Multinational Corporations: The British East India Company

As a young white male living in present day America, I am one to consume mass amount of products produced by multinational corporations. Everyone nowadays succumbs to this fact. I always have been immensely interested in how these corporations became to be. I wanted to know if multinational corporations had power over people and certain governments. If so, how much power did they have? It is said that some corporations are bigger than even nations. A major question also came up in my head about whether this power came to be recently or if it has been around for a great period of time? So in order to answer these inquiries, a research questions must be asked that has the capability of assessing this topic sufficiently. The question I developed

A charter is a document, issued by a sovereign or state, outlining the conditions under which a corporation, colony, city, or other corporate body is organized. This meant the British Government had no direct control of the company; they just informed them of how to properly organize themselves, and by doing this they also approved of the creation the company and allowed them the right of passage to the East Indies. At first the British East India Company had no power in the trade around India specifically the Indian Ocean and the East Indies. The British were regarded by some as the “weaklings” of that time, specifically the Dutch. But it should be known that the British were the only formal company at this time in the area until the Dutch East India Company was organized shortly after when it was chartered in 1602 by the current State General of Netherlands at that time. Before the British East India Company formed there was no real form of major trade going on in the region in which the Indian Ocean is in. With this being said, the British East India Company still struggled to gain power in the spice trade. This was mostly due to the Dutch’s extreme urgency to establish themselves so they can claim the area as their trading ground. The British Struggled to keep afloat for the first few years but eventually they started to become immensely profitable after

This being said he later on granted royal charters to other British based companies, most famously The Virginia Company which was a vital piece of the beginnings of The United States of America, but sadly The Virginia Company cannot be discussed in detail due to word restrictions in this