Part Two: The Most Evil Company In History

Poor tense, abound adjective. Yeah, I love them. That little blue triangle and adverbs, little orange circle. I think did you do that what we're talking about? I learned with the system where you put symbols for every part of speech that sounds exhaust So to me, a conjunction will always be a little pink rainbow. Oh okay, that's good to know. Actually, I think that's preposition. Let's talk about some speaking of prepositions. I'm gonna make a preposition. I

don't think you are. I think prosition that one. That one didn't come out. I was going to try to tie that in more smoothly, but then you caught me scripted apart. So where we are in the story. We got we got this guy, Robert Clive, and Robert Clive has conquered Bengal like a big chunk of India and he's rich as ship. And the East India Company has got like tens of millions of people that they don't really have to take care of, but they kind of control.

And it's getting weird. And everybody back in England is like, this is getting weird. And also corporations are spreading throughout the world and starting colonies all over the place and extending European domination and center the globe. They're collecting rents, they are starting to do that, and yeah, they are starting to to carry out taxes and stuff that that

that is beginning in this period of time. But mostly what's happening, mostly the thing that the company is doing in this big area they now control is being corrupt as ship. Corruption had always been indemic among the East India Company's foreign officers. That's why you did it, is so that you could take a bunch of stuff and come back home and be rich if you survived the tropical diseases. So everybody skimmed a little bit off the

top that was kind of built into the system. Clive had just done what everybody else had been doing when he took the three thousand pounds of gold and jewels and stuff. But the cup that he'd been skimming from was the biggest cup anyone had ever stumbled across. Right, Yeah, so that's that's the situation. And it was unprecedented, and people started to ask the question do we want it to be okay for our corporate officers in foreign countries to be this corrupt? And that's something we as British

people are fine with. It's not like he's a brilliant innovator, it's just the most Yeah, he's Yeah, no one has ever had that. This seems like it could go bad places. And some of that is people who like have a human sense of like it's wrong, we're plundering the world. A lot of it is other rich guys who are old money and are just don't like just like this is a threat to our fortresses of the money that

we have built in our places. Exactly. Now this gross guy is rich and yeah, this uncouth guy who joined because he likes beating people up, Yeah, it's too wealthy. Exactly.

So Clive leaves India after conquering and Bengal and governing it for a while, and he goes back to England, and to give you an idea of how modern this period is, he takes all this lute that he earned from conquering Bengal and he deposits it with the Dutch East India Company and then when he gets back to London, he withdraws it from them as cash or as cash okay, So they didn't like transport his jewels and because he he was like, there's no way, this is way too

much ship to syd I'll give it to them, They'll give me the cash value and I'll take it out in London. Boom, it was done. Just upload it to the cloud. You're good to go. Yeah. This is like the first time people were figuring out how to do that sort of ship. So yeah, again this is becoming a very modern time period. Uh So Cloud gets back to England and he's rich and he's popular for a while. He buys his shipload of mansions, but all is not

well because his boss, Laurence Sullivan does not like him. Now, Laurence Sullivan is the chairman of the company, so Clive in addition to all of them, and he had gotten was guaranteed a giant yearly payment from all of ben Goal. So basically the prints that he put in power was like, we'll give you a huge a fortune every single year. Because you put me in power, He's just free to

write up that contract. And that's why the company challenges it because I just don't understand how people take pure will yeah and make it reality because people to go along, they're not they don't want to. His own company takes him to court the like, you're not allowed to make that deal. Yeah, they you're not allowed to make that deal. We never voted to confirm this giant annual payment for you.

You know, you worked it out directly with the prince, but you were working with the company at the time and this is our area. So and they're not saying this money should go back to the Indian people. They're saying that we should this should get us, not you. Um. So they go to quarter over and they fight in court for a while. So they're battling in court while things in India are kind of starting to go sour

for the company. They're making a lot of money because they found a bunch of different ways to tax and sell and suck being gold Eye, but they start being rebellions as a result of this, So now the company is spending more and more money putting down rebellions, and eventually they agree to confirm Clive's big annual payment in exchange for him going back to India and fixing the ship that's gone wrong since he left the last time.

But that makes it sound like it's arm again, like he's the only man in the world who can do this, don't they have other trustworthy mercenaries they do. They think he's special, but as he's traveling back to India, they learned that he's really not because some other guy puts the rebellion down. First. Yeah, first, British guns are just

so much better than everything they face. So they agree to give him his money and he leaves over there because they're worried they're going to lose control of the region because of these rebellions. And then when he's in transit, some other guy beats. You can tell like, you don't need this guy. Yeah, you don't need any guy. You've

got canav guns. It's the guns that you need. And in fact, actually Clive's big contribution winds up being that when he gets there, things are going so well that the company has almost invaded Delhi, the capital of India, and conquered the whole Mughal Empire, and he stops them. Like Robert Clive is like, this is this has gone unessential. Also, it seems like he may have just actually gotten scared at how much thinks have escalated. This is this could

be bad. Yeah, yeah, you launch a new Starbucks franchise and somehow you accidentally now took over city hall. Yeah. So he writes a letter when he's justifying his corporate bosses why he stopped the army, he writes a letter that says, quote to go further, it is, in my opinion, a scheme so extravagantly ambitious and absurd that no governor and counsel in their senses can adopt it unless the whole system of the company's interests be first entirely new modeled.

Said the guy who's like, but acquiring three hundred thousand pounds of gold, that is not overly ambsual. I think he would say that was never his goal. He found himself in a war and he won, and then they handed him all this stuff. What am I gonna do say no, that is yeah, yeah, but he didn't, and I don't think most people would to be fair, I think most people who are the kind of people who could be in Clive's position, I was gonna say most people would never get in that position. There's no way

to get to there. But anyone who's capable of being in that position is probably gonna be like, yeah, hit me the uh so. Clive basically thought that the company already had a sweet deal. They weren't officially in charge of anything. They were in control because guns, but they didn't have to do anything aside from occasionally fighting cash checks. The Indians were still nominally at least leaders of their

own land, and they were outside of Bengal. They were still in control, so the East Indian Company didn't have to worry about this giant subcontinent that they had no business interests in. Most of this changed on August twelfth, seventeen sixty five, when Robert Clive, with worry and his gut, signed a deal on behalf of the East India Trading Company with the Mughal Emperor that guaranteed the British East India Company formal control over three big chunks of India

and the lives of almost thirty million people. So we'll have the graphic up on the site, but you can see outline there this is what the East India Company after this agreement now controls. That's land they own and govern. So now, okay, it's about a fifth about a fifth of India, the largest country in existence, I believe, one

of them and Russia. Yeah wow. So but what I don't understand is to what level did they control people's lives because I assume they have no interest in going in and being like we're going to make laws and moral codes. They just want to loot the place. That is the point of today's episode. But now they are in charge of it. So they are now the government in a big chunk of India. Right, So that's the

situation after this. It's weird that they'd even want to be what's the prophet Clive did not want to be, but I think they got greedy and so well Clive is in charge, he tries to cut back on the shocking amount of corruption and graph that he sees amongst the company officers. He banns his officers from taking gifts or bribes, although he doesn't give up his own bribes so people don't take it super seriously. He increases salaries

to try to make people want to steal less. Uh. And he restricts the company's monopoly so that some sort of local economy can exists, so that the East India Company is not the only people who are allowed to sell products to Indians, so that they can have a functioning society. So he tries to pump the brakes, just let them do what they do. Um. He also does nice stuff, like he gives a shipload of money to the pension fund for the company army. Again, he's one

of these people. He starts this road, but he does not seem to be running unchecked in that direction. It's not like jan Coon or new money is evolving into old money like you talked about on the Brothers episode where it's time to get philanthropic now and resuscitate my image, gloss over all that ship. It's possible. I don't know the man, but eventually he like his health isn't great.

At this point, he winds up heading back to England and other people take over for for India, and he winds up in court again fighting a company for access to his yearly bribe basically because they can't get him hired. Can't they fire him? Well, he when he leaves every time, he stops working for them, essentially, and so then there's like big legal fights in the court because they don't want him to just forever get a fortune every year.

They want that fortunate. But it seems like they keep coming back and being like, Okay, we'll give you your old job back, sign this deal. Well, they thought they needed him, and now they know they really don't um and he's starting to try to we should steal slightly less. Yeah, this guy's served his purpose getting out here. So the East India Company now after Clive leaves, is essentially, yeah,

the government of a big chunk of India. And if you're a government, need to provide things for people, right and then just take tax money like you take tax money, but you provide roads and libraries and e m t s and firefighters and the FDA and ship. The company doesn't provide anything. They just take pretty much. And so that's the situation in seventeen seventy when a famine hits and it's a bad one, and we will get into

the famine in a little bit. Right now, we're talking about Clive because this famine is a disaster for his image. He's not in charge when it happens, but it goes big in the press and it looks bad for him, and he's basically portrayed aid by a lot of the media as a greedy idiot who had ruined India, even though a lot of other people had ruined India as well as Robert Clive. And here you are throwing him under the bus. A full two hundred years later, we

leave Clive alone. I mean, he had tried to clamp down on the shameless left. He did see the problem. Um. So he winds up in court and you know, has a big legal case where he tries to essentially defend his legacy. And during the court proceedings he delivers a famous speech. So it's it's like one of those really

like movie ready moments from history. So he's being cross examined about robbing Bengal blind and accused of plundering India, and he says, quote, consider the situation in which the victory of Plassy placed me a great prince was dependent on my pleasure. An opulent city lay at my mercy. It's richest bankers bid against each other for my smiles. I walked through vaults which were thrown open to me alone, piled on either hand with gold and jewels. Mr Chairman.

At this moment, I stand astonished at my own moderation. I mean, that's literally just the same as you want the truth, you can't handle the truth when you're out there. Can you think I stole a lot? I could have stolen a lot more? Mother? Why does the loophole exist if I'm not supposed to exploit it? That classic justification we hear all the time to this day. So he was acquitted, Uh, yeah, but he didn't last that much longer.

He was very sick from all of the tropical diseases he'd picked up overseas, and he also might have been suffering terrible regret for his actions and the famine. He has described as having had a nervous disorder. It's also possibly he had severe PTSD. There are numerous times where people exploded next to him, Like would be shot by cannons and just the guy next to him would burst. Like So if you don't mean got mad at him,

you mean physically exploded? Yeah, yeah, Like was burst by a cannon, so he lived through horrible commas, so it's possible he was just a broken mentally at this point. Then he drowned on gold. No. In seventeen seventy four, he stabbed himself to death in the throat with a pocket knife. Yeah, at home alone, a suicide with no explanation. That's a crazy math. People knew he was depressed, it has always been depressed. But he cut his own throat with a tiny knife, so he was gone. This is

the end of Robert Clive. But the British were still in India, and they would stay there from nearly two centuries now. Merchant Kings mentioned the famine in passing but didn't get into much detail on the matter. It was a famine, it was very, very bad. So I decided to do a little bit of extra digging and I ran into a college textbook called The East India Company

and the Natural World. It had a whole chapter on the famine, and thanks to the bountiful Goddess of Capitalism, Springer allowed me to buy just that chapter for thirty dollars. What a deal, right, for a single single chapter exercised from the book Capitalism it's different from the stuff we're talking about today because reasons. Anyway, I read the chapter and it's really good. I'm gonna I'm gonna quote from

it now. According to the report from the Famine Commission, in a period of ninety years from seventeen sixty five when the British East India Company took over the Dwani of Bengal to eighteen fifty eight Bengal experience, it's twelve famines and four severe scarcities. Now, some of those famines would have occurred with or without the British East India Company,

because famines are a thing. They've always been a thing, right, But once you delve into it, their whole period of rule is basically a master class and had a funk over an entire subcontinent. In essence, in order to compensate for the minimal amount of actual government work the company needed to do in order to turn a profit, they just started jacking up taxes on rural workers and on farmers, and usually these taxes were in kind, so you'd pay with whatever it is you were growing at the time.

So the company commercialized agriculture in India and tried to turn it into an almost industrial operation to maximize output. So there's been a bunch of small independent farms and villages and whatnot, And now the whole countryside was basically one giant, big food production plan and made a lot of money. But it also made it impossible for the farmers themselves to handle bad years. Everything was sold every year, nothing was set aside for the bad times. There wasn't

enough left over after the taxes for the individual farmers. Anyway, the dis East India Company had disrupted the intricate cultural systems that had formed during and before the Mughal Empire. In the past, when there was a bad year and the rains didn't come, villages had standing arrangements with other

villages to help each other out with food. These were local insurance plans that were present all across India and particularly in the farming regions have been gal was very common way to stop people from dying horribly when a famine. Presumably have been working for a thousand years exactly. Now, No, now you all work one giant farm together. Yeah, this will be better for us. So now when famine hit, everybody worked for the company. Nobody had anything extra. There

were no more insurance policies. They'd all been taken in taxes and sold. Quote from that same chapter. Bengali society was divided between the Zamindars, the hereditary revenue collectors of the Mughal Empire, and a broad base consisting of some landless laborers and a large number of poor cultivators. Most of them were sharecroppers, so taxes started to ratch it

up on these people in the late seventeen hundreds. The company started jacking up to acts is really hard in the seventeen fifties, and by the mid seventeen sixties they were like doubling every couple of years. The agricultural reforms

the Corporation put in place didn't really work out. Yields started to fall, so they're actually growing feware crops because it turns out a bunch of British guys ideas on how to farm Indian land did not work as well as what the Indians that are going to a totally different culture with different land and just telling them do this, I think this would work for you for farming. You

have to do it or will shoot you try it out? Yeah, give it a shot, let us know it works, but don't tell us if it doesn't, we're not really interested in that. So would they ration food back because it is in their interests to keep people alive? And that right now, you would think that, right, you think it's it's in your interest that, yeah, you you would think that other people did not. So the price of grains started to rise right as the company takes over UM.

And the company has no less in interest in selling cheap grain to the people growing grain to pay them grain taxes. So when the famine hit, the company just reacted with a kind of sociopathy. I think we're coming to expect from the British East India Company. Oh, because they're not even paying a portion of their income they pay in grain anyway. Yeah, exactly. So they're like, well, you're going to give us all your grain anyway, why should we even give you some back when we just

get it all anywhere. We're just going to get it all like um, so that I continue living and they're already gone, they're already walking off with the grain. Yea. So here's another quote from that chapter. The effect of the famine was to enshrine free market economics as part of the colonial policy all over the Empire, periodic famines

were seen as a check to population growth. As Mike Davis notes, by the nineteenth century, these Malthusian ideas, which were voiced all throughout the colonial period, resulted in the pursuit of free market economics and quote, India, like Ireland, became a utilitarian laboratory where millions of lives were wagered against a dogmatic faith in omnipotent markets, overcoming the convenience of dearth. This was a policy that was to become

quote a mask for colonial genocide. So you want to talk about colonial genocide, first, let's talk about some ads, because it is time. I need something the gird myself. I need some time heared yourself with these products and or services that support the shades, and we're back. Fabulous ads. They like wrapped me in such a cozy feeling that I feel like I have the buffer I need for what's gonna come now. But what's gonna come now is we're gonna talk about how free market economics became a

mask for colonial genocide. We're getting to the genocide part of that. Again, to Charles Cooke Bonner, he would have loved this period. Just a pig in plot, just stealing money, watch selling people into slips, defying it with bizarre, nonsensical statements. It would have been great. He would have been super good at this. Really was born in the wrong time, although making this time, that time, doing his best. It's just business. This is like the beginning of that ethos.

It's just business, just business. So it's worth getting into exactly how different the famines caused by the East India Company's management were from the famines that had come before in India and in every society in human history. There had been famines in India shortly before the company's period of dominance, including one that lasted from sixteen seventy to sixteen seventy one. Thousands of people had died one to three hundred every day during the months that the famine

was active. It was a terrible time, but the Mughal government, shitty as it was by that point, had taken action to mitigate it. The government had repaired and built new irrigation works. They'd created reservoirs to make sure they'd be able to grow crops during the next dry season. They cut taxes so farmers would be able to keep more of the food they'd grown, they'd set up free kitchens and given out grain to try and reduce the number of people who start to death. In other words, they

were a fucking government. The East India Company was not so. Starting in the seventeen seventies, all of India started to learn the difference between the two. The Great Bengal Famine of seventeen seventy lasted from seventeen sixty nine to seventeen seventy three. See a media I'm like, a famine supposed to last a season, Yeah right, that four years? Supposed for four years? Yeah. So the last famine had lasted less than a year and killed thousands. This famine lasted

four years, it would kill millions. The Great Bengal Famine was made a lot worse by the fact that in the years leading up to it, the company had kind of sort of gutt of the local economy and shipped all of their silver away to marry Old England or rather China. Uh see economics isn't my strong suit. But I did manage to find a very detailed article on the Wire, an independent journalism website that publishes in Hindi and Urdu, and it focuses a lot on historical economic

stuff in that region of the world. The article is called the role that currency played in the Great Bengal Famine of seventeen seventy. It breaks down how the company spent its tax revenue. This is talking about one district in berb Home District. Out of ninety thousand pounds connected through taxs and duties and net surplus of some sixty pounds was employed for the purchase of silks, Muslims, cotton cloths and other articles to be sold in Leadenhall Street,

the headquarters of the company. In short, the revenues have been goal supplied the means of providing the expenditure for purchases in Bengal, reducing the net annual influx of specie, which is hard currency, to a pittance. So the company was taking taxes, making a shipload of money, using it to buy products Indian people needed, and then it would sell those products back to them for a profit and ship the hard currency the silver and gold back to

England and out of India. The two primary impacts of this on England were Number one, A few people got very very very very very rich, and it's always a few people. What's crazy to me is countries will swallow up and destroy whole other countries and only eighteen people were involved. It's like the country that crushed the other country doesn't even benefit from us. Well, England does in one way. This is how the tax. But know this is how gets ta okay this, yeah, I've heard this.

So the Chinese were the only place to get tea, you know, China was the only place where it grew at this point, not anymore. And China only wanted silver. They wanted the specie, the hard currency. Now sounding like a Sidmyer civilization, Yeah, that's exactly what's happening. Here's another quote. The relatively undervalued silver and Bengal proved a profitable source

to finance the growing tea trade with China. Within a span of just three years, some seven d and twenty thousand pounds of specie was sent out of Bengal to China. The widespread corruption and plunder by the servants of the company not only transferred the wealth of the country to these individuals, but was also sent out of the country

through ingenious means. Now this meant that very quickly, being Golf's hard currency, ran out the parts of India the company owned only had so much silver and gold and whatever. The sheer lack of currency meant that Indians could no longer buy and sell things. The local economy collapsed, and this also meant that suddenly the company had no money since they weren't willing to send silver over from India

so they could just buy things. The company sort of twiddle it's them and failed to import grain from outside to avert the millions of deaths. In fact, they banned the importation of grain between different regions of India and seized boats to prevent it. Jesus, here's what one comes them products down at the company's store. Well, they're not buying those anymore because the company doesn't have the money to stop the famine. Vicious circle. No one's at fault, right,

How could it possibly ever have been prevented? This is just what had to happen. No one could have foreseen. This is the Irish potato famines. Sorry, like quiz you on stuff even research? But was that also corporate ization? That not in the same way, but it involved a lot of very rich landown story. Yeah, that's it. We will be talking about that. I'm talking about Victoria at some point. Yeah, here is a quote from a company worker at the time about what Bingal was like during

this famine. This is a guy who who's watching it as a white dude who has enough food. Quote. All through the stifling summer of seventeen seventy, the people went on dying. The husbandmen sold their cattle, they sold their implements of agriculture. They devoured their seed grain. They sold their sons and daughters, till at length no buyer of children could be found. They ate the leaves of trees

and the grass on the field. And in June seventeen seventy, the resident at the Durbar affirmed that the living were feeding on the dead day and night. A torrent of famished and disease stricken wretches poured into the great cities. At an early period of the year. Pestilence had broken out. In March, we find smallpox at the Morschetta Bad. The streets were blocked up with promiscuous heaps of the dying and dead. In Terment cannot do its work quick enough.

Even the dogs and jackals, the public scavengers of the East, became unable to accomplish their revolting work, and the multitude of mangled in festering corpses at length threatened the existence of the citizens. And even through all this, the East India Company keeps increasing taxes on the farmers, which must not even mean anything anymore, Like fine, no, they're still growing food, it's just being taken from them while they're starving.

So why don't they just eat the food that they're harvesting? Right then there's guys with guns there, but yeah, and they've got to like, bad things will happen if you don't pay your time. What's crazy is they treat it like it's business, like they have some god given right to do this because they created this abstract thing we call like a business plan structure. But really it boils down to robbery because at the end of the day, it's always just like, well, why couldn't China come trade

directly for silver with India? Well, because we'd kill them all and we'd shoot it. You, that's what it comes down to, you the guns. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So the taxes on the Bengalese people are higher in seventeen seventy and seventy one, the year the famine starts. Then in seventeen sixty nine to seventy, the year that preceded the famine. I mean, you work on a grain farm and you go home and eat your dead sibling, your children you

sold a long time ago. Yeah, So in April of seventeen seventy quote astoundingly, the Council, acting on the advice of the Muslim Minister of Finance Mohammed Rezakan, added ten percent to the land acts of the ensuing year, but the distress continued to increase at a rate that baffled official calculation. In the second week of May, the central government awoke to find itself in the midst of universal

and irredeemable starvation. So some company officers advised basically cutting taxes and giving back some of what they'd taken so the people wouldn't starve to death. But that just didn't happen. I can't because they want some were living people to work the field. I really thought their response would be give them all a pittance of food. They're even like, I don't know if we shouldn't even give them that.

It's not the company is a big force. Make like, the company is a big force of making some of these calls. But a lot of it's just individuals being like, Yeah, but if we give some of it back, then I'll be able to steal less. And I want to be home in a year with a pile of money, so I'll just keep stealing for another year. Still totally reliance on most of the people being like and that's worth watching everyone starved to death around me while I'm here.

If we've learned one thing about corporations from the last four hundred years, it's that they have a great deal of foresight. Yeah, and never murder in poison themselves out of like sci fi movies where there's a desert planet, but so but the evil corporate lady lives in like a glass pyramid filled with water. Always seems so over the top, but it's real. It's reality. Boy, howdy has

it happened? So yeah. By May seventeen, seventy one third of the Bengalese population six out of every seventeen people was dead. Company officials estimated one half of the cultivators and pairs of revenue will perish with hunger. The sheer scale of the devastation was terrible for the company's bank statement. By October, the company started to notice that an awful lot of the workers they relied on had been quote destroyed by the famine. Oh so we're already using business

devil speak. They're already euphemizing it. Um, some of our bipedal product was destroyed a transaction. Yeah. Quote the failure of a single up following a year of scarcity had wiped out an estimated ten million human beings. God, so that's the death toll of this first famine, ten million. The famines continued though, off and on through the seventeen seventies. In seventeen eighty, another big famine hit and again one third of Bengal just died. Revenue plummeted. The British government

started to get involved. Even to people at the time, what was happening was seen as horrific, and the press attack the East India Company. By seventeen eighty four, the British government started to pass the first regulations limiting the company's powers, really limiting any company's powers. This is the birth of regulation and corporations. It's because the corporation killed ten million people, probably more like twelve to fifteen at that point. It's roughly a holocaust to a holocaust and

a half worth of human beings. You hear me slowing down because my brains just grappling with actually trying to absorb in. Oh, and there's another that's real that we were like, this way of organizing humans seems to be making money. Oh, it also kills people. Well, that's fine, unless goes too far. When did it go too far? When did we go like, maybe it has gone too far? When ten million people were dead, Well, ten million people died, and then ten years later, maybe we should do another

probably five or six million people died. And then in eighteen hundred ten percent of all of India died. There's not even a death count for that. It's just roughly one billion people in India today. But probably if we're trying to take the whole East India Company's death toll from famine, it wouldn't be outrageous to assume somewhere in the million deaths by this whole over the whole course

of this whole period. So it's good to know that humanity does have a point where you're like, is this too many people that you can for me to have slightly bigger houses? Yeah? Uh so, Yeah. In seventeen eighty four, they start regulating the Company. In seventeen eighty eight, Edmund or someone Burke, I forget which Burke gives a speech at the impeachment trial of India's Governor General. Because they're like, you've killed like twenty million people, you should probably not

have this job. So Burke called the company quote a rogue state, waging war, administering justice, minting coin and collecting

revenue over Indian territory. He didn't exaggerate. Horace Walpole, a Whig member of Parliament, said at the time that quote, the oppressions of India, and even of the English settled there under the rape and cruelties of the servants of the company have now reached England and created a general clamor here to such monopolies were imputed the late famine of Bengal and the loss of three million they didn't know the whole total of its inhabitants. A tithe of

these crimes was sufficient to inspire horror. So the famine of seventeen seventy, seventeen eighty and seventeen ninety nine. It is likely, and these are other historians to me saying this, that the famines the East India Company brought onto India where the single greatest atrocity, the single worst disaster of the entire seventeen hundreds of that whole century. It was the beginning of the end for the East India Company too, although businessmen would continue to trade and profit off of

her for nearly a tree. India continued to suffer famines, which led to unrest in war, which led to uprisings and crackdowns. This led the East India Company's army to expand, which led them to take over more and more of India, until pretty soon they controlled basically all of India and had an army of two hundred thousand soldiers. A guy named Lord Wellesley eventually wound up in charge, and he

became the company's most successful general. He's the guy who expanded them from sort of the eastern coast of India all the way into what's now Pakistan and eventually Afghanistan. According to the wonderful book Return of a King. By seventeen ninety six, quote the company was expanding rapidly out from its coastal factories to conquer much of the interior. Wellesley's Indian campaigns would ultimately annex more territory than all

of Napoleon's conquests in Europe. Yeah. This eventually brought the East India Company to the doorstep of Afghanistan. In eighteen sixteen, the British East India Company extended an offer of asylum

to Shah Shuja, the exiled king of Afghanistan. In eighteen thirty nine, due to a basically minor dispute with the Afghan from it, the East India Company invaded Afghanistan, conquered the country and placed Shah Shuja on a throne as a puppet Lord Auckland, who was the guy who had ordered the invasion, and the company quickly lost interest in their conquest of Afghanistan and immediately invaded China next because it feels it seems like they feel that, well, you

got to invade something that's not mandatory, you're allowed to stop.

Let me explain it to you, Michael. They've been selling opium to China and it had created a horrific endemic drug problem that was crippling the local economy and killing people in huge So the Chinese government band opium sales, and so they had to invade China to keep selling them deadly just like it's like, yeah, we funked up India until it's stopped bleeding money, so we have to move on to a new place and funk that place up, So let's stop the bleeding. I'm of the opinion that

this is all fine. Well know that the great heroes in history are probably the afghan people, because the East India Company is on a tear killing people by the millions, conquering land, and then they take over Afghanistan and they find themselves the rulers of Afghanistan, a country that has nothing of value for the East India Company. It's not profitable. So they have this huge army in Afghanistan that they

start needing to cut back on. And they can't cut back on the army because Afghanistan is big and hard to control, so they stopped paying bribes to all of these local war lords, which means the local warlords start attacking the army, which means there's eventually a gigantic revolution in Afghanistan that ousts the garrison, the Company's giant army in Kabul and wipes it out in the mountain passes

of Afghanistan. And there, you know, these are British soldiers with muskets, unrifled guns that aren't good at very long range. The Afghans have these weapons called Jezail Cheese, which are basically sniper rifles. So they're hiding in the mountains murdering huge numbers of British soldiers and their Indian sepoys, and they just massacre this entire British army. It's a huge, huge disaster. Uh. And this disaster comes after years of

declining revenues for the East India Company and ballooning expenses. Finally, all of this helps kill the East India Company as a global power. In eighteen fifty eight, the British government finally decided that letting a for profit enterprise governed the lives of tens of millions of people and like a fifth of the world was a really bad idea. Instead they give it to a queen. Yeah, there's there's if.

I feel like the Afghan uprising just delayed what we're already So it was it was like there was this weird chance at the very beginning of corporate history that corporations and governments could have merged then become one and the same. In the East India Company could have been like literally the empire and just own the world, and they stop that from happening for five years. It's still

gonna happen, but it could have happened really fast. There's news today that President Donald Trump is considering a plan by Eric Prince, the founder of Blackwater, to basically put private mercenaries in charge of the war of An Afghanistan and have a guy who Erik Prince is described as a viceroy run Afghanistan for the Western Powers. So there's a chance the Afghans might get to stop the next stage ship. Of course, Trump has named six to the

Council of Operance. Yeah, like everything's becoming So I will tell you one thing about Afghanistan. Nobody wins when they fight there, other than not even after the Afghan people

don't even win. Everybody loses, but you don't win. And usually when you quote unquote win or are are holding it for a while, you're just they're being hot standing around and it It's worth noting that when we invaded Afghanistan, the guy we put in charge of the country was a dude named Hamid Karzai who was an ascendant of Shah Shuja. The people the East India company put in charge of Afghanistan, who was then massacred after the revolution.

It's a small, small, awful world, dumb, dumb world. So yeah. In eighteen fifty eight, India becomes the property of Queen Victoria, who we will almost certainly discuss in a subsequent episode. The East India Company survives for another few years, but it is dissolved for good in eighteen seventy four by the East India Stock Redemption Act. This ever, shall we get our tea? Who's to say at this point, I'm sure there's competitors. So that's that's the era of heroic

commerce slog. What does that have to do with the Boston Tea party? They just brought the tea that yeah, yeah, yeah. It's really just like the militarization aspect, and that's crazy that we're going down that road again. And I left out there's so because we didn't really talk about North America. There's a lot of the story of these companies, and we didn't even because there's just so much totally because I don't know about that, but the things I do know.

It's so this is like the template for like ouran contra all kinds of ship that I do know about the I'm like, oh, this is the first time people were like, let's do this particular kind of It's a template for Iran, it's a template for all these ideas. It's a template for colonialism, and thus all these colonial

wars have their start here. This is a big part of the origin of our problems with race in the United States, because these corporations really jump start the slave trade because they're depopulating these islands of the natives, and then they need to move slaves in to work the spice plantations. It seems like it's almost and it's inevitable because you're reaching this technological threshold where we now we have compasses and sextant so we can get further away.

It's just like in any community, there's going to be some bastards. You have job security for sure, and this is the first time that you're like, oh, the bastards operate on a global level now, because it's the first time this clive motherfucker can go all the way over there and funck everything up and come all the way back. It's remarkable. It's the birth of something horrible, some Cathulu

type monster. Yeah, that is destined to destroy us all I firmly believe, and this is the to get and I think the tiniest bit to political just to explain somet of my own beliefs, because I've received some negative feedback from people over a few episodes for anti capitalist rants and stuff. Ill on what the internet? That's not the Internet. I know I'm not anti capitalist. I'm enjoying a delightful bag of Darrino's right now. I understand that,

God damn it is good. I think they'd have to eventually pay you for it to be considered capitalism though, Yeah, that's fair. But me buying the products, me enjoying a good, clean, fancy new phone is capitalism. It's not that I'm saying, Oh, this system all needs to be torn down tomorrow and

I have a solution. It's that I'm saying when we start talking about how like all the deaths from communism and stuff like you hear on the right people be like communisms killed ninety million People's man, there's a lot tens and millions of people have died under communist governments. I will never argue that with you, But if you think capitalism's death toll isn't as higher for much even much higher, because it's been going on for four hundred years.

You are not paying attention to the actual facts, in the actual history. Everything we do that we elevate to an ideology kills buckets of people. That's what people do. So don't get on your high horse. If you like capitalism. I'm not going to argue with you about the right way to run the world because I don't know what it is. But don't get on your high horse because whatever you believe, there's blood on your hands, or there's blood on the hands of the thing that you believe in.

You don't like this show, now, I couldn't agree more as Jack Johnson saying about so long he's a wise man, my friend, we've all got the blood on our hands. Yeah, I think this is I was really happy to be on this episode because it ectoes something I do. Definitely believe. There's no bigger bastard than the abstract system that develops its own momentum. Yeah, because Robert Clive, if you told him when he came to India, your actions will kill tens of millions of people. I think the guy might

have killed himself. And like we don't think of him as hitler, Yeah, because he never never exactly. So it's just there's nothing. Nothing will funk you up, like a group of self interested people who none of them think of themselves as guiding the thing. The thing just it's too late now, the things rolling. Yeah, And they don't think about the larger system. They're just like, how can we get money out of this place? They don't think about what allows a region this large and densely populated

to not get wiped out by famine constantly? Is it maybe that they've built systems over the course of millennia that you should pay attention. It's now your job to think that you're in sub Block C six of s District nine and you're supposed to make this number number increased tax revenues by four and that's all you're supposed and you kind of trust that someone well, if there was going to be a famine that would kill everyone,

someone up the chain exactly. Damn dude. Yeah, anyway, anytally you want to plug your stuff, No, I'm want to be associated with UM. You can buy all our wonderful products on now. We are opening a merging store soon. But you can find the content that might inspire. What island is your merch store up? The only island with the right cotton for us are Yeah, our baseball caps are currently being freightered over from the Cayman Islands. Already

sketchy money wise, but over at small Beans. Small Beans is the name of my outfit and you can find all of our content there. We do podcasts, sketches, occasional songs, all kinds of stuff. And I am personally on Twitter at Swain Underscore Corp. You can find me on Twitter at I right, okay. I have a book on Amazon call a Brief History Advice. Uh. And you can find this website on the internet at Behind the Bastards dot com. And you can also find us on Twitter at at

Bastard's Pod. You can find us on Instagram same way. Uh. And that's that's the episode. So check back in UM next Tuesday and there will be another episode and probably something just as depressing and frightening. That's my goal. I hope it is. I hope it really is. UM. So have a good week and I love you about h