Now that I have found a very early female ancestor almost certainly “country born”, about whose life and whose father’s life I know something, I want to know more about their world. Below is a shorthand version of their life and times:

World Trade: For millenia the vast majority of world trade was centered in the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. Asians traded with Asians and then with “Middle Eastern” Muslims. “Europeans”, in their distant backward, cold and foggy peninsula at the Northwest end of the Eurasian continent, imported their spices and the things they considered the finer things of their lives (eg muslin textiles and porcelain), from the “Indies” and from China, via what is now “Turkey”.

Bullion Flow: From time immemorial bullion (gold and silver) flowed from Europe to the Orient to pay for European consumption of Oriental produce and products. Roman politicians are on record decrying the loss of specie to pamper Roman wives. It was a one way flow. Asians had little use for European wares. The flow of bullion began to reverse direction around the time Andrew Burgh was born.

Bullion and “India”: Andrew Burgh was born in 1764. By the time Andrew was 17, when he joined the HEIC and came to Bengal in 1781, bullion was flowing in massive quantities out of Bengal and into England. In the decade between the early 1760s and the early 1770s, around the time Andrew was about 12 years old, HEIC employees had looted and ruined the Bengali economy and nearly ruined the HEIC, their employer.

“India”: “India” was an European corporate construct. The HEIC appeared in “The Indies” in the 17th century. It was only after acquiring several of the independent kingdoms in the area now called “The Indian Sub-Continent”, that the HEIC began referring to “India” as a political and geographical entity. “India” will not be found in any ancient histories or geographies.

Bengal: In the early 1700s what eventually became “British India” or “The Raj”, consisted of relatively independent “kingdoms” ruled mostly by Muslims. “Bengal”, today split between Bangladesh and East India, was one of those quasi independent states. It was by far the richest of them all and then much richer than Britain. Bengal is where Andrew Burgh was sent, Bengal is where Mary Burgh was born, Bengal is where Carey and his group set up shop, Bengal is where the HEIC conquest of “India” began, and Bengal is the starting point for most Anglo Indian families who remained in India during the Raj. The Raj began with the misbehavior of rogue British employees of a global British corporation in Bengal. The map shows the extent of the HEIC controlled area of “India” in 1767. (Click on map for readable size)

HEIC Dominance: Between 1757 and 1760, through military brilliance, bribery and double crossing his allies, a psychotic, apparently later opium addicted, Englishman named Robert Clive achieved every corporation’s ultimate dream: he negotiated the right of his corporation to set tax rates and collect taxes, while avoiding the responsibility of governing the taxed.

By bribing Muslim commanders to betray their Muslim monarch, and by using funds obtained from Hindus, Sikhs and Armenians to pay them, Clive used an army of Indians commanded by Europeans and Anglo Indians, to defeat the armies of the ruler of Bengal (Plassey 1757). Clive then placed a Muslim puppet on the throne, paid him off, and negotiated an agreement with him for the HEIC to become the sole tax collector, leaving the nominal responsibility for government to his puppet. That arrangement lasted for a century as more and more “Indian” states were driven into penury by the demands of the HEIC. The British government officially took over control of India after the 1857 “Mutiny”.

After paying off HEIC allies in Bengal, and funding HEIC armies which began conquering other areas of India, (generally without the fore knowledge of the HEIC Directors in London), the tax funds squeezed out of Bengalis found their way to England via the pockets of HEIC employees.

Famine: Within a decade Bengal was ruined. It has never recovered. Between 1768 and 1772 about 10 million Bengalis, one third of Bengal’s population, died of famine. Entire previously populated villages reverted to jungle. Tigers began prowling the streets, preying on people. Famine, virtually unknown in early “India” was a recurring phenomenon in British India. The last Bengal famine occurred as recently as 1943-44 shortly before the British left. There have been no major famines since.

Andrew Burgh: The teenager Andrew Burgh who arrived in Bengal in 1781 would have known nothing of Bengal’s past. He would have seen a country of pathetically poor Indians scraping out a living. There would have been a thin layer of relatively wealthy Indian tax collectors, bankers and merchants learning how to serve their new masters — Englishmen and Anglo-Indians. Warren Hasting was still Governor General, and the restrictions on Anglo Indians decreed by Cornwallis were still in the future.

Bangladesh: Today’s Bangladesh and Eastern India are the husks of the vibrant society the HEIC conquered in 1757. The HEIC and later, Britain, continued the practice of using Bengali taxes and then “Indian” taxes to set Indian against Indian. Indian taxes were used to maintain huge standing armies of Indians commanded by British officers. That army was the cannon fodder used to expand Empire east and south into Burma and the Malay archipelago, and west and north into East Africa, Afghanistan and the Middle East. This was the army which Andrew Burgh and his brother joined. They gave their lives expanding the fiefdom of the HEIC, the largest official drug smuggling operation the world has ever developed. The HEIC army officer corps provided employment for many generations of Britons.

1776, The Americn Revolution: Meanwhile HEIC profits, which had never been large, began to decrease as corporate employees neglected trade and squeezed Bengalis for ever more taxes for transfer to their private accounts in England. British politicians were personally invested in the corporation, and the British government depended heavily on taxes levied on the giant corporation. Drastic action was required. Various strategies for increasing the tax contribution and restoring the health of the corporation were tried, including the “Tea Act” of 1773. Everyone knows the consequence: “The Boston Tea Party” heralded the birth of a new future world super power.

The rape of Bengal and the birth of America sprang from the same root: rewarding successful corporate employee misbehavior.

Britain: This is enough for one post! I will leave Andrew Burgh’s and William Carey’s Britain for the next post.