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A History of Corporate Control: The East India Company | UK Column Interviews · UK Column Radio

0:08
Speaker 1: Hello.
0:08
Speaker 2: I'm Charles Madnock with a UK column interview and today
0:11
Speaker 2: I have with me William Durrymple. William a very warm
0:14
Speaker 2: welcome to UK column and thank you for joining.
0:16
Speaker 1: Me, very very nice to be invited on. Thank you
0:19
Speaker 1: not at all.
0:20
Speaker 2: No, I would say that we're going to try to
0:24
Speaker 2: tackle a big subject today, and that is, you know,
0:28
Speaker 2: your special subject, empire effectively but specifically, and not wanting
0:33
Speaker 2: to lure you into into tricky territory necessarily, but to
0:36
Speaker 2: deal with the idea that what we see in the
0:40
Speaker 2: world around us now is only really to be made
0:44
Speaker 2: sense of with the context of history, and I think
0:49
Speaker 2: in particular the relationship between state and corporate power. And
0:54
Speaker 2: so just as an easy opener, what I would put
0:57
Speaker 2: to you or ask you is, what does it say
1:00
Speaker 2: about British history that outside the Foreign Commonwealth and Development
1:05
Speaker 2: Office sits a statue of Robert Clive of India.
1:11
Speaker 3: So I should perhaps declare an interest here. I've spent
1:14
Speaker 3: the last twenty five years writing four books on the
1:18
Speaker 3: East India Company, which is I suppose my special subject.
1:22
Speaker 3: They are The Anarchy, White Mugals, Return of the King
1:27
Speaker 3: and the Last Mogul and between them. They now appear
1:30
Speaker 3: as a sort of box set of the Company Quartet.
1:33
Speaker 1: And it's the story which.
1:35
Speaker 3: I think is surprisingly little known, because I think people
1:38
Speaker 3: tend to think of the story of British imperiodism as
1:42
Speaker 3: being a state enterprise led by the state and the
1:45
Speaker 3: British Army and the Royal Navy and commanded from Downing Street.
1:50
Speaker 3: And I think it's often forgotten that a great deal
1:53
Speaker 3: of the work of empire, and this is not just
1:58
Speaker 3: the case with the British Empire, but also the case
2:00
Speaker 3: with the Portuguese and the Dutch and many others were
2:06
Speaker 3: led by private corporations. And the most powerful and most
2:10
Speaker 3: successful of those was the corporation which I've spent the
2:13
Speaker 3: last quarter century writing about, which is the East India Company.
2:18
Speaker 3: And these Dinner Company is an extraordinary story. It is
2:23
Speaker 3: a private company with shareholders, with an general meeting, with
2:27
Speaker 3: a share price that was listed on the Stock exchange,
2:32
Speaker 3: and yet it was also the conqueror of the largest
2:37
Speaker 3: and richest country in the world in the eighteenth century,
2:40
Speaker 3: which was India. India in the eighteenth century controlled about
2:46
Speaker 3: or produced about a quarter of the world's GDP. There
2:52
Speaker 3: are most for most of history that's true that India
2:56
Speaker 3: and China between them produced up to about eighty percent
3:01
Speaker 3: of the world's GDP, and Europe was not as central
3:07
Speaker 3: as were perhaps taught in our schools to imagine it
3:09
Speaker 3: to be. And the eighteenth century is one of those
3:13
Speaker 3: moments when India actually overtakes China.
3:15
Speaker 1: There's not many of them, but throughout the.
3:18
Speaker 3: Eighteenth century chicked to the Indian textile industry was extraordinarily
3:23
Speaker 3: rich and successful, and it was that that attracted the
3:27
Speaker 3: British and the French, and the Dutch and the.
3:29
Speaker 1: Portuguese to.
3:33
Speaker 3: Trade initially and then conquer chunks of the country. And
3:37
Speaker 3: eventually it was the East India Company which took over
3:41
Speaker 3: the whole of India, and it did that astonishingly with
3:44
Speaker 3: its own private army. India was later garrisoned by the
3:50
Speaker 3: British Army, but throughout the eighteenth century the conquering of
3:54
Speaker 3: it was done not by the British Army by and large,
3:56
Speaker 3: though there were occasionally British Army units involved, most of
4:01
Speaker 3: the work was done and most of the manpower came
4:03
Speaker 3: from the East India Company's own army, which was separate,
4:08
Speaker 3: which was controlled by the directors of the East India Company,
4:11
Speaker 3: and which was far larger than the British Army. The
4:16
Speaker 3: British Army in seventeen ninety nine, just as it was
4:18
Speaker 3: beginning to re arm to fight Napoleon, was about one
4:23
Speaker 3: hundred thousand soldiers. The East India Company Army in the
4:27
Speaker 3: same year had just short of two hundred thousand seapoys, and.
4:32
Speaker 1: So it was literally double the size of the British Army.
4:34
Speaker 3: And this whole enterprise was run out of a single
4:37
Speaker 3: office in London in Leadenhall Street. For much of the
4:41
Speaker 3: eighteenth century it was a rather modest Georgian building, six
4:45
Speaker 3: windows wide. In about the eighteen twenties it was enlarged
4:49
Speaker 3: and something looked a bit more like Bucking Palace and
4:51
Speaker 3: took over a great chunk of leaden All Street. But
4:54
Speaker 3: throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was just six
4:58
Speaker 3: windows wide. It had no big blackhard outside it. There
5:02
Speaker 3: are engravings of it with Georgian gentlemen's of frock coats
5:06
Speaker 3: wandering past the railings, apparently unaware that anything was going
5:09
Speaker 3: on inside. And yet out of this building the conquest
5:13
Speaker 3: of the richest country in the world was organized and
5:18
Speaker 3: the East India Company took advantage of the breakup of
5:21
Speaker 3: the Mogul Empire for which it was not responsible that
5:23
Speaker 3: cidently it happened independently and was about internal Indian politics
5:27
Speaker 3: and then invasion from Persia with Nadishah in seventeen thirty
5:33
Speaker 3: nine who ran off within Tarmmgal Treasury, leading to the
5:37
Speaker 3: fragmentation of India, and at that point the East India
5:40
Speaker 3: Company and their rivals, the French Company designed sort of
5:43
Speaker 3: fought it out and the English East India Company under
5:47
Speaker 3: Robert Clive, who you asked me about, was the victor.
5:53
Speaker 1: And Robert Clive is an extraordinary character.
5:56
Speaker 3: I mean, he's one of the most interesting characters in
5:59
Speaker 3: British and in history. And he is someone who won
6:06
Speaker 3: almost all the battles that he engaged, of the many
6:08
Speaker 3: that engaged in his life. Initially as a military man
6:13
Speaker 3: in India working for the East India Company, he fought
6:17
Speaker 3: a very unconventional style of warfare for the eighteenth century.
6:19
Speaker 3: Eighteenth century warfare was often very formal, with you know,
6:21
Speaker 3: sort of lines of infantry and cavalry and artillery on
6:25
Speaker 3: the flanks, and you know, everyone sort of wore bright
6:29
Speaker 3: red uniforms and lined up and exchanged cannonades and then
6:34
Speaker 3: sort of charged each other. Clive didn't do that talk.
6:37
Speaker 3: Clive attack from the rear at night before in the
6:39
Speaker 3: morning in the fog during thunderstorms, terrified his opponents consistently.
6:45
Speaker 1: And was a brilliant general.
6:51
Speaker 3: He then went back to England where he engaged equally
6:54
Speaker 3: successfully in the boardroom warfare of the city of London
6:59
Speaker 3: and eventually became the boss of the East India Company
7:01
Speaker 3: and outwitted his rival Sullivan, and finally, as an MP.
7:07
Speaker 1: Controlled a great chunk of the British.
7:09
Speaker 3: Parliament because Easterndier Company men were returning back from India
7:14
Speaker 3: right that eccentrily with vast fortunes, and there was an
7:17
Speaker 3: extraordinary situation by the seventeen eighties when I can't remember
7:19
Speaker 3: the exact statistics off the top of my head, but
7:22
Speaker 3: something like a third Parliamentarians were Eastern Deer Company retorneys
7:26
Speaker 3: who come back and bought rotten Boroughs and something like
7:30
Speaker 3: eighty or ninety percent I can't remember the exact figure
7:32
Speaker 3: of MP's controller had Easter INNdiA Company shares. So the
7:36
Speaker 3: East India Company, which was the largest single employer in
7:38
Speaker 3: Britain with its own enormous army, double the size of
7:44
Speaker 3: the British Army. Also had an incredibly influential effect on
7:49
Speaker 3: British politics, and to a certain extent, you could argue
7:52
Speaker 3: that they invented corporate lobbying. This this business that still
7:55
Speaker 3: goes on today, whereby donations are given to political parties
7:59
Speaker 3: for and for covertly expressed pro god quo which is
8:05
Speaker 3: never openly declared, but which is expected often by the donors.
8:10
Speaker 3: And these in the company learnt how to refine its corruption.
8:18
Speaker 3: One of the very I think the first government of
8:20
Speaker 3: These India Company ended up in the Tower of London
8:22
Speaker 3: because he started bribing MPs very early on with cash
8:25
Speaker 3: in hand to extend the company's monopoly. And I think
8:30
Speaker 3: in very early years that sixteen o five or sixteen
8:33
Speaker 3: ten or something, that the company had a monopoly which
8:34
Speaker 3: had to be extended. He was caught bribing people. And
8:37
Speaker 3: since then it refined its technique so that the East
8:41
Speaker 3: India Company became many ways the father of corporate lobbying
8:45
Speaker 3: and found ways of offering you know, campaign donations and
8:49
Speaker 3: putting its own men up for rotten boroughs and so on,
8:52
Speaker 3: so that by mysterious alchemy. The interest of the East
8:55
Speaker 3: India Company became the interest of the British Parliament, and
9:00
Speaker 3: what was good for these India Company became foreign policy.
9:04
Speaker 3: So as well as in a sense conquering India in
9:08
Speaker 3: a very different way, it conquered Britain and controlled its
9:13
Speaker 3: body politic in a way that no institution has ever
9:16
Speaker 3: done before. Arguably, since you know, the time of the
9:19
Speaker 3: Magna Carture and the barons being sort of confronting the
9:24
Speaker 3: state with warfare, you've never had an institution capable of
9:32
Speaker 3: bending the state to its will. So it's, as you
9:36
Speaker 3: can hear, a very modern story, although it's a story
9:38
Speaker 3: of the eighteenth century, and the companies, you know, finally
9:40
Speaker 3: wound up at eighteen fifty eight by an act of Parliament,
9:44
Speaker 3: and in the final analysis, at the end this long
9:48
Speaker 3: battle which had gone on for one hundred and fifty
9:50
Speaker 3: years between the parent of the state and the parwer
9:51
Speaker 3: of the corporation, ultimately the state that wins, and these
9:55
Speaker 3: India companies disbanded, according to the Times, with less fast
9:58
Speaker 3: than a regional railway back bankruptcy. So despite in the
10:04
Speaker 3: end that round is won by the state, but the
10:11
Speaker 3: methods that it pioneered of influencing a legislature, the precedent
10:18
Speaker 3: that it formed of a multinational and it was also
10:24
Speaker 3: a fascinatingly kind of shape shifter. It's different things at
10:28
Speaker 3: different times. It starts off as we're actually London enterprise,
10:31
Speaker 3: London merchants wanting to buy spices and compete with the Dutch,
10:35
Speaker 3: who just does successful voyages to the Spice Islands which
10:38
Speaker 3: were not India, which were far distant Indonesia, and quite
10:42
Speaker 3: clearly the Banda Islands close to Papua New Guinea in
10:46
Speaker 3: the modern map. And that goes on for about forty years,
10:51
Speaker 3: and they do less and less well against the Dutch
10:54
Speaker 3: who've got better ships and better finance and better ways
10:57
Speaker 3: of raising capital. And eventually they get kind of kicked
11:02
Speaker 3: out of the East Indies as Indonesia as we record
11:06
Speaker 3: it now, and the Dutch win, and there's a face
11:10
Speaker 3: saving treaty whereby in the return for the Banda Islands,
11:15
Speaker 3: the British get given a completely useless island in the
11:18
Speaker 3: middle of the Hudson River called Manhattan, which is a
11:22
Speaker 3: kind of face saving swap. Of course, in the end
11:25
Speaker 3: it turned out to be quite a valuable swap, but
11:28
Speaker 3: they didn't do. At the time, no one realized what
11:30
Speaker 3: a good deal the Brits were getting. And over the
11:36
Speaker 3: course of the eighteenth century, the Brits realized that they've actually
11:40
Speaker 3: got the better deal because they relocate to India and
11:43
Speaker 3: they focus on the textile trade, which is the big
11:46
Speaker 3: eighteenth century.
11:48
Speaker 1: Product that they deal with, and so it is making these.
11:51
Speaker 3: Extraordinary textiles, all sorts of fancy textiles called kanankarries and silks.
11:57
Speaker 3: But ultimately the kind of body of the trade was
12:01
Speaker 3: simple cotton, what they call peace goods, which is rolls
12:05
Speaker 3: of simple white cotton that the British export for the
12:09
Speaker 3: for the moguls all over the world, and so much
12:12
Speaker 3: so that you get sort of de industrialization in Mexico
12:15
Speaker 3: by the late eighteenth century as the East India company
12:18
Speaker 3: cotton undercuts everything everywhere else in the world.
12:20
Speaker 1: It's such high quality. And then so having started a spice.
12:25
Speaker 3: Export business which went wrong and then become a textile business,
12:30
Speaker 3: they suddenly reais that their business model of shipping English
12:34
Speaker 3: goal that to India to buy this stuff is unnecessary.
12:37
Speaker 3: And they have now thanks to the military revolution of
12:41
Speaker 3: the eighteenth century Europe and the collapse the Mogal Empire,
12:43
Speaker 3: that their new methods of warfare developed in by Frederick
12:47
Speaker 3: the Great and Prussia, which they've adopted and has been
12:50
Speaker 3: adopted all over Europe, new eighteenth century ballistics, horse artillery,
12:56
Speaker 3: file firing and infantry and so on and so forth,
13:00
Speaker 3: that this allows them to actually conquer great chunks of India,
13:03
Speaker 3: and from the seventeen forties through particularly in the seventeen
13:06
Speaker 3: fifties and the battle Classy in the Battle of Buxa,
13:08
Speaker 3: and finally with the battles against the Maratas and the Sikhs,
13:11
Speaker 3: the East India Company conquers using Indian troops and borrowing
13:15
Speaker 3: capital from Indian bankers, which it repays very promptly and
13:20
Speaker 3: therefore is the favored lender of the Indian banking dynasties.
13:26
Speaker 1: The East India.
13:27
Speaker 3: Company extends its way over the whole of India. Then
13:31
Speaker 3: they realize that they can grow in the marginal land
13:34
Speaker 3: opium poppies, which they then export to China, and they
13:38
Speaker 3: become the largest narco operator in the world in world history.
13:43
Speaker 3: And they sell poppy from India to China. They buy
13:50
Speaker 3: tea in China which they sell in India, Europe and
13:53
Speaker 3: in America. It's East India Company tea that gets poured
13:56
Speaker 3: into Boston Harbor at the.
13:58
Speaker 1: Boston Tea Party.
14:00
Speaker 3: And by the seventeen eighties they become this massive multinational.
14:04
Speaker 3: They own most of India, they are making vast suns
14:07
Speaker 3: of money out of China. They're subverting the Parliament in Britain,
14:11
Speaker 3: and they are they and they're thwarted by the American
14:14
Speaker 3: Revolution from extending their influence into America. So what started
14:18
Speaker 3: off as a sort of Elizabethan Amazon in a garage
14:23
Speaker 3: of Sir Thomas Smythe, who was the Jeff Bezos in
14:25
Speaker 3: this analysis, they end up the most powerful company in history.
14:31
Speaker 3: And in over the twenty five years I've been writing
14:33
Speaker 3: about it, we've seen the growth of companies such as Apple,
14:37
Speaker 3: Meta and Microsoft, who, like these India Company, had annual
14:42
Speaker 3: general had profits which they presented annual general meetings, greater
14:47
Speaker 3: than that of whole nation states, and with the ability
14:52
Speaker 3: to subvert nation states either by war or by bribery,
15:00
Speaker 3: and they become quite unincredibly powerful. But it's a story
15:07
Speaker 3: which speaks to us today because we see today these
15:10
Speaker 3: massive corporations with enormous resources.
15:13
Speaker 2: We absolutely do I mean, obviously you're absolutely specialists subjects,
15:19
Speaker 2: but in a way an unfair question to ask you
15:21
Speaker 2: to contend quite so much and to one thing. But
15:26
Speaker 2: you know it's there, and there is a lot to
15:29
Speaker 2: go back to from what you've just said. But I
15:31
Speaker 2: think exactly where you ended up with this idea of
15:34
Speaker 2: there being phenomenal corporate power. Let's just go back to
15:39
Speaker 2: eighteen fifty eight, because you made the point there that
15:42
Speaker 2: in that instance the state one, But you have also
15:45
Speaker 2: just referred to the state being subverted. So is it
15:49
Speaker 2: the case that actually the state in eighteen fifty eight
15:53
Speaker 2: was quite dramatically different from the state as it had
15:56
Speaker 2: existed over the course of the previous centuries. And therefore,
15:59
Speaker 2: if we can the individuals, because of course, actually this
16:02
Speaker 2: is really a tale of a chain of individuals, and
16:05
Speaker 2: you might say that greed has played a great part
16:07
Speaker 2: in this. So I mean, who, in terms of the individuals,
16:12
Speaker 2: really won in eighteen fifty eight. Do you really think
16:15
Speaker 2: that it was the state in the way that it
16:17
Speaker 2: had been a couple hundred years previously.
16:19
Speaker 3: If that's so, there's been a growing agitation of the
16:22
Speaker 3: course of the nineteenth century over the fact that it
16:26
Speaker 3: was very odd that it was a corporation which was
16:30
Speaker 3: controlling Britain's most important colony, and after the loss of
16:34
Speaker 3: America in the seventeen eighties and the increasing importance of
16:39
Speaker 3: India to the British economy in the early nineteenth century,
16:42
Speaker 3: the oddity that it was a company, not the Crown,
16:47
Speaker 3: which was running this colony became more and more apparent,
16:50
Speaker 3: and more and more parliamentarians raise it. But the company
16:55
Speaker 3: is finally, you know, companies, sees off various attempts in
16:58
Speaker 3: the early nineteen cent tree to isolate it and defang it,
17:05
Speaker 3: and it ultimately it's the Great Indian Uprising, which we
17:09
Speaker 3: call the Indian Mutiny in Britain, but which in India
17:11
Speaker 3: is called the First War of Independence. And this is armageddon.
17:15
Speaker 3: This is the most enormous anti climinual uprising in history.
17:20
Speaker 3: Hundreds of thousands die, it's and they very nearly succeed
17:24
Speaker 3: in throwing the Brits out of India. It's it's a
17:28
Speaker 3: series of complete chances that the telegram sent out of
17:32
Speaker 3: Delhi on the day that the thing breaks out to
17:35
Speaker 3: the rest of India, which allows these India Company to
17:38
Speaker 3: disarm the Sepoy regiments who arrested elsewhere.
17:43
Speaker 1: Recruit new troops.
17:45
Speaker 3: Under a different banner from the Sikhs and the Pushtuns
17:49
Speaker 3: in the Northwest, and basically just managed to get Also
17:55
Speaker 3: fact there's a tenor of army troops heading on their
17:57
Speaker 3: way to China who are diverted to color Cutter and
18:00
Speaker 3: march up the Ganges and.
18:02
Speaker 1: Defeat the sea points.
18:04
Speaker 3: All these things mean that by the end of eighteen
18:06
Speaker 3: fifty eight, the whole thing has been suppressed and the
18:10
Speaker 3: Brits are back in control. But it has been the
18:13
Speaker 3: most obvious, you know, an unquestionably a complete mess, and many,
18:18
Speaker 3: many British women and children have been killed, far greater
18:21
Speaker 3: numbers of innocent Indians have been massacred. And this is
18:26
Speaker 3: the point where everyone disagrees, right, you know, we've could
18:28
Speaker 3: to find a new way of running this show, and
18:30
Speaker 3: the state takes over. I think you could make a
18:33
Speaker 3: case that had it not been for that uprising, that
18:35
Speaker 3: these Indio company would have found ways to continue operating
18:38
Speaker 3: much longer.
18:39
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I mean it very much sounds like it the
18:42
Speaker 2: Wine Earth. Given what you're saying, would they have you
18:46
Speaker 2: done anything other than that? If they'd been able the elements,
18:49
Speaker 2: I'd like to sort of introduce here to ask you
18:51
Speaker 2: about because of course, when we think of a similar time,
18:55
Speaker 2: I mean not altogether similar, but the situation now with
18:59
Speaker 2: these incredible corporate sort of behear moths that dominate the
19:04
Speaker 2: space and what might loosely be described as public opinion
19:10
Speaker 2: about them. I know that that is a difficult term
19:14
Speaker 2: to use, because of course the public has many opinions,
19:17
Speaker 2: and many different elements of the public would have different opinions.
19:20
Speaker 2: But by this time, what was or indeed did the
19:26
Speaker 2: public mood such as it may be described back in
19:29
Speaker 2: Britain have any impact on what was going on? And
19:33
Speaker 2: was that changing? Was that evolving as the company was evolving.
19:36
Speaker 1: So one of the.
19:37
Speaker 3: Biggest surprises for me researching this history over twenty five
19:41
Speaker 3: years was how angry quite little Brits were about these company.
19:47
Speaker 3: I think people assume that, you know, people thought imperialism.
19:52
Speaker 1: Was fine in the eighteenth ninety century. It's only a modern.
19:56
Speaker 3: Liberal sensibility that means that we oppose imperialism today. In reality,
20:02
Speaker 3: this astonishing amount of resistance to the East India Company
20:06
Speaker 3: in the eighteenth century.
20:07
Speaker 1: Some of it is jealousy.
20:09
Speaker 3: You have people minding kind of nouveau riche neighbobs returned
20:14
Speaker 3: from India, possibly with dodgy Indian wives, in the views
20:18
Speaker 3: of the locals, turning up and buying you know, getting
20:22
Speaker 3: rid of some old buffer who's been the MP for
20:24
Speaker 3: forty years, taking buying up his house and taking over.
20:28
Speaker 3: And in the same way that you know, people in
20:30
Speaker 3: the nineteen eighties used to dislike much of bankers crashing
20:33
Speaker 3: their porsches into restaurants and letting off fire extinguishers and
20:37
Speaker 3: they're misbehaving that. You know, you get a bit of
20:41
Speaker 3: that in the eighteenth century. You get people disregarding these
20:43
Speaker 3: as sort of monstrous nuvoche.
20:47
Speaker 1: Jumped up merchants. But people like.
20:55
Speaker 3: Clive were booed in the streets and there was you know,
21:00
Speaker 3: for example, after the Bengal famine, when maybe million Indians
21:06
Speaker 3: died in Bengal, with the East India Company not bothering
21:09
Speaker 3: to set up a single soup kitchen. The same famine
21:12
Speaker 3: strikes areas under Indian rule, and Indians responders they've always
21:16
Speaker 3: done to famine by setting up soup kitchens and creating,
21:19
Speaker 3: you know, building massive monuments that they didn't really need
21:22
Speaker 3: in order to employ people doing times of famine and
21:25
Speaker 3: paying them a basic wage. As for example, in the
21:27
Speaker 3: Kingdom of Avid there is a very strong response by
21:31
Speaker 3: the la and very few people die, although you know,
21:33
Speaker 3: there's a great shortage of food under the East India Company.
21:36
Speaker 3: A million die and this is reported by whistleblowers. There's
21:39
Speaker 3: no foreign correspondence in those days. You've got no sort
21:41
Speaker 3: of CNN people jetting in or Christina Lamb turning up
21:46
Speaker 3: for the Sunday Times. You've got East India Company whistleblowers
21:51
Speaker 3: writing to the Spectator and the Gentlemen's Magazine and Blackwood's,
21:55
Speaker 3: you know, describing horrific scenes of starvation. And this becomes
22:00
Speaker 3: widely known in Britain that the company has just been
22:02
Speaker 3: you know, murdering, effectively murdering a million people, doing nothing
22:05
Speaker 3: to save it, and sending out vast profits to London,
22:12
Speaker 3: and all these people still retiring with enormous fortunes while
22:15
Speaker 3: all this is going on, and you get plays put
22:21
Speaker 3: on in the Hay Market where Clive is is mocked
22:24
Speaker 3: as Lord Vulture uh and and you know various other
22:29
Speaker 3: nagh bobs whose names are now not well known, you know,
22:32
Speaker 3: as the other characters in this play. And they get
22:35
Speaker 3: heat hissed in the streets of London. And in the end, Clive,
22:39
Speaker 3: you know, it's the best ever example of Indian comic
22:44
Speaker 3: theory of something you know, there were your just desserts will.
22:47
Speaker 1: Come to you. Clive commits suicide. He cuts his own wrists.
22:55
Speaker 3: In a deep depression over the fact that he's you
22:59
Speaker 3: can't go without people booing him. So So, you know,
23:04
Speaker 3: whenever some of my right wing friends sort of tell
23:07
Speaker 3: me that my views that you know are very sort
23:09
Speaker 3: of about those of the liberal modern establishment, I say
23:12
Speaker 3: absolutely not. This is you know, decent people have always
23:14
Speaker 3: supposed famines, massacres, genocides throughout history, and that equally they've
23:22
Speaker 3: always been those who've said that, you know, profits, business
23:26
Speaker 3: must continue.
23:28
Speaker 1: So but I have to rather proud of.
23:31
Speaker 3: The British response to the Sydney Company. You get an
23:35
Speaker 3: awful lot of resistance to it at the time, and
23:38
Speaker 3: some very brilliant writers such as Horace Walpole writing eloquently
23:44
Speaker 3: about the evils of conquering in other people, sucking out
23:50
Speaker 3: their wealth and looting a country.
23:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's fascinating. I think the interesting thing
23:55
Speaker 2: that drops out of that is rea what I'd like
23:58
Speaker 2: you to sort of describe if it were a thing then,
24:01
Speaker 2: I mean, now, corporate communications are such that those sorts
24:06
Speaker 2: of stories would be suppressed so incredibly vigorously and actually effectively,
24:12
Speaker 2: because of course, in today's communications space, so many of
24:16
Speaker 2: the big companies that you've just described actually control the
24:18
Speaker 2: communications networks. But did the East India Company at that
24:22
Speaker 2: time have the ability to direct the press or have
24:27
Speaker 2: media channels of their own?
24:28
Speaker 3: I mean, very interesting question that I'm ashamed to say
24:31
Speaker 3: I haven't examined, and it's a very interesting thing to
24:35
Speaker 3: fin I will make a note to to because I
24:38
Speaker 3: didn't think the East India Company. I didn't know these
24:42
Speaker 3: we controlling the press, but it's quite possible that they did.
24:45
Speaker 3: And certainly journalists were for her then as they are
24:48
Speaker 3: today today. But what you do find is that particularly
24:53
Speaker 3: after the Bengal famine, and particularly after these whistleblower reports
24:57
Speaker 3: by these India Company's own servants and anonymously right back,
25:02
Speaker 3: horrible reports of bodies piling up in Calcutta and corpses
25:07
Speaker 3: in them in the Ganges, and dogs eating babies and cannibalism,
25:12
Speaker 3: or people selling their children into the slavery and stuff,
25:16
Speaker 3: when all This appears in the British press. It also
25:20
Speaker 3: appears in the American press and plays a very important role.
25:23
Speaker 3: It's seventeen eighty four that the that the Bengal famine happens, sorry,
25:27
Speaker 3: seventeen seventy four Bengal famine happens, and you find a
25:32
Speaker 3: lot of American patriots very alarmed that these India companies
25:38
Speaker 3: has been allowed to sell tea in Boston and saying we.
25:41
Speaker 1: Are not we are not Maratas, we will fight for.
25:45
Speaker 3: Our freedom from from the East India company. And so
25:48
Speaker 3: its reputation was known even in America.
25:52
Speaker 1: Very interesting, No, it is.
25:54
Speaker 2: I think it's fascinating. And as I say, you know,
25:57
Speaker 2: given the situation now and the and the incredible efforts
26:00
Speaker 2: corporations will go to to maintain control of the particular
26:05
Speaker 2: narrative that is important to them and their business, I.
26:08
Speaker 3: Think you've come up with a childs with a very
26:10
Speaker 3: good idea of someone's PhDs to decompany the press.
26:13
Speaker 1: I don't think it's been done that. I think it's
26:15
Speaker 1: a very interesting idea.
26:16
Speaker 2: Well, but then again, how do how does one get
26:18
Speaker 2: to it? And this is what I was going to
26:20
Speaker 2: ask you, actually, as as an historian, How is it
26:24
Speaker 2: that you make that decision when you're scouring through this,
26:28
Speaker 2: that and the other. How do you decide when you've
26:31
Speaker 2: hit upon what you think is the most likely truth
26:34
Speaker 2: for one for a better word, and the reason I
26:35
Speaker 2: just just to just to go further that because you've
26:37
Speaker 2: just talked about reports of horrific events and and also
26:43
Speaker 2: you've mentioned the word genocide. Now we're going to come
26:45
Speaker 2: on to it. But clearly what is going on in
26:47
Speaker 2: the Middle East now triggered by the events of October seventh,
26:51
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three, the reporting has been.
26:56
Speaker 1: Wild on you might say, on all sides.
26:59
Speaker 2: Now, in twenty years time, I think it's going to
27:02
Speaker 2: be quite hard to look back at that and actually
27:05
Speaker 2: discern what did or didn't happen. How do you do
27:08
Speaker 2: that when you're looking back hundreds of years.
27:11
Speaker 3: So one of the extraordinary things about the Stindia Company
27:14
Speaker 3: is the astonishing amount of archival material it left behind
27:19
Speaker 3: and which you can now consult. In the Anarchy, I
27:23
Speaker 3: wrote about its very first meeting, which took place in
27:25
Speaker 3: the Founders Hall in Moorgate Fields, which isn't a grotty
27:29
Speaker 3: tube station that it is today but was literally fields
27:31
Speaker 3: outside London with a lovely and the founders were the
27:36
Speaker 3: Brass Founders, so they had their own guildhall. And this
27:41
Speaker 3: was fifteen ninety nine when Shakespeare was writing Hamlet. And
27:45
Speaker 3: Shakespeare got stuck in the middle of writing to be
27:47
Speaker 3: or not to be inside, to go for a walk
27:49
Speaker 3: while he thought over how this speech could end. He
27:52
Speaker 3: could have crossed Dundon Bridge and been in the Founder's
27:55
Speaker 3: Hall by about twenty five minutes from the Globe Theater,
27:58
Speaker 3: walking along the Thames. And anyway, you know, I called
28:03
Speaker 3: up the minutes of that meeting which is sitting in
28:06
Speaker 3: the British Library today and there it is the first
28:08
Speaker 3: subscribers and the very first meeting inscription of everyone that
28:10
Speaker 3: attended it. And from that point onwards, the East India
28:13
Speaker 3: Company has left this paper trail.
28:16
Speaker 1: And if you then go to.
28:17
Speaker 3: India and the Indian archives, you get the and even
28:21
Speaker 3: fuller picture because you get the provincial archives.
28:24
Speaker 1: And what you have happening is.
28:27
Speaker 3: Something happens in Peshawar or the hall and the local
28:31
Speaker 3: guy sends a message to Calcutter. What you get in
28:37
Speaker 3: Peshawer and the whore is the original message. You then
28:41
Speaker 3: get the message as it arrives in Calcutta and that's
28:44
Speaker 3: kept now in the National Archives in Delhi where the
28:47
Speaker 3: East India Company's Calcuta archives have been moved into the
28:51
Speaker 3: National Archives. And what you get in London in the
28:53
Speaker 3: British Library is the Leadenhall Street records kept at the
28:58
Speaker 3: head office, so you can follow a single event through
29:01
Speaker 3: different archives and see how it gets spun by the
29:04
Speaker 3: time that it gets back. So what you get in London,
29:06
Speaker 3: which is what most historians write their history is from,
29:09
Speaker 3: is the London end and basically what they want the
29:14
Speaker 3: directors to think is happening. You get a slightly better
29:18
Speaker 3: view of the cockup that's happened from the Calcutta archive.
29:22
Speaker 3: But the best of all, if you go to Illahabad
29:23
Speaker 3: or to Peshaw and Lahore and look at the regional archives,
29:27
Speaker 3: you understand, you know, you find out all manner of
29:29
Speaker 3: things have gone badly wrong, which you know, it gets
29:32
Speaker 3: filtered and polished and spinned, spun by the time that
29:36
Speaker 3: it gets to London. So an amazing amount. And the
29:39
Speaker 3: problem with these India Company really is the sheer wealth
29:43
Speaker 3: of material. You have to sift through it and select
29:47
Speaker 3: and it's obviously a very personal deocistion. At the end
29:48
Speaker 3: of the day, you know, you spent I spent five
29:50
Speaker 3: years on each book, the four books that took five
29:54
Speaker 3: years each, but about twenty years of my life. And
29:57
Speaker 3: with each book you take decisions about what bits you
30:00
Speaker 3: know of your notes you highlight and then eventually put
30:03
Speaker 3: into the book. And on top of all the official records,
30:08
Speaker 3: there are private archives which families find and so you
30:11
Speaker 3: then select, you know, and you get you get more
30:14
Speaker 3: dissonant opinions of people from their diaries and there when
30:18
Speaker 3: they're not in official mode. The driest records are the
30:21
Speaker 3: official ones, the more colorful ones, people's private letters and
30:24
Speaker 3: particularly their private diaries where they often commit their private thoughts,
30:29
Speaker 3: and so you actually can you can really reconstruct a world.
30:33
Speaker 3: And then you have the British press and again a
30:36
Speaker 3: surprising degree of criticism of imperial atrocities, which you know,
30:42
Speaker 3: I think people I say assume is a kind of
30:45
Speaker 3: modern sexibility.
30:46
Speaker 1: Isn't at all. People were as appalled by the seventeen
30:49
Speaker 1: seventy two famine then as they are now.
30:55
Speaker 3: So it's a very similar world with you know, some
30:58
Speaker 3: people trying to make money, some people trying to save souls,
31:03
Speaker 3: some people crusading do gooders who expose the moneyman, and
31:10
Speaker 3: you get the same. You know, it's a very familiar
31:12
Speaker 3: mixture of different different types operating against each other. But ultimately,
31:18
Speaker 3: as you say, it's every historian's own subjective opinion of
31:20
Speaker 3: what significant, what isn't, and what is historical historically.
31:24
Speaker 1: Relevant to what is just you know, part of the
31:28
Speaker 1: chaff of history. And that's why there will never be
31:33
Speaker 1: a you know, a final history of anything.
31:36
Speaker 3: With future generations of historians will find new materials and
31:40
Speaker 3: things will.
31:40
Speaker 1: Look different to them.
31:42
Speaker 3: Even in my own time, though, I mean, what's extraordinary
31:44
Speaker 3: is that when I started in nineteen ninety nine writing
31:48
Speaker 3: the first of these books, the White Googles, I think,
31:50
Speaker 3: you know, Google began that year and Amazon began that year.
31:55
Speaker 3: In the course of the twenty five years I've been
31:56
Speaker 3: writing about these enormous corporations, we've seen new, massive glow
32:01
Speaker 3: world beating corporations emerge and.
32:05
Speaker 1: Have an unprecedented power which one could have anticipated at
32:10
Speaker 1: the time.
32:12
Speaker 2: And actually on that given the length of time and
32:14
Speaker 2: the way things do change, and of course, as you say,
32:17
Speaker 2: I absolutely get that, ultimately you just have to make
32:21
Speaker 2: a decision in any of that period, I suppose, especially
32:26
Speaker 2: given what you've just said about how bad news gets
32:29
Speaker 2: sort of, you know, ameliorated over the distance, let's say,
32:33
Speaker 2: and by the time it ends up, you know, on
32:36
Speaker 2: somebody's desk, it looks a bit better than it was,
32:38
Speaker 2: or sometimes perhats vice versa. Have you ever been surprised
32:43
Speaker 2: by something that's happened sort of years later to make
32:47
Speaker 2: you question something that you had originally settled upon as
32:52
Speaker 2: being the account of something you know, to have something
32:57
Speaker 2: undone for you.
32:58
Speaker 3: Yes, it's interesting that, you know how when you're walking
33:01
Speaker 3: through a landscape, things can look differently if you're looking,
33:04
Speaker 3: say from the top of a valley or in.
33:06
Speaker 1: A at the bottom of one.
33:10
Speaker 3: Well, modern history and contemporary events changed the way you
33:14
Speaker 3: look at things.
33:15
Speaker 1: I'll give you two examples of that. One is the subprime.
33:20
Speaker 3: Crisis, when suddenly all those big American corporations that Nhman
33:24
Speaker 3: Brothers were collapsing. You suddenly realized how vulnerable these enormous
33:30
Speaker 3: financial institutions were. One day they were bestriding the world,
33:34
Speaker 3: providing incredible salaries.
33:36
Speaker 1: To their.
33:38
Speaker 3: Their company employees. The next day they're out on the
33:42
Speaker 3: street without a job, and the company's collapsed. The other
33:48
Speaker 3: thing I suppose is the response to the seventh of
33:52
Speaker 3: October in Gaza, which is something that to me has
33:57
Speaker 3: extraordinary parallels with the outbreak of the mutiny uh The
34:03
Speaker 3: eighty seven in Delhi opens with sepoys and cavalrymen riding
34:11
Speaker 3: in from me at the massacring, allegedly raping and murdering
34:17
Speaker 3: women and children in cold blood. And this is reported
34:20
Speaker 3: read lurid terms in Britain, and even things like Dickens,
34:24
Speaker 3: you know, who are famous champions of the underdogs, come
34:30
Speaker 3: out and say delete Deli massacre, every last one of them.
34:35
Speaker 1: These savages must be brought to book.
34:39
Speaker 3: I wrote this book on the Indian uprising, called the
34:43
Speaker 3: Last Mingle, ten years before the events.
34:48
Speaker 1: Of seventh sort of and and and therefore I knew
34:52
Speaker 1: how the rape of and massacre of innocence got reported then,
34:58
Speaker 1: and and and the and the parallel today, and the way.
35:01
Speaker 3: That the reporting of atrocities created an environment where much
35:09
Speaker 3: greater atrocities could then be.
35:13
Speaker 1: Could then be facilitated without criticism. And so.
35:24
Speaker 3: Very few voices in Britain complained about the way that
35:28
Speaker 3: the East India Company put down the uprising where, for example,
35:33
Speaker 3: in Delhi, when they reconquered Deli, which is the heart
35:35
Speaker 3: of the revolt, the doors the greats of Delhi are locked,
35:39
Speaker 3: and every male above the age of sixteen is massacred
35:41
Speaker 3: and benetted, pulled out for the hiding places old.
35:44
Speaker 1: Men, young men, And we have diaries. One young man
35:46
Speaker 1: I remember Edward Vaibart.
35:48
Speaker 3: Who'd lost two sisters massacred at the corn Pool massacre
35:52
Speaker 3: and is expected to burn it all the males in Delhi. Right,
35:58
Speaker 3: so very moving letter, But he says hard must be
36:01
Speaker 3: that man's heart who who can see an old man butchered?
36:06
Speaker 1: I am. I am no sort of quaking liberal.
36:09
Speaker 3: I've lost two sisters to this revolt, but I'm disgusted
36:14
Speaker 3: to see the actions that I've expected to perform on
36:18
Speaker 3: innocent people.
36:21
Speaker 1: And so you you that there are fascinating parallels that
36:26
Speaker 1: exists between the events of in this history and seeing
36:37
Speaker 1: echoes of it in modern events today.
36:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I think that's fascinating. I think it's very
36:43
Speaker 2: well put the words that you've chosen there, and I
36:48
Speaker 2: think that will make people think to a great degree
36:52
Speaker 2: as to exactly what it is that does. As you say,
36:57
Speaker 2: effectively justifile pave the way for inflicting mass violence upon people.
37:06
Speaker 2: And well, absolutely that's the that's the key, indeed, indeed
37:14
Speaker 2: now and therefore, you know, you've sort of moved into
37:17
Speaker 2: territory that I did want to.
37:20
Speaker 1: Take you I suspected you did, so I have.
37:24
Speaker 2: Very well, almost as though we had rehearsed it. But
37:27
Speaker 2: I think where I'd like to go with it again,
37:30
Speaker 2: not to try to sheehorn a comparison, but when you
37:33
Speaker 2: go back to the genesis of the East India Company,
37:35
Speaker 2: and you may know, I certainly don't whether or not
37:40
Speaker 2: those that were there right in the early days had
37:43
Speaker 2: in their mind's eye a vision of the conquest that
37:46
Speaker 2: did in actual fact take place, you know.
37:49
Speaker 3: Sort of the founding charter of the India Company does
37:55
Speaker 3: envisage conquest the great the creation of army and governance
38:02
Speaker 3: of tracts of territory is there in the fifteen ninet
38:05
Speaker 3: nine charter issued by Lizabeth the First on the on
38:07
Speaker 3: the very first moment of the East India Company's creation.
38:11
Speaker 2: Okay, that is fascinating. Okay, so the Crown at that
38:15
Speaker 2: point was aware of the intentions of the company.
38:19
Speaker 3: One thing that I didn't know even when I wrote
38:22
Speaker 3: first wrote about this, was that what was happening in
38:24
Speaker 3: these Indy comries also happening elsewhere in the world. So
38:27
Speaker 3: you get things like the Bahamas Company, which goes out
38:30
Speaker 3: to conquer Ohamas, or the Rhode Island Company which goes
38:33
Speaker 3: out to conquer Rhode Island, or the Virginia Company which
38:36
Speaker 3: conquers Virginia, or the one that survived until I think recently,
38:40
Speaker 3: I think it has just been closed. The Hudson Bay Company,
38:43
Speaker 3: which which certainly was there, you know, ten years ago,
38:48
Speaker 3: and so it was the East India Company was not
38:53
Speaker 3: at all unique. It was particularly successful and took the
38:58
Speaker 3: opportunity provided by the collapse of the Mogal Empire to
39:01
Speaker 3: move in and conquer this very rich territory. But similar
39:06
Speaker 3: outcomes were envisaged in North America, for example, and again
39:13
Speaker 3: you have corporate colonialism preceding the crown.
39:19
Speaker 1: Yes, Okay.
39:21
Speaker 2: So the reason I asked that is because for most people,
39:26
Speaker 2: I think it's fair to say that because of what's
39:28
Speaker 2: happened since October twenty twenty three, which you've referred to,
39:32
Speaker 2: there's been a great focus on Israel and the history
39:36
Speaker 2: of the state of Israel, And yeah, I think for
39:39
Speaker 2: most people that goes pretty much as far back as
39:42
Speaker 2: the Balford exploration of nineteen seventeen, But actually it goes
39:45
Speaker 2: back a long way before that. And I suppose that
39:49
Speaker 2: the overlay is what was at that point the intent.
39:56
Speaker 2: You know, can we work backwards backwards from now in
40:00
Speaker 2: terms of what it is we appear to be seeing
40:03
Speaker 2: Israel trying to do, and can we trace that back
40:07
Speaker 2: to nineteen seventeen and beyond.
40:13
Speaker 1: So, the.
40:17
Speaker 3: Founder of the idea of Zionism, Herzel, writes privately in
40:22
Speaker 3: his diary from the very beginning about necessity of transferring
40:30
Speaker 3: is the word he uses, Arabs out of.
40:34
Speaker 1: The land of Israel, as he calls it, and moving
40:38
Speaker 1: them out.
40:39
Speaker 3: Initially, in his first track called the judenstat the Jewish Date,
40:44
Speaker 3: he once he doesn't even once mention.
40:48
Speaker 1: The population that is living there.
40:50
Speaker 3: But then subsequently at the Zionist conferences, there's a famous
40:55
Speaker 3: delegation that come back and say, the bride is very beautiful,
40:58
Speaker 3: but is already married there.
41:00
Speaker 1: Is there is already this a lovely place, but someone's
41:04
Speaker 1: living there already. And the you find from.
41:15
Speaker 3: Many of the early Zionist leaders, including Bengorian private and
41:22
Speaker 3: also from Chaim Weitzmann private notes and letters and internal discussions,
41:28
Speaker 3: where they make it clear that moving the existing population
41:32
Speaker 3: by force of necessary is going to be a necessary
41:35
Speaker 3: part of this. The British are more nigen and there's
41:40
Speaker 3: all the people, the only I think, the only person
41:43
Speaker 3: in the cabinet who'd been to Palestine when it's discussed
41:45
Speaker 3: in Lord Cousin, and he's the only one who makes
41:49
Speaker 3: a real fuss saying, you know, there's existing population, and
41:54
Speaker 3: in nineteen seventeen, I think the situation is ninety six
41:59
Speaker 3: percent Palestinian, Muslim and Christian, only four percent Palestinian Jewish
42:04
Speaker 3: or recent arrivals, and therefore ninety six percent of the
42:09
Speaker 3: population would have to be removed in order to create
42:13
Speaker 3: a Jewish data. Remember, the above decoration specifically is a
42:17
Speaker 3: Jewish homeland, which is an ambiguous statement and leaves open
42:21
Speaker 3: what is to happen to what it calls the non
42:23
Speaker 3: Jewish of the population, which Balfer, I think again genuinely
42:27
Speaker 3: didn't know that ninety six percent of was not Jewish.
42:30
Speaker 3: I think he imagined that there must have been fifty
42:32
Speaker 3: or sixty or seventy percent Jewish population there, and the
42:40
Speaker 3: negligence with which the early British early twenty century British
42:45
Speaker 3: cabinet ministers simply dismiss the majority of the population. Balfer says,
42:50
Speaker 3: I don't think we will even go through the motions
42:52
Speaker 3: of asking for their opinion or having any sort of
42:58
Speaker 3: representative government. The wishes and prejudices of the Arabs who
43:06
Speaker 3: now inhabit that land are of far less importance, in
43:10
Speaker 3: the words, the uses than the the The destiny of
43:17
Speaker 3: the Jewish people is a phrase like that, and people
43:21
Speaker 3: just dismiss the population which they don't seem even.
43:27
Speaker 1: Aware is there.
43:30
Speaker 3: And the Peal Report, which is one of the first
43:32
Speaker 3: commissions to try and work out what to do with
43:36
Speaker 3: this mess that's developing with the local population become increasingly
43:39
Speaker 3: nervous and restive at the immigration of the fact they're
43:43
Speaker 3: going to be marginalized in their own country, has an
43:47
Speaker 3: important footnote where he says that Balfer simply wasn't aware
43:51
Speaker 3: of the existing geography and the makeup of the population.
43:57
Speaker 3: And you have successive generations of colonial administrators who go
44:03
Speaker 3: there and see the situation whereby you know, the terms
44:07
Speaker 3: of the mandate a set out to create a Jewish homeland,
44:10
Speaker 3: and they see on the ground what people in Whitehall
44:14
Speaker 3: are largely unaware of, which is that in order to
44:18
Speaker 3: do this you have to marginalize the existing population. The
44:22
Speaker 3: book I'm writing at the moment is a history of
44:24
Speaker 3: the Palestinians, and I think it's very important to understand,
44:29
Speaker 3: and the main argument in my forthcoming book will be
44:32
Speaker 3: this that the Palestinians who were there in nineteen seventeen
44:37
Speaker 3: and are there now at refugees in Gaza being bombed,
44:42
Speaker 3: are the same people who were the Ottomans, largely eighty
44:49
Speaker 3: percent Muslim at the time of the Ottomans, who were
44:53
Speaker 3: the Byzantine Christians before them, who slowly convert to Islam
44:58
Speaker 3: in the twelfth century, who were before that, many of
45:02
Speaker 3: them the Jews, who did not go into a diasper,
45:06
Speaker 3: but converted to Christianity at the time of Constantine in
45:08
Speaker 3: the two centuries after that, who were before that pagan Canaanites.
45:13
Speaker 3: And so you have these extraordinary continuities which archaeologists are
45:16
Speaker 3: witnessed of single villages. The one I write about at
45:20
Speaker 3: the beginning of my new book is the village of
45:24
Speaker 3: what ninety seven is called is Dood the Arab name,
45:28
Speaker 3: but it had been called various variations of that name
45:32
Speaker 3: right back to the biblical Ashtod, when it was the
45:34
Speaker 3: center of the Philistines, who were one of the important
45:38
Speaker 3: ancestors of the Palestinians, but also the origin of the name.
45:43
Speaker 3: These people are known as the palast by the Egyptians
45:45
Speaker 3: from about eleven seventy seven PCE. Then there is the
45:48
Speaker 3: plashe Do by the Assyrians. And these people have deep,
45:51
Speaker 3: deep roots in the soil. And because the British administrators
45:55
Speaker 3: of the twentieth century were many of them like Lloyd George,
45:59
Speaker 3: Christian Zionists, who who who saw the who saw the
46:07
Speaker 3: politics there from religious point of view, and saw the
46:10
Speaker 3: destiny of the the return of the Jewish people as
46:13
Speaker 3: something which was essential from a Christian point of view,
46:19
Speaker 3: they ignore or marginalize the rights of the people who
46:22
Speaker 3: were there. And the great siren, of course, is that
46:25
Speaker 3: DNA shows very clearly that both the Palestinians and particularly
46:30
Speaker 3: the Sephar Dick and Mizrahi Israelis are cousins, very close
46:35
Speaker 3: cousins with almost identical DNA, that the Ashkenazis have more
46:40
Speaker 3: admixture with with Europeans from the from the centuries spent
46:44
Speaker 3: within Europe. But the Mizrahi Jews who lived in the
46:48
Speaker 3: Middle East have almost identical DNA to the Palestinians the
46:51
Speaker 3: other side of the political fence, and both of them
46:55
Speaker 3: are the inheritors of the same traditions of the Canaanites
46:59
Speaker 3: and Bronze Age peoples who made up you know, the
47:02
Speaker 3: origins of both both groups. So it's a very tragic story.
47:08
Speaker 3: And you know, in my view, obviously some accommodation has
47:11
Speaker 3: got to be find whereby both groups can can be
47:13
Speaker 3: a fine self determination of freedom.
47:17
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Now the thing that I would say is again
47:20
Speaker 2: a sort of link or an overlap, is that both
47:23
Speaker 2: these stories, the story of the East India Company and
47:26
Speaker 2: your comments earlier about the you know, the victory that
47:29
Speaker 2: the States held in effect over the Company by sort
47:32
Speaker 2: of seeing it off, and indeed the conversion of that
47:38
Speaker 2: part of Palestine into what has become Israel. What we've
47:41
Speaker 2: seen in both instances is a change in the balance
47:45
Speaker 2: of power, and power doesn't doesn't disappear, It just transfers
47:49
Speaker 2: from from one place to another. What I would like
47:53
Speaker 2: to do is sort of bring this up to up
47:56
Speaker 2: to date. Where where do you see power line now?
48:00
Speaker 2: I mean the British Empire we're told has concluded many
48:06
Speaker 2: years ago. Is that really the case? I mean, is
48:09
Speaker 2: there still nuance there? Because of course, like I said earlier,
48:12
Speaker 2: we are dealing really with individuals who have many fingers
48:16
Speaker 2: in many pies.
48:17
Speaker 1: Where are you talking specifically about Palestini?
48:20
Speaker 2: Well, I think in the way I would say, in
48:23
Speaker 2: the way that the world works now, is it possible
48:27
Speaker 2: that we are looking beyond you know, quite well beyond
48:29
Speaker 2: borders because we you know, be possible to list the
48:32
Speaker 2: number of individuals and organizations that are involved in Israel,
48:36
Speaker 2: involved in the United Kingdom, in the United States, even
48:40
Speaker 2: in China, all at the same time. So how do
48:44
Speaker 2: you see I suppose the evolution or the change in
48:48
Speaker 2: what was the relationship back then between the East India
48:51
Speaker 2: Company and the state as you describe it, and now
48:54
Speaker 2: you know what exactly is it? What what do we
48:57
Speaker 2: have we do we have a relationship between corporations and states?
49:01
Speaker 2: Or is it more complex than that?
49:03
Speaker 3: So I think yes, I mean, obviously the battle between
49:07
Speaker 3: the state and the corporation continues today as it always has,
49:12
Speaker 3: and they both have different weapons corporate financing is still
49:18
Speaker 3: an important part of politics, and corporate donations to campaign
49:26
Speaker 3: funding is a crucial element. I think what we're seeing,
49:33
Speaker 3: looking at the longest term view as a historian, is that,
49:38
Speaker 3: as I said at the beginning, India and China controlled
49:41
Speaker 3: about eighty percent of the world's GDP for most of history.
49:45
Speaker 3: Now this is obviously before America became a massively important
49:48
Speaker 3: industrial power. But we are seeing seventy five years after
49:55
Speaker 3: the Indian independence, the return of that equilibrium which had
50:02
Speaker 3: been the case for most of history. The rise of China,
50:07
Speaker 3: which has happened and is now the second biggest economy
50:11
Speaker 3: in the world, and the rise of India, which is
50:15
Speaker 3: happening more slowly but which is gaining momentum. India just
50:20
Speaker 3: overtook Britain three years ago. It has overtaken Germany. I
50:27
Speaker 3: think this year will overtake Japan to be the third
50:29
Speaker 3: part economic power of the world by the.
50:33
Speaker 1: End of the decade.
50:35
Speaker 3: So we're seeing slowly but steadily the return to the
50:39
Speaker 3: pre colonial balance of the world where most of output
50:45
Speaker 3: took place not in Europe but in Asia, particularly in
50:48
Speaker 3: the areas that are now China and India, and that
50:54
Speaker 3: I think is the big change that will happen in
50:57
Speaker 3: our lifetime and in the lifetime of our children. And
51:04
Speaker 3: I think Europe can be stronger if it is united
51:09
Speaker 3: and acts with a degree of unity, and I hope
51:16
Speaker 3: that will happen, and I think Brexit was a disaster
51:19
Speaker 3: from that point of view.
51:20
Speaker 1: But I think.
51:24
Speaker 3: We're unlikely to see any increase, so we say, of
51:27
Speaker 3: European or British power in our lifetime. It's more much
51:30
Speaker 3: more likely to slip away. And by the end of
51:36
Speaker 3: the century it's going to be America, India, and China.
51:41
Speaker 3: If you'd ask me five years ago, I just said
51:43
Speaker 3: it was going to be China, which would be number one.
51:46
Speaker 3: I think it's now more an open question with sort
51:48
Speaker 3: of Trump self destructing American power in the way that
51:53
Speaker 3: he's managed to do and facilitating the increasing rise of
51:57
Speaker 3: China the way that he is unwittingly as wittingly facilitated.
52:05
Speaker 3: I would I would don't know whether I think it's
52:08
Speaker 3: an open question now which will be the big power
52:10
Speaker 3: by the end of the century.
52:11
Speaker 1: But it's not gonna be Europe. It's going to be India,
52:14
Speaker 1: China or America.
52:16
Speaker 2: And given that and the incredible wealth that is contained
52:20
Speaker 2: within particularly those Eastern you know, India and China. Do
52:23
Speaker 2: you think it's in any way conceivable but the not
52:28
Speaker 2: exactly the aims, but the practices of an organization like
52:35
Speaker 2: the East India Company could be seen again as it were.
52:41
Speaker 1: Yes, I think it's quite possible.
52:42
Speaker 3: I think we've seen over the last twenty years these companies,
52:48
Speaker 3: like these tech companies like Microsoft and Apple, Meta x
52:56
Speaker 3: enormously increase that their power and their influence over the state.
53:03
Speaker 3: You know, when when Trump went to China, he brought
53:06
Speaker 3: the chief executives of those companies with him, with the
53:11
Speaker 3: exception of Alunmask, they were all that Navidia, you know,
53:13
Speaker 3: all these different groups, and I think they are powerful.
53:17
Speaker 3: But I think again, you know, it's it's a question.
53:21
Speaker 3: It's an open battle the power of the state and
53:24
Speaker 3: the parent of the corporation. It's not clear which the
53:26
Speaker 3: two will will will win. That they both have advantages.
53:31
Speaker 3: In the early days of East Indie Company, there's a
53:32
Speaker 3: wonderful moment when the Nawab of Arcot arrives the Canatic
53:38
Speaker 3: Rise outside Madras and threatens to destroy it because I
53:41
Speaker 3: haven't paid any taxes for three or four years. And
53:45
Speaker 3: the Madras doesn't send out an army. It sends out
53:49
Speaker 3: as single bilingual spokesman I called Nikola Manucci, who goes
53:56
Speaker 3: to gets. He speaks perfect Persian, which is the language
53:58
Speaker 3: of diplomacy in those days, and he says, you can
54:02
Speaker 3: you know, we haven't got the military power to resist you.
54:05
Speaker 3: This is in the seventeenth century, before the company became
54:08
Speaker 3: as powerful as it would be in the eighteenth century.
54:12
Speaker 3: But if you do attack us, these companies will just
54:16
Speaker 3: move up the coast to one of your neighbors and
54:18
Speaker 3: create a city where where they where they go and
54:22
Speaker 3: and and make them prosperous. This is a place that
54:26
Speaker 3: can bring you enormous wealth if you if you treat us,
54:30
Speaker 3: treat us well, you can you can share in that.
54:33
Speaker 1: But if you.
54:34
Speaker 3: Attack us, we will just go elsewhere. And this is
54:38
Speaker 3: the same argument that Amazon makes. You know, don't taxes,
54:42
Speaker 3: or we will we will withdraw and and and then
54:45
Speaker 3: this is the the the argument that has meant so
54:49
Speaker 3: many have moved, for example to Ireland, where the island
54:51
Speaker 3: is now richer per capita according to official statistics, the
54:56
Speaker 3: Monaco or Sadi Arabia. Because all these companies based in
55:01
Speaker 3: tax free in Dublin. So there are are corporate there
55:05
Speaker 3: are there are parallels.
55:06
Speaker 1: I mean, I hope that it.
55:07
Speaker 3: Won't happen at these India company. In the company we
55:10
Speaker 3: have a very good example of how this can go wrong.
55:13
Speaker 3: But there is certainly a possibility that we could end
55:17
Speaker 3: up with some sort of company like the company in
55:21
Speaker 3: the movie Avatar, the mining company going to another planet.
55:25
Speaker 1: And just you know, looting and pillaging the or the
55:28
Speaker 1: minerals to send back home. That could be the future.
55:32
Speaker 2: Well, absolutely, I mean, unfortunately, that is exactly what people
55:34
Speaker 2: are already discussing. I mean, I think the reason I
55:36
Speaker 2: asked that is it's really you know, the idea or
55:39
Speaker 2: at least do you consider that the state and corporate
55:45
Speaker 2: interest are in fact divergent. I mean, you know, you've
55:48
Speaker 2: talked about the incredible power of corporate lobbying, and you know,
55:52
Speaker 2: look at the sort of revolving door mechanism where you've
55:55
Speaker 2: got people coming into one and going you know, going
55:57
Speaker 2: immediately out to the other, or which have a way around.
56:00
Speaker 2: I mean, do you think that in actual fact, although
56:04
Speaker 2: we are given the impression that the state and the
56:08
Speaker 2: corporations are supposedly acting independently, or indeed pursuing different interests.
56:13
Speaker 2: But you know the way you look at that, now,
56:15
Speaker 2: do you really consider that to be the case?
56:18
Speaker 1: I think the best answer that is the.
56:22
Speaker 3: Statement of the Lord Chancellor at the trial of Warren
56:25
Speaker 3: Hastings in but He's brought to trial in seventeen eighty
56:30
Speaker 3: and he says, corporations have neither souls to be condemned
56:37
Speaker 3: nor bodies to be punished. They therefore do as they like.
56:41
Speaker 3: And corporations will use all the.
56:48
Speaker 1: Powers at their disposal to make the maximum profits for themselves,
56:54
Speaker 1: and it's up to the state to regulate them.
56:57
Speaker 3: And it's an open question whether the state will do that.
57:00
Speaker 3: That they can be they can be lobbied into submission.
57:04
Speaker 2: Do we ever see anything new? You've you've spent decades
57:07
Speaker 2: researching and you have seen a huge amount of this
57:12
Speaker 2: incredibly evolution of a company. We talked quite a lot about,
57:15
Speaker 2: you know, the present day. We've brought ourselves up to
57:17
Speaker 2: the present day. Do you see do you see anything
57:20
Speaker 2: new in the way that the state or the corporate
57:23
Speaker 2: beast behaves.
57:25
Speaker 3: I think, in this broadest outlines, almost everything that we
57:29
Speaker 3: see today is there in the history of the Styndia company,
57:31
Speaker 3: which is why studying it is so fascinating, and in
57:34
Speaker 3: the sense you know a lot of the stuff which
57:37
Speaker 3: didn't seem important when I started this study twenty five
57:41
Speaker 3: years ago, you can now see with the growth of
57:45
Speaker 3: Meta and X and the position of bet Musk and government,
57:50
Speaker 3: how how an East India company could happen again.
57:57
Speaker 2: Okay, and on that note, look, it's been wonderful, But
57:59
Speaker 2: just very quickly, do you have a title or a
58:02
Speaker 2: publication date for your book?
58:04
Speaker 1: No, it's very early days at the moment. The working
58:06
Speaker 1: title is just the Palestinians.
58:07
Speaker 2: But okay, no, that's fine, that's good enough. We'll look
58:10
Speaker 2: out for it. But then, but then, otherwise, where would
58:12
Speaker 2: you direct people that want to follow more about what
58:13
Speaker 2: you do? Website, social media, any of that sort of thing.
58:16
Speaker 1: So I have published eleven books which are under my name,
58:20
Speaker 1: so you can find those in bookshops.
58:22
Speaker 3: And I have a podcast called Empire, which I do
58:27
Speaker 3: with Wonderful Anita, which is under the Goal Hanger banner
58:32
Speaker 3: and which has just passed ninety million downloads in two years.
58:36
Speaker 3: So it's it's been a surprising change to my life
58:40
Speaker 3: from that point of view.
58:42
Speaker 2: And you're on Elon Musk's platform X. I think, but
58:46
Speaker 2: I can't remember what your net?
58:47
Speaker 1: What's I am? Durymple?
58:48
Speaker 2: Will Okay, we'll look. I'll put notes below this interview.
58:52
Speaker 2: William Drymple, thank you very much indeed for join him
58:55
Speaker 2: on UK Column. It's been absolute pleasure. Thanks, Thank you
58:57
Speaker 2: so much.
58:58
Speaker 1: Charles.
58:59
Speaker 2: The UK Column is very pleased to have announced the
59:02
Speaker 2: first issue of a print magazine, a quarterly called The Column,
59:07
Speaker 2: So please go to shop dot UK column dot org
59:10
Speaker 2: to find out more and get your hands on a copy.