In 2010 Sanjiv Mehta launched ‘’ The East India Company ‘’ as a revival of the historic East India Company that was dissolved on 1 June 1874, although the company is not as strong as it was three centuries ago it is a symbolic move; an Indian owns the company that dominated India and world trade for centuries.
That makes us ask ourselves an important question: how strong companies could get and how dominating, and how far a company could get just to increase its profits and is the area of companies ruling countries and nations is just history, or is it very relatable to our nowadays.
The answer is: throughout history so many companies held so much power that they were able to dominate countries, form armies, or even be a threat to their own countries which was ironic because most of those companies were created by the governments to be a source of power and influence in the far foreign lands like east India company which its motto was ‘ by command of the king and parliament of England’.
The company had absolute power and an army of over 300 thousand soldiers which was twice as many as the British crown soldiers, and over time it turned from a trading company to colonial power.
Wherefore, when the time came Britain seized the opportunity and took over and India became officially a part of the British empire.
And the question remains, wasn’t occupying India Britain’s intention in the first place and the company was nothing but soft power, to begin with.
Of course, there were other companies of that kind like the Dutch East India company which also was a symbol of capitalism, colonization, and violence.
The Companies That Colonize Our World
Today our wars are not about spices or tea, today we are fighting for information, for more number of users, and more influencing media. Today we have companies like Amazon, Facebook, and apple. the market capitalization of each of these companies is equivalent to the GDP of some countries. Transnational companies that own information about every individual on the planet.
Facebook-Cambridge analytical data scandal have opened the world’s eye to what these companies are capable of, and how they can dominate nations this time not by violence and the power of weapons but by turning the people’s heads around and manipulating them softly.
These companies can be a threat to democracy and capitalism, the same absolute power of the East India company but this time it was not the British crown that created them but a teenage boy in his university accommodation or a young man in his garage, and I do not know if this should be more assuring or more scaring.
Investigations and interrogations have started is the US Congress of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and recently of the CEOs of the 4 largest technical companies in the United States (apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon) facing the accusation of monopolism, exploitation, and conspiracy.
Also, questions like how is it that one person could be that wealthy or how profitable companies could own that much information and power. So who knows, will the history repeat itself, will we wake up one day to the news of the US taking over these companies. And is what have been happening for four centuries is the pattern a method that certain countries are following or is it just capitalism.
Written by - Aya Koky
Edited by - Sravanthi Cheerladinne
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