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The British East India Company was a joint-stock company that held a company monopoly over trade between the British Isles and India (as well as much of the rest of Asia) from the early 1600s to the late 1800s. Smith relentlessly criticizes the British East India Company for its greed, brutality towards native peoples, and poor governance. When Smith published The Wealth of Nations, the East India Company had already conquered much of South Asia and begun ruling it as a repressive dictatorship; it would only grow more cruel and powerful over the following decades, until the first Indian War of Independence led the crown to take it over directly.
British East India Company Quotes in The Wealth of Nations
The The Wealth of Nations quotes below are all either spoken by British East India Company or refer to British East India Company . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Book 5, Chapter 1
Quotes
Frequently a man of great, sometimes even a man of small fortune, is willing to purchase a thousand pounds share in India stock, merely for the influence which he expects to acquire by a vote in the court of proprietors. It gives him a share, though not in the plunder, yet in the appointment of the plunderers of India. [...] About the prosperity of the great empire, in the government of which that vote gives him a share, he seldom cares at all. No other sovereigns ever were, or, from the nature of things, ever could be, so perfectly indifferent about the happiness or misery of their subjects, the improvement or waste of their dominions, the glory or disgrace of their administration, as, from irresistible moral causes, the greater part of the proprietors of such a mercantile company are, and necessarily must be.
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British East India Company Quotes in The Wealth of Nations
The The Wealth of Nations quotes below are all either spoken by British East India Company or refer to British East India Company . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Book 5, Chapter 1
Quotes
Frequently a man of great, sometimes even a man of small fortune, is willing to purchase a thousand pounds share in India stock, merely for the influence which he expects to acquire by a vote in the court of proprietors. It gives him a share, though not in the plunder, yet in the appointment of the plunderers of India. [...] About the prosperity of the great empire, in the government of which that vote gives him a share, he seldom cares at all. No other sovereigns ever were, or, from the nature of things, ever could be, so perfectly indifferent about the happiness or misery of their subjects, the improvement or waste of their dominions, the glory or disgrace of their administration, as, from irresistible moral causes, the greater part of the proprietors of such a mercantile company are, and necessarily must be.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
