232 DESTINY DISRUPTED
The first such company was born in 1553, when forty English mer-
chants ponied up twenty-five pounds apiece to finance a search for a sea
route to India. The expedition they funded found Moscow instead of
India (don't ask}, but it brought home a tidy profit and when this news
spread, other people clamored to buy into "the Russia Company." Those
who paid the subscription fee got slips of paper entitling them to a pro-
portional cut of any profits the company's future ventures earned, slips of
paper they could sell to speculators if they wished (and thus the institution
of the stock market was born}.
Around 1600, three gigantic national versions of that first corporation
were created in Europe: they were the English, the Dutch, and the French
"East India Companies." Each was a limited liability corporation with
private shareholders. Each was founded for the sole aim of turning a
profit on trade in East Asia in order to enrich its shareholders. Each was
run by a board of directors. Each was chartered by its national govern-
ment, and in each case the government in question gave its company a
national monopoly on doing business in the Islamic east. The actual en-
tities jockeying for advantage in Persia, India, and Southeast Asia, then,
were these corporations.
Over the course of two centuries in India, these European corpora-
tions altered the texture of the Indian economy in ways reminiscent of
what was happening in the Ottoman world. In Bengal, where the British
elbowed out all other Europeans, the East India Company pretty much
destroyed the Bengali crafts industry, but hardly noticed itself doing so. It
was simply buying up lots of raw material at very good prices. People
found more profit in selling raw material to the British than in using
those materials to make their own goods. As the native economy went
bust, indigenous Bengalis became ever more dependant on the British
and finally subservient to them.
When the corporations first arrived in India, they competed to earn
the favor of the Moghul emperor, but as the empire broke down, the favor
of the central government mattered less and less. The Europeans came to
realize they had better align themselves with various local rulers rising up.
But they had to pick the right ones of these, because some turned out to
be losers and got churned under. Guessing wrong about the subcontinent's
internal politics would cost the company money. It was tempting, there-