The British East India Company (EIC), also known as the Honourable East India Company (HEIC) or the British East India Company and informally as the John Company was founded as a British joint-stock company chartered in 1600 by Queen Elizabeth I. The English trading company would eventually monopolize the trade of opium to China, resulting in their expulsion by the Chinese Emperor, which resulted in two Opium Wars being fought between the English and China between 1839-1862.
In 1602 a rival trading company to the EIC, called the United East India Company or Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) and the Geoctroyeerde Westindische Compagnie (GWIC) backed by the Dutch Government was granted a 21 year monopoly on the Dutch spice trade. Although both trading companies share similar names, their founding nations are separate countries as displayed by their respective company flags whose designs were derived from. However both companies were similar in that they were the first publicly traded companies in their countries. This allowed investors to bet money on more than one ship, in order to avoid putting all their eggs in one basket, with the disastrous possibility of a ship being lost at sea and not returning. Stocks allowed the English and Dutch to put out thousands of ships over the centuries of the Age of Discovery. In the 1600’s there was a renaissance in European cuisine, resulting from the Spanish and Portuguese spice trade, not experienced in Europe since the fall of Constantinople, when the Silk Road no longer connected Asian spices to Rome.
The Dutch, English and other European countries began to establish colonies and trading companies to profit from the demand for teas and spices from Asia which were prescribed by doctors and cooked into recipes by chefs to combat the Black Plague or the bubonic plaque, which killed millions of Europeans with no known cure. Whether these imported ingredients conferred health benefits, their flavors were in high demand, which drove competition for these teas and spices. Competition was fierce between the trading companies who fielded their own private armies and navies. The EIC in India at it’s height had over 250,000 soldiers under company command. Three Anglo-Dutch Wars were fought between 1652-1674 largely by the armies and navies of the trading companies.
The Tea Act of 1773 was forced on the 13 Colonies and like the Stamp Act, patriots again resisted. The Tea Act was intended to save the British East India Company from financial loss from oversupply of tea filling warehouses in England. American trading companies brought back tea from Asia, which was considered illegal to sell directly to colonists since it violated the Company’s monopoly. The resistance to the Tea Act resulted in the Boston Tea Party (December 16, 1773) The British responded with the Coercive Act and the appointment of General Thomas Gage as Governor of Massachusetts. By April 1775 All 13 colonies were in rebellion. The United East India Company secretly supplied arms, ammunition and needed supplies blockaded by the British, that the Dutch were able to deliver to the American Colonial Revolutionist, while the Dutch maintained a tenuous peace with the British. However, shortly after the U.S. gained independence the British discovered evidence of the extent of Dutch involvement in New York, which culminated in a Fourth Anglo-Dutch War which was fought between 1781-1784..
