107. English Formed East India Company

The English formed their East India Company on the last day of 1600 and entered the East Indies hand in hand with the Dutch. Their foes were common – the Portuguese and Catholic Spain – and this brought them closer. However, familiarity breeds contempt, and soon the English realized that the Dutch were not willing to share their space in Spice Islands (East Indies) with them.

Things became grim enough for the British to finally run away and find refuge in India. It was this success of the Dutch to hang on, with characteristic tenaciousness to the Spice Islands that finally made the British to settle on India as the second-best; because spices in India were essentially only in the south where the local rulers and other Europeans already had a monopoly.

of course, they ran into trouble in their very first step, so to speak, with the Portuguese. However, here the British luck turned; perhaps the Raj was destined, after all. As said earlier, the Portuguese were not winning any popularity contests in India, and then with Spain coming into the scene they were hard pressed for resources. Finally what won the east was that old trump card of the British, their naval supremacy.

In 1612 the Mughal emperor Jahangir received Sir Thomas Roe, the first ambassador of the British to Indian aristocracy. Roe’s diplomacy with the Mughals was so successful that by a treaty in 1618 the East India Company became their unspoken, unsaid, naval aide. By 1674 Bombay came to the British as part of the dowry of Charles II's Portuguese queen Catherine, and from here they never looked back. 1708 or the dawn of the Modern Indian Era found them quite comfortably placed in India, commercially that is.