ABSTRACT

The previous section’s preoccupation with questions of Indian government is liable to give a somewhat distorted picture of the nature of Britain’s connexion with India in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Although many Englishmen saw the importance of India to Britain in terms of an increase in British power against France, and others were primarily concerned with the problems of how to rule millions of new Indian subjects, for the great majority relations between Britain and India were still envisaged in commercial terms, as they had been ever since English ships had first entered the Indian Ocean. India was expected to contribute to the economic well-being of Britain. The profits of trade between Britain and India counted for more than the outcome of battles or the introduction of new methods of administering justice. The level of the East India Company’s dividend, the current price of its stock, and the results revealed by the India Budgets, were for most men the true gauge of the success of British rule. The debate on how the trade with Asia could best be exploited, whether by a single company, a completely open trade, or a combination of monopoly and private ventures, was as vigorous as the debate on how India should be ruled.