Parker, J.G.

English

For a century and a half before 1754 the East India
Company had. enjoyed a monopoly of English trade with the East.
The Company, under the control of a Court of Directors drawn
exclusively from mercantile and financial world, had
steadfastly resisted any move on the part of its servants in
India towards territorial acquisition, or political involvement,
and. had concentrated on the pursuit of its trade, based
on its three main settlements, in Bombay, Madras and Fort
William, in Bengal. However, the political instability in
India accompanying the decline of the power of the centralised
Mogul Empire, and the growing challenge of the Company's
main European rivals, the French, in the mid-eighteenth
century, forced the Company to take up arms to defend its
position.

Consequently, with victories over the French in the south,
and over Mogul power in Bengal, the Company, in the period from
1754 to 1790, underwent a transformation from the status of a
purely commercial organisation in the sub-continent, to that
of a political power with territorial responsibilities. This
thesis sets out to discuss the men who became directors in the
thirty-six years from 1754, how developments in the Company' a
situation in the East affected the composition of the
Direction, and, conversely, how changes in the constituent
elements of the Court influenced the Company's policies in the
East; also, how the interests and factions in the Company,
which the directors represented, altered in the period, with
the consequences for the balance of power at East India House;
and, finally, how well equipped were the directors of these
years to cope with the Company's changing role in the East;
all questions of importance in this formative period, when
directors of a commercial organisation struggled to deal with
the problems of an increasingly political dominion

Parker, James Gordon

Edinburgh Research Archive

The directors of the East India Company, 1754-1790

174: 'Considerations on the Important Benefits to

J mes G. Parker August 1977

https://era.ed.ac.uk/bitstream/1842/6833/1/D077412.pdf

The directors of the East India Company, 1754-1790

Abstract

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