ABSTRACT
The gradual occupation of India by Western traders, missionaries and adventurers was part of a wider expansionist policy which was really under way by the sixteenth century. Ostensibly it began as exploration with a little economic dealing on the side. But with the creation of jointstock companies (in England from 1553) the way was open to raise venture capital to finance risky but potentially lucrative markets abroad. Probably the most important of these new trading companies was the East India Company founded in 1600. This was really formed to tap resources of the Orient at a time when Portugal, then united with Spain, was in serious conflict with Dutch and English privateers. English appetites were whetted when, in 1592, they appropriated a Portuguese vessel laden with ‘spices, drugges, silks, calico quilts, carpets and colours’ (quoted in Weech 1945:573). With the ungarnered wealth of the East waiting to be had, the English wanted a major share of the action.
