Tea Advisor
Aspects of Tea Production
Had they wanted to, the Company could have marched against the Emperor in Delhi. However, this might not have been a financial success, so the Company satisfied itself with assuming, in 1765, the DiwaniI of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. The Diwani gave the rights, after a small annual tribute to the Emperor (soon abandoned), to all the tax revenues of those territories. The Company assumed responsibility for the administration, including the army, police and justice system. It had become a government. It also had a monopoly of trade.
Although the East India Company was the government of part of India, it was also a British company, and to some extent answerable to the British government. That relationship, under the Company's charter was, however, far from clear. Parliament became concerned, and in 1784 passed the India Act, which established a Board of Control. This could regulate the levying of war or making of peace, or negotiating with any native princes or states in India, and could also dismiss the Company's Governor-General. Subject to these limitations, however, the Company managed to retain its trading monopoly, and also retain the right to govern its territories.
The Company's armies, with help from British troops, conquered huge new tracts of India, especially in the south, so that about half of all India came under the direct Company rule. There was much criticism of the Company's dual role, as government and trader. The Company lost its monopoly of trade with India in 1813. When its charter came up for renewal in 1833, some wanted to abolish its governmental responsibilities. Quite the opposite happened - the Company was prohibited from trading, except in salt and opium, and left to administer British India. Shareholders would receive an annual dividend of 10½ per cent. This dividend and the cost of servicing the "home bond debt" would be met out of taxation in India. Since the home bond debt originated in loans the East India Company had taken out when it lent money to the British government to further its own commercial interests, there was much resentment in India over these arrangements.
In addition to these monies, the Indians also had to pay for the cost of transporting troops between Britain and India, the pensions of the Company's administrators and army, the salaries of the directors of the East India Company and many other expenses. These included the cost of war medals produced to commemorate their own conquest, and the maintenance of European lunatics from India. Together with the home bond debt, these charges became known, and reviled by Indians, as the "home charges." Not only Indians were outraged. Sir Charles Trevelyan, later Governor of Madras, observed "£5,000,000 sterling a year is subtracted from the wealth of India and added to the wealth of England, which is the most serious injury which India suffers from its connection with England." There would be future resentment, too, as the cost of conquering new territories inside India and of waging war against adjacent countries was added to these debts to be paid by the Indians.
Tea | By Roy Moxham
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