The corporation that changed the world

How the East India Company shaped the modern multi-national

Nick Robins, Pluto Press, 280 pages, paperback, £17.99

The East India Company was the mother of the modern multinational with a trading empire encircling the globe. But it also conquered much of India with its private army, and broke open China’s markets with opium.

The company’s practices shocked its contemporaries and still reverberate today. The Bengal Presidency Army run by the company took part in the repression of the peasant risings in India that punctuated company rule in the first half of the 19th century. This army was at the heart of Britain’s wars of conquest inside India itself and around the world.

From Russia to Burma, from China to Afghanistan, they caused death and destruction. This process of pillage and accumulation was central to the formation of the global capitalist system.

For decades, the company was considered too big to fail, and we see how stock market bubbles, famines, drug-running and even duels between rival executives failed to stop its relentless drive for profits.

The story has vital lessons on the role of corporations in world history — and the steps needed to make global business accountable today.

Reviews contributed by the Bookmarks socialist bookshop. Order online at www.bookmarksbookshop.co.uk