they made by the trips. The cost of the trip was far less than the huge profit trade was incurring. With this, the EIC had full control over the British market. They made trade for tea with China and America and traded several items such as ivory, porcelain, gold, calicos, pearls, silk, and spices with India and other countries through sea trade. They could make the policies in their favor as they had legally authorized dominating position in England (Lal, 2010).

Discussion

BEIC-China Tea Trade

China has an economic impact for the production of Tea because it is one of the most valuable trading commodities of their resources. China had an increasing growth in the trading and production of tea in the 7th century. When Britisher's reached China by sea, they found that tea was being used as a source of healing and freshness, so they implied the same use of it in Europe. The people in China used Tea as a source of currency and it was being used as a medical drink too, after the trade in Britain it was also used in Britain for the same purpose (Goodman, 2013).

In the mid of 18 century, tea was being imported by Britain from China, because of this it became costly and very few people were able to consume it. The Britisher's started to figure out an alternate to tea by the process of adulteration of tea which increased the supply of tea without making the import of tea expensive. This adulteration process was a mixture of tea leaves and some another substance such as sawdust or ash because this way a higher amount of tea can be consumed rather than further importing from China (Goodman, 2013).

The British East India Company gained the control over the whole foreign sea trade after the decline of Dutch East India Company in 1795. The British East India Company made use of their power as superiority to establish trading posts in China and other trading countries. This use of trading posts allowed Britain to lower the cost of importing tea and increase the quantity of imports from China for tea and various other commodities. The British East India Company also depicted many laws that came into their favor for the purpose of adulteration, illegal smuggling ...