The Company That Ate the World
A fairy tale for capitalists and our children
Once upon a time, in the cold, grey kingdom of England, a group of rich men asked their fair queen,
“Your most royal highness, may we go east and bring back treasures, spices, and maybe a little power?”
Queen Elizabeth I, who loved riches far more than women who married for love or pleasure waved her hand and said,
“Take a ship. Take ten. Just don’t make me pay for it.”
And so, the East India Company was born.
Not a prince, not a knight, but a business that would soon act like a king.
Chapter 1: The Merchants and the Mughal
At first, the Company was polite. It bowed to emperors in India, traded wool for silk, and asked nicely for land to build factories, which were not factories but scalable fortresses.
The Company was very clever. And greedy.
And it noticed that the pretty little bejeweled Indian princes liked to bicker amongst themselves for who had the biggest emerald in his turban. So the Company offered soldiers to one side, bribes to the other, and invoices to everyone. Divide and conquer was official policy from London on high.
Soon, the emperors were gone, the princes were meat puppets, and the Company was no longer trading. It was ruling. I wonder sometimes, were the princes born stupid or was their environment? I digress, the Bell Curve needs to be examined but not now.
Chapter 2: The Army in a Briefcase
The Company grew fatter.
It had a private army larger than Britain’s.
It collected taxes from tens of millions.
It decided who would live, who would starve, and who would sell opium to the Chinese.
It became a dragon in a suit, breathing profit, burning nations.
And back in England, the lords smiled and drank their tea, never asking who had picked the leaves or paid the price. The ladies had hysteria in the wisteria and some pretty interesting cures.
Chapter 3: The Tea That Started a War
Far across the ocean, in a young colony called America, the Company tried to sell its tea cheap.
The British government said, “You must buy it. It’s efficient.”
The Americans said, “It tastes like tyranny.”
So one night, dressed as ghosts and warriors, they threw the Company’s tea into the sea.
That splash in Boston Harbor became a wave.
One that drowned a crackpot (wait aren’t they all nuts?) king and birthed a new country.
Yes, children: a revolution began because of a corporate discount.
Chapter 4: The Opium and the Emperor
Then the Company turned to China.
The Chinese said, “We don’t want your clocks and cotton. We have tea and porcelain.”
The Company said, “Fine. How about drugs?”
They smuggled opium into China until the empire groaned under addiction.
When the emperor tried to stop it, the Company sent in ships and cannons.
And that’s how Hong Kong was taken, not by war,
but by balance sheet and boatloads of chill chowder.
Chapter 5: The Rebellion and the Crown
Back in India, soldiers and farmers and mothers began to rise.
They were tired of lies, looting, and laws made in London.
The Company sent troops. The people fought back.
And the blood that soaked the soil told a final truth:
A company should never rule a country.
So, another royally high Queen returned, not in kindness, but in control.
She dissolved the Company, took India for herself, and turned her ‘Jewel in the Crown’ into a high-margin hungry-child sweatshop wrapped in velvet. Years later her great-grandson son was thrown out of India, but I digress again.
Epilogue: The Ghost in the Ledger
The Company died on paper in 1874.
But its ideas live on:
Corporations can raise armies
Profit excuses cruelty
Maps are made in boardrooms
Today, we sip iced turmeric-golden-colon-cleanser-chai and scroll on our magical phones, forgetting the ghosts in our cups.
But if you look closely at the ports, the pipelines, the debt, the drugs, the branded boxes from faraway factories, the golden baubles we lap up to make America great looking again… you’ll see the Company never really left.
It just changed its shape.
And so, our fairy tale ends not with a wedding or a dead dragon, but with a caution:
Beware the businessman that governs.
He may promise god, gold and your tribe’s supremacy but brings chains.
