My view: The East India Company and the 2012 Elections

One of the repeated accusations the GOP hurls at President Barack Obama is that he is a socialist and favors more government intrusion into our lives ? of course what they mean is more government intrusion into business. In the context of American history, however, this accusation doesn't make much sense. In order to understand why, we need to go back to New Year's Eve of the year 1600.

Since 1580, Queen Elizabeth had been the largest shareholder in the Golden Hind, the ship of buccaneer and slave trader Sir Francis Drake. This investment had worked out quite well for her, but she wanted a more permanent way to protect her income stream from parliamentary oversight. So, on Dec. 31, 1600, she authorized 218 London merchants and noblemen to create a corporation, the East India Company.

Thus dawned the era of the modern corporation. For the next 200 years, corporate history was the history of the EIC. This corporation wielded more power than any business today could imagine. It is incorrect to state that Britain ruled the world with the assistance of the EIC. It is more correct to say that the EIC ruled the world. "At its height," says New Internationalist magazine, "it ruled over a fifth of the world's population with a private army of a quarter of a million."

This included the American colonies. The EIC exercised sufficient power in America that it can rightly be claimed that the American Revolution was not just a rebellion against the Crown; it was also a rebellion against a particular British corporation. For instance, although we are often taught that the Boston Tea Party was a protest against "taxation without representation," this is technically incorrect. The Bostonians who dumped over $1 million worth of tea (in today's currency) into Boston Harbor in 1773 were actually protesting against the unfair business practices of the East India Company, an importer and vender of tea.

Because of their unsavory encounter with European corporations, primarily the EIC, early Americans distrusted corporations and chartered very few of them. In 1816, Thomas Jefferson wrote, "I hope we shall ? crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."

Source: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/765601953/My-view-The-East-India-Company-and-the-2012-Elections.html

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