TRADING COMPANIES

The East India Company

In 1600 Queen Elizabeth I incorporated the East India Company by charter. In 1623, following growing Anglo-Dutch tensions in the Indonesian archipelago, there was a massacre of English merchants at Amboina. Thereafter, the English East India Company left the islands and their spice trade to the Dutch and instead concentrated on the South Asian subcontinent. In 1635 the Mughal Emperor granted the Company the right to trade throughout Bengal.

In 1648 the East India Company acquired the Craven townhouse on Leadenhall Street, which became known as East India House. In 1726 the property was rebuilt to meet the enterprise's requirements.

Until the 1730s the amount of warehousing that the East India Company had in the City of London was fairly modest. However, the expansion of trade led to the creation of a network of bonded warehouses each of which had a specialisation: pepper - the Royal Exchange and Blackwall; private goods - Billiter Lane; saltpetre - Cock Hill; spices - Leadenhall Street; tea - Cooper's Row, Crutched Friars, Fenchurch Street, Haydon Square, and Jewry Street; and textiles - Cutler Street, Devonshire Square, and New Street. The Bengal Warehouse in Cutler Street was built over 1770-1800. It was the Company's largest single warehouse.

By the late 18^thC some of the Company's ships had become so large that they could not sail further up the Thames than Deptford. Its docks were located at Blackwall.

Between 1796 and 1799 a 200ft.-long Classical building was constructed on Leadenhall Street. In the early and mid-19^thC the East India Company maintained a large bureaucracy in its headquarters that dwarfed the size of most government departments. It provided employment for a number of individuals who developed substantial literary careers: the essayist Charles Lamb, the novelist Thomas Love Peacock, and the philosopher John Stuart Mill.¹

In 1813 the government terminated the enterprise's monopoly over the India trade. Two decades later its control of the China trade was also ended. In 1857 the Indian Mutiny occurred. Subsequently, the government assumed those administrative functions that the Company had retained. In 1862 the Leadenhall Street building was demolished. In 1874 the East India Company ceased to exist.

Location: Crutched Friars, EC3N 2AU. There was a network of East India Company warehouses that stretched across Crutched Friars, Seething Lane, and Fenchurch Street. (blue, yellow)

Cutler Street, E1 7DJ (blue, yellow)

East India Dock Road, E14 6JE

The East India Arms, 67 Fenchurch Street, EC3M 4BR (blue, pink)

12 Leadenhall Street, EC3V 1LP (purple, turquoise)

¹. J.S. Mill never spent more than three hours a day on Company business. He often worked while not wearing his trousers.

The Timbuktu Company

In the early 17^thC a company was set up to develop a trading relationship with Timbuktu. It failed. It was to be another two centuries until a European traveller is known to have reached the city and returned.

See Also: EXPLORATION Timbuktu

The Turkey Company

Location: Devonshire Square, EC2M 4TE (blue, pink)

David Backhouse 2024