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Speaker 1: Mmm, hello friends, I'm Robert Evans, and this is once

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Speaker 1: again Behind the Bastards, the show we tell you everything

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Speaker 1: you don't know about the very worst people in all

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Speaker 1: of history. Now, this is part two of our episode

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Speaker 1: on the age of Heroic Commerce. Uh and my my

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Speaker 1: guest with me, as with the last episode, is the imminent,

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Speaker 1: the tenerant, the excellent Michael Swain. Thank you, the auspicious

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Speaker 1: Robert Evans for having me. Yeah, you know what's fun good?

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Speaker 1: Poor tense, abound adjective. Yeah, I love them. That little

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Speaker 1: blue triangle and adverbs, little orange circle. I think did

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Speaker 1: you do that what we're talking about? I learned with

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Speaker 1: the system where you put symbols for every part of

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Speaker 1: speech that sounds exhaust So to me, a conjunction will

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Speaker 1: always be a little pink rainbow. Oh okay, that's good

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Speaker 1: to know. Actually, I think that's preposition. Let's talk about

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Speaker 1: some speaking of prepositions. I'm gonna make a preposition. I

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Speaker 1: don't think you are. I think prosition that one. That

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Speaker 1: one didn't come out. I was going to try to

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Speaker 1: tie that in more smoothly, but then you caught me

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Speaker 1: scripted apart. So where we are in the story. We

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Speaker 1: got we got this guy, Robert Clive, and Robert Clive

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Speaker 1: has conquered Bengal like a big chunk of India and

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Speaker 1: he's rich as ship. And the East India Company has

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Speaker 1: got like tens of millions of people that they don't

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Speaker 1: really have to take care of, but they kind of control.

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Speaker 1: And it's getting weird. And everybody back in England is like,

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Speaker 1: this is getting weird. And also corporations are spreading throughout

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Speaker 1: the world and starting colonies all over the place and

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Speaker 1: extending European domination and center the globe. They're collecting rents,

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Speaker 1: they are starting to do that, and yeah, they are

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Speaker 1: starting to to carry out taxes and stuff that that

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Speaker 1: that is beginning in this period of time. But mostly

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Speaker 1: what's happening, mostly the thing that the company is doing

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Speaker 1: in this big area they now control is being corrupt

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Speaker 1: as ship. Corruption had always been indemic among the East

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Speaker 1: India Company's foreign officers. That's why you did it, is

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Speaker 1: so that you could take a bunch of stuff and

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Speaker 1: come back home and be rich if you survived the

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Speaker 1: tropical diseases. So everybody skimmed a little bit off the

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Speaker 1: top that was kind of built into the system. Clive

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Speaker 1: had just done what everybody else had been doing when

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Speaker 1: he took the three thousand pounds of gold and jewels

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Speaker 1: and stuff. But the cup that he'd been skimming from

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Speaker 1: was the biggest cup anyone had ever stumbled across. Right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so that's that's the situation. And it was unprecedented, and

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Speaker 1: people started to ask the question do we want it

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Speaker 1: to be okay for our corporate officers in foreign countries

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Speaker 1: to be this corrupt? And that's something we as British

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Speaker 1: people are fine with. It's not like he's a brilliant innovator,

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Speaker 1: it's just the most Yeah, he's Yeah, no one has

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Speaker 1: ever had that. This seems like it could go bad places.

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Speaker 1: And some of that is people who like have a

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Speaker 1: human sense of like it's wrong, we're plundering the world.

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Speaker 1: A lot of it is other rich guys who are

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Speaker 1: old money and are just don't like just like this

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Speaker 1: is a threat to our fortresses of the money that

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Speaker 1: we have built in our places. Exactly. Now this gross

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Speaker 1: guy is rich and yeah, this uncouth guy who joined

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Speaker 1: because he likes beating people up, Yeah, it's too wealthy. Exactly.

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Speaker 1: So Clive leaves India after conquering and Bengal and governing

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Speaker 1: it for a while, and he goes back to England,

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Speaker 1: and to give you an idea of how modern this

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Speaker 1: period is, he takes all this lute that he earned

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Speaker 1: from conquering Bengal and he deposits it with the Dutch

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Speaker 1: East India Company and then when he gets back to London,

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Speaker 1: he withdraws it from them as cash or as cash okay,

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Speaker 1: So they didn't like transport his jewels and because he

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Speaker 1: he was like, there's no way, this is way too

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Speaker 1: much ship to syd I'll give it to them, They'll

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Speaker 1: give me the cash value and I'll take it out

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Speaker 1: in London. Boom, it was done. Just upload it to

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Speaker 1: the cloud. You're good to go. Yeah. This is like

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Speaker 1: the first time people were figuring out how to do

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Speaker 1: that sort of ship. So yeah, again this is becoming

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Speaker 1: a very modern time period. Uh So Cloud gets back

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Speaker 1: to England and he's rich and he's popular for a while.

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Speaker 1: He buys his shipload of mansions, but all is not

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Speaker 1: well because his boss, Laurence Sullivan does not like him. Now,

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Speaker 1: Laurence Sullivan is the chairman of the company, so Clive

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Speaker 1: in addition to all of them, and he had gotten

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Speaker 1: was guaranteed a giant yearly payment from all of ben Goal.

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Speaker 1: So basically the prints that he put in power was like,

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Speaker 1: we'll give you a huge a fortune every single year.

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Speaker 1: Because you put me in power, He's just free to

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Speaker 1: write up that contract. And that's why the company challenges

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Speaker 1: it because I just don't understand how people take pure

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Speaker 1: will yeah and make it reality because people to go along,

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Speaker 1: they're not they don't want to. His own company takes

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Speaker 1: him to court the like, you're not allowed to make

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Speaker 1: that deal. Yeah, they you're not allowed to make that deal.

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Speaker 1: We never voted to confirm this giant annual payment for you.

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Speaker 1: You know, you worked it out directly with the prince,

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Speaker 1: but you were working with the company at the time

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Speaker 1: and this is our area. So and they're not saying

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Speaker 1: this money should go back to the Indian people. They're

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Speaker 1: saying that we should this should get us, not you. Um.

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Speaker 1: So they go to quarter over and they fight in

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Speaker 1: court for a while. So they're battling in court while

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Speaker 1: things in India are kind of starting to go sour

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Speaker 1: for the company. They're making a lot of money because

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Speaker 1: they found a bunch of different ways to tax and

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Speaker 1: sell and suck being gold Eye, but they start being

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Speaker 1: rebellions as a result of this, So now the company

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Speaker 1: is spending more and more money putting down rebellions, and

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Speaker 1: eventually they agree to confirm Clive's big annual payment in

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Speaker 1: exchange for him going back to India and fixing the

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Speaker 1: ship that's gone wrong since he left the last time.

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Speaker 1: But that makes it sound like it's arm again, like

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Speaker 1: he's the only man in the world who can do this,

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Speaker 1: don't they have other trustworthy mercenaries they do. They think

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Speaker 1: he's special, but as he's traveling back to India, they

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Speaker 1: learned that he's really not because some other guy puts

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Speaker 1: the rebellion down. First. Yeah, first, British guns are just

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Speaker 1: so much better than everything they face. So they agree

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Speaker 1: to give him his money and he leaves over there

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Speaker 1: because they're worried they're going to lose control of the

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Speaker 1: region because of these rebellions. And then when he's in transit,

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Speaker 1: some other guy beats. You can tell like, you don't

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Speaker 1: need this guy. Yeah, you don't need any guy. You've

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Speaker 1: got canav guns. It's the guns that you need. And

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Speaker 1: in fact, actually Clive's big contribution winds up being that

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Speaker 1: when he gets there, things are going so well that

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Speaker 1: the company has almost invaded Delhi, the capital of India,

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Speaker 1: and conquered the whole Mughal Empire, and he stops them.

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Speaker 1: Like Robert Clive is like, this is this has gone unessential. Also,

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Speaker 1: it seems like he may have just actually gotten scared

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Speaker 1: at how much thinks have escalated. This is this could

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Speaker 1: be bad. Yeah, yeah, you launch a new Starbucks franchise

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Speaker 1: and somehow you accidentally now took over city hall. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So he writes a letter when he's justifying his corporate

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Speaker 1: bosses why he stopped the army, he writes a letter

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Speaker 1: that says, quote to go further, it is, in my opinion,

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Speaker 1: a scheme so extravagantly ambitious and absurd that no governor

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Speaker 1: and counsel in their senses can adopt it unless the

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Speaker 1: whole system of the company's interests be first entirely new modeled.

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Speaker 1: Said the guy who's like, but acquiring three hundred thousand

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Speaker 1: pounds of gold, that is not overly ambsual. I think

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Speaker 1: he would say that was never his goal. He found

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Speaker 1: himself in a war and he won, and then they

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Speaker 1: handed him all this stuff. What am I gonna do

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Speaker 1: say no, that is yeah, yeah, but he didn't, and

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Speaker 1: I don't think most people would to be fair, I

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Speaker 1: think most people who are the kind of people who

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Speaker 1: could be in Clive's position, I was gonna say most

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Speaker 1: people would never get in that position. There's no way

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Speaker 1: to get to there. But anyone who's capable of being

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Speaker 1: in that position is probably gonna be like, yeah, hit

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Speaker 1: me the uh so. Clive basically thought that the company

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Speaker 1: already had a sweet deal. They weren't officially in charge

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Speaker 1: of anything. They were in control because guns, but they

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Speaker 1: didn't have to do anything aside from occasionally fighting cash checks.

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Speaker 1: The Indians were still nominally at least leaders of their

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Speaker 1: own land, and they were outside of Bengal. They were

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Speaker 1: still in control, so the East Indian Company didn't have

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Speaker 1: to worry about this giant subcontinent that they had no

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Speaker 1: business interests in. Most of this changed on August twelfth,

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Speaker 1: seventeen sixty five, when Robert Clive, with worry and his gut,

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Speaker 1: signed a deal on behalf of the East India Trading

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Speaker 1: Company with the Mughal Emperor that guaranteed the British East

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Speaker 1: India Company formal control over three big chunks of India

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Speaker 1: and the lives of almost thirty million people. So we'll

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Speaker 1: have the graphic up on the site, but you can

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Speaker 1: see outline there this is what the East India Company

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Speaker 1: after this agreement now controls. That's land they own and govern.

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Speaker 1: So now, okay, it's about a fifth about a fifth

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Speaker 1: of India, the largest country in existence, I believe, one

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Speaker 1: of them and Russia. Yeah wow. So but what I

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Speaker 1: don't understand is to what level did they control people's

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Speaker 1: lives because I assume they have no interest in going

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Speaker 1: in and being like we're going to make laws and

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Speaker 1: moral codes. They just want to loot the place. That

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Speaker 1: is the point of today's episode. But now they are

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Speaker 1: in charge of it. So they are now the government

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Speaker 1: in a big chunk of India. Right, So that's the

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Speaker 1: situation after this. It's weird that they'd even want to

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Speaker 1: be what's the prophet Clive did not want to be,

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Speaker 1: but I think they got greedy and so well Clive

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Speaker 1: is in charge, he tries to cut back on the

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Speaker 1: shocking amount of corruption and graph that he sees amongst

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Speaker 1: the company officers. He banns his officers from taking gifts

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Speaker 1: or bribes, although he doesn't give up his own bribes

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Speaker 1: so people don't take it super seriously. He increases salaries

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Speaker 1: to try to make people want to steal less. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And he restricts the company's monopoly so that some sort

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Speaker 1: of local economy can exists, so that the East India

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Speaker 1: Company is not the only people who are allowed to

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Speaker 1: sell products to Indians, so that they can have a

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Speaker 1: functioning society. So he tries to pump the brakes, just

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Speaker 1: let them do what they do. Um. He also does

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Speaker 1: nice stuff, like he gives a shipload of money to

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Speaker 1: the pension fund for the company army. Again, he's one

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Speaker 1: of these people. He starts this road, but he does

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Speaker 1: not seem to be running unchecked in that direction. It's

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Speaker 1: not like jan Coon or new money is evolving into

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Speaker 1: old money like you talked about on the Brothers episode

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Speaker 1: where it's time to get philanthropic now and resuscitate my image,

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Speaker 1: gloss over all that ship. It's possible. I don't know

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Speaker 1: the man, but eventually he like his health isn't great.

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Speaker 1: At this point, he winds up heading back to England

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Speaker 1: and other people take over for for India, and he

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Speaker 1: winds up in court again fighting a company for access

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Speaker 1: to his yearly bribe basically because they can't get him hired.

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Speaker 1: Can't they fire him? Well, he when he leaves every time,

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Speaker 1: he stops working for them, essentially, and so then there's

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Speaker 1: like big legal fights in the court because they don't

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Speaker 1: want him to just forever get a fortune every year.

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Speaker 1: They want that fortunate. But it seems like they keep

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Speaker 1: coming back and being like, Okay, we'll give you your

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Speaker 1: old job back, sign this deal. Well, they thought they

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Speaker 1: needed him, and now they know they really don't um

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Speaker 1: and he's starting to try to we should steal slightly less. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: this guy's served his purpose getting out here. So the

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Speaker 1: East India Company now after Clive leaves, is essentially, yeah,

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Speaker 1: the government of a big chunk of India. And if

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Speaker 1: you're a government, need to provide things for people, right

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Speaker 1: and then just take tax money like you take tax money,

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Speaker 1: but you provide roads and libraries and e m t

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Speaker 1: s and firefighters and the FDA and ship. The company

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Speaker 1: doesn't provide anything. They just take pretty much. And so

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Speaker 1: that's the situation in seventeen seventy when a famine hits

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Speaker 1: and it's a bad one, and we will get into

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Speaker 1: the famine in a little bit. Right now, we're talking

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Speaker 1: about Clive because this famine is a disaster for his image.

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Speaker 1: He's not in charge when it happens, but it goes

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Speaker 1: big in the press and it looks bad for him,

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Speaker 1: and he's basically portrayed aid by a lot of the

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Speaker 1: media as a greedy idiot who had ruined India, even

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Speaker 1: though a lot of other people had ruined India as

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Speaker 1: well as Robert Clive. And here you are throwing him

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Speaker 1: under the bus. A full two hundred years later, we

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Speaker 1: leave Clive alone. I mean, he had tried to clamp

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Speaker 1: down on the shameless left. He did see the problem. Um.

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Speaker 1: So he winds up in court and you know, has

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Speaker 1: a big legal case where he tries to essentially defend

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Speaker 1: his legacy. And during the court proceedings he delivers a

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Speaker 1: famous speech. So it's it's like one of those really

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Speaker 1: like movie ready moments from history. So he's being cross

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Speaker 1: examined about robbing Bengal blind and accused of plundering India,

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Speaker 1: and he says, quote, consider the situation in which the

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Speaker 1: victory of Plassy placed me a great prince was dependent

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Speaker 1: on my pleasure. An opulent city lay at my mercy.

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Speaker 1: It's richest bankers bid against each other for my smiles.

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Speaker 1: I walked through vaults which were thrown open to me alone,

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Speaker 1: piled on either hand with gold and jewels. Mr Chairman.

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Speaker 1: At this moment, I stand astonished at my own moderation.

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Speaker 1: I mean, that's literally just the same as you want

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Speaker 1: the truth, you can't handle the truth when you're out there.

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Speaker 1: Can you think I stole a lot? I could have

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Speaker 1: stolen a lot more? Mother? Why does the loophole exist

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Speaker 1: if I'm not supposed to exploit it? That classic justification

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Speaker 1: we hear all the time to this day. So he

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Speaker 1: was acquitted, Uh, yeah, but he didn't last that much longer.

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Speaker 1: He was very sick from all of the tropical diseases

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Speaker 1: he'd picked up overseas, and he also might have been

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Speaker 1: suffering terrible regret for his actions and the famine. He

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Speaker 1: has described as having had a nervous disorder. It's also

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Speaker 1: possibly he had severe PTSD. There are numerous times where

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Speaker 1: people exploded next to him, Like would be shot by

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Speaker 1: cannons and just the guy next to him would burst.

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Speaker 1: Like So if you don't mean got mad at him,

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Speaker 1: you mean physically exploded? Yeah, yeah, Like was burst by

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Speaker 1: a cannon, so he lived through horrible commas, so it's

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Speaker 1: possible he was just a broken mentally at this point.

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Speaker 1: Then he drowned on gold. No. In seventeen seventy four,

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Speaker 1: he stabbed himself to death in the throat with a

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Speaker 1: pocket knife. Yeah, at home alone, a suicide with no explanation.

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Speaker 1: That's a crazy math. People knew he was depressed, it

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Speaker 1: has always been depressed. But he cut his own throat

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Speaker 1: with a tiny knife, so he was gone. This is

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Speaker 1: the end of Robert Clive. But the British were still

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Speaker 1: in India, and they would stay there from nearly two

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Speaker 1: centuries now. Merchant Kings mentioned the famine in passing but

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Speaker 1: didn't get into much detail on the matter. It was

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Speaker 1: a famine, it was very, very bad. So I decided

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Speaker 1: to do a little bit of extra digging and I

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Speaker 1: ran into a college textbook called The East India Company

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Speaker 1: and the Natural World. It had a whole chapter on

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Speaker 1: the famine, and thanks to the bountiful Goddess of Capitalism,

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Speaker 1: Springer allowed me to buy just that chapter for thirty dollars.

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Speaker 1: What a deal, right, for a single single chapter exercised

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Speaker 1: from the book Capitalism it's different from the stuff we're

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Speaker 1: talking about today because reasons. Anyway, I read the chapter

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Speaker 1: and it's really good. I'm gonna I'm gonna quote from

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Speaker 1: it now. According to the report from the Famine Commission,

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Speaker 1: in a period of ninety years from seventeen sixty five

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Speaker 1: when the British East India Company took over the Dwani

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Speaker 1: of Bengal to eighteen fifty eight Bengal experience, it's twelve

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Speaker 1: famines and four severe scarcities. Now, some of those famines

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Speaker 1: would have occurred with or without the British East India Company,

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Speaker 1: because famines are a thing. They've always been a thing, right,

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Speaker 1: But once you delve into it, their whole period of

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Speaker 1: rule is basically a master class and had a funk

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Speaker 1: over an entire subcontinent. In essence, in order to compensate

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Speaker 1: for the minimal amount of actual government work the company

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Speaker 1: needed to do in order to turn a profit, they

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Speaker 1: just started jacking up taxes on rural workers and on farmers,

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Speaker 1: and usually these taxes were in kind, so you'd pay

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Speaker 1: with whatever it is you were growing at the time.

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Speaker 1: So the company commercialized agriculture in India and tried to

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Speaker 1: turn it into an almost industrial operation to maximize output.

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Speaker 1: So there's been a bunch of small independent farms and

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Speaker 1: villages and whatnot, And now the whole countryside was basically

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Speaker 1: one giant, big food production plan and made a lot

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Speaker 1: of money. But it also made it impossible for the

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Speaker 1: farmers themselves to handle bad years. Everything was sold every year,

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Speaker 1: nothing was set aside for the bad times. There wasn't

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Speaker 1: enough left over after the taxes for the individual farmers. Anyway,

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Speaker 1: the dis East India Company had disrupted the intricate cultural

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Speaker 1: systems that had formed during and before the Mughal Empire.

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Speaker 1: In the past, when there was a bad year and

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Speaker 1: the rains didn't come, villages had standing arrangements with other

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Speaker 1: villages to help each other out with food. These were

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Speaker 1: local insurance plans that were present all across India and

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Speaker 1: particularly in the farming regions have been gal was very

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Speaker 1: common way to stop people from dying horribly when a famine.

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Speaker 1: Presumably have been working for a thousand years exactly. Now, No,

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Speaker 1: now you all work one giant farm together. Yeah, this

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Speaker 1: will be better for us. So now when famine hit,

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Speaker 1: everybody worked for the company. Nobody had anything extra. There

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Speaker 1: were no more insurance policies. They'd all been taken in

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Speaker 1: taxes and sold. Quote from that same chapter. Bengali society

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Speaker 1: was divided between the Zamindars, the hereditary revenue collectors of

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Speaker 1: the Mughal Empire, and a broad base consisting of some

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Speaker 1: landless laborers and a large number of poor cultivators. Most

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Speaker 1: of them were sharecroppers, so taxes started to ratch it

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Speaker 1: up on these people in the late seventeen hundreds. The

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Speaker 1: company started jacking up to acts is really hard in

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Speaker 1: the seventeen fifties, and by the mid seventeen sixties they

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Speaker 1: were like doubling every couple of years. The agricultural reforms

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Speaker 1: the Corporation put in place didn't really work out. Yields

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Speaker 1: started to fall, so they're actually growing feware crops because

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Speaker 1: it turns out a bunch of British guys ideas on

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Speaker 1: how to farm Indian land did not work as well

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Speaker 1: as what the Indians that are going to a totally

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Speaker 1: different culture with different land and just telling them do this,

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Speaker 1: I think this would work for you for farming. You

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Speaker 1: have to do it or will shoot you try it out? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: give it a shot, let us know it works, but

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Speaker 1: don't tell us if it doesn't, we're not really interested

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Speaker 1: in that. So would they ration food back because it

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Speaker 1: is in their interests to keep people alive? And that

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Speaker 1: right now, you would think that, right, you think it's

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Speaker 1: it's in your interest that, yeah, you you would think

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Speaker 1: that other people did not. So the price of grains

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Speaker 1: started to rise right as the company takes over UM.

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Speaker 1: And the company has no less in interest in selling

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Speaker 1: cheap grain to the people growing grain to pay them

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Speaker 1: grain taxes. So when the famine hit, the company just

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Speaker 1: reacted with a kind of sociopathy. I think we're coming

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Speaker 1: to expect from the British East India Company. Oh, because

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Speaker 1: they're not even paying a portion of their income they

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Speaker 1: pay in grain anyway. Yeah, exactly. So they're like, well,

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Speaker 1: you're going to give us all your grain anyway, why

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Speaker 1: should we even give you some back when we just

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Speaker 1: get it all anywhere. We're just going to get it

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Speaker 1: all like um, so that I continue living and they're

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Speaker 1: already gone, they're already walking off with the grain. Yea.

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Speaker 1: So here's another quote from that chapter. The effect of

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Speaker 1: the famine was to enshrine free market economics as part

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Speaker 1: of the colonial policy all over the Empire, periodic famines

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Speaker 1: were seen as a check to population growth. As Mike

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Speaker 1: Davis notes, by the nineteenth century, these Malthusian ideas, which

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Speaker 1: were voiced all throughout the colonial period, resulted in the

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Speaker 1: pursuit of free market economics and quote, India, like Ireland,

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Speaker 1: became a utilitarian laboratory where millions of lives were wagered

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Speaker 1: against a dogmatic faith in omnipotent markets, overcoming the convenience

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Speaker 1: of dearth. This was a policy that was to become

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Speaker 1: quote a mask for colonial genocide. So you want to

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Speaker 1: talk about colonial genocide, first, let's talk about some ads,

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Speaker 1: because it is time. I need something the gird myself.

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Speaker 1: I need some time heared yourself with these products and

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Speaker 1: or services that support the shades, and we're back. Fabulous ads.

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Speaker 1: They like wrapped me in such a cozy feeling that

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Speaker 1: I feel like I have the buffer I need for

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Speaker 1: what's gonna come now. But what's gonna come now is

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Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about how free market economics became a

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Speaker 1: mask for colonial genocide. We're getting to the genocide part

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Speaker 1: of that. Again, to Charles Cooke Bonner, he would have

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Speaker 1: loved this period. Just a pig in plot, just stealing money,

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Speaker 1: watch selling people into slips, defying it with bizarre, nonsensical statements.

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Speaker 1: It would have been great. He would have been super

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Speaker 1: good at this. Really was born in the wrong time,

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Speaker 1: although making this time, that time, doing his best. It's

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Speaker 1: just business. This is like the beginning of that ethos.

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Speaker 1: It's just business, just business. So it's worth getting into

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Speaker 1: exactly how different the famines caused by the East India

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Speaker 1: Company's management were from the famines that had come before

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Speaker 1: in India and in every society in human history. There

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Speaker 1: had been famines in India shortly before the company's period

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Speaker 1: of dominance, including one that lasted from sixteen seventy to

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Speaker 1: sixteen seventy one. Thousands of people had died one to

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Speaker 1: three hundred every day during the months that the famine

393
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Speaker 1: was active. It was a terrible time, but the Mughal government,

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Speaker 1: shitty as it was by that point, had taken action

395
00:19:36,680 --> 00:19:39,119
Speaker 1: to mitigate it. The government had repaired and built new

396
00:19:39,160 --> 00:19:41,960
Speaker 1: irrigation works. They'd created reservoirs to make sure they'd be

397
00:19:42,000 --> 00:19:44,440
Speaker 1: able to grow crops during the next dry season. They

398
00:19:44,480 --> 00:19:46,800
Speaker 1: cut taxes so farmers would be able to keep more

399
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Speaker 1: of the food they'd grown, they'd set up free kitchens

400
00:19:49,480 --> 00:19:51,480
Speaker 1: and given out grain to try and reduce the number

401
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Speaker 1: of people who start to death. In other words, they

402
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Speaker 1: were a fucking government. The East India Company was not so.

403
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Speaker 1: Starting in the seventeen seventies, all of India started to

404
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Speaker 1: learn the difference between the two. The Great Bengal Famine

405
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Speaker 1: of seventeen seventy lasted from seventeen sixty nine to seventeen

406
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Speaker 1: seventy three. See a media I'm like, a famine supposed

407
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Speaker 1: to last a season, Yeah right, that four years? Supposed

408
00:20:16,520 --> 00:20:19,080
Speaker 1: for four years? Yeah. So the last famine had lasted

409
00:20:19,119 --> 00:20:21,320
Speaker 1: less than a year and killed thousands. This famine lasted

410
00:20:21,359 --> 00:20:24,719
Speaker 1: four years, it would kill millions. The Great Bengal Famine

411
00:20:24,760 --> 00:20:26,320
Speaker 1: was made a lot worse by the fact that in

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Speaker 1: the years leading up to it, the company had kind

413
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Speaker 1: of sort of gutt of the local economy and shipped

414
00:20:30,840 --> 00:20:33,159
Speaker 1: all of their silver away to marry Old England or

415
00:20:33,240 --> 00:20:36,399
Speaker 1: rather China. Uh see economics isn't my strong suit. But

416
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Speaker 1: I did manage to find a very detailed article on

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Speaker 1: the Wire, an independent journalism website that publishes in Hindi

418
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Speaker 1: and Urdu, and it focuses a lot on historical economic

419
00:20:45,400 --> 00:20:48,040
Speaker 1: stuff in that region of the world. The article is

420
00:20:48,040 --> 00:20:50,479
Speaker 1: called the role that currency played in the Great Bengal

421
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Speaker 1: Famine of seventeen seventy. It breaks down how the company

422
00:20:53,359 --> 00:20:56,040
Speaker 1: spent its tax revenue. This is talking about one district

423
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Speaker 1: in berb Home District. Out of ninety thousand pounds connected

424
00:20:59,560 --> 00:21:02,000
Speaker 1: through taxs and duties and net surplus of some sixty

425
00:21:02,359 --> 00:21:05,520
Speaker 1: pounds was employed for the purchase of silks, Muslims, cotton

426
00:21:05,560 --> 00:21:08,679
Speaker 1: cloths and other articles to be sold in Leadenhall Street,

427
00:21:08,720 --> 00:21:11,480
Speaker 1: the headquarters of the company. In short, the revenues have

428
00:21:11,520 --> 00:21:13,960
Speaker 1: been goal supplied the means of providing the expenditure for

429
00:21:14,040 --> 00:21:17,600
Speaker 1: purchases in Bengal, reducing the net annual influx of specie,

430
00:21:17,600 --> 00:21:20,080
Speaker 1: which is hard currency, to a pittance. So the company

431
00:21:20,200 --> 00:21:23,080
Speaker 1: was taking taxes, making a shipload of money, using it

432
00:21:23,119 --> 00:21:25,520
Speaker 1: to buy products Indian people needed, and then it would

433
00:21:25,560 --> 00:21:28,080
Speaker 1: sell those products back to them for a profit and

434
00:21:28,160 --> 00:21:31,040
Speaker 1: ship the hard currency the silver and gold back to

435
00:21:31,119 --> 00:21:34,199
Speaker 1: England and out of India. The two primary impacts of

436
00:21:34,200 --> 00:21:37,240
Speaker 1: this on England were Number one, A few people got

437
00:21:37,359 --> 00:21:39,600
Speaker 1: very very very very very rich, and it's always a

438
00:21:39,640 --> 00:21:44,320
Speaker 1: few people. What's crazy to me is countries will swallow

439
00:21:44,400 --> 00:21:48,679
Speaker 1: up and destroy whole other countries and only eighteen people

440
00:21:48,760 --> 00:21:51,960
Speaker 1: were involved. It's like the country that crushed the other

441
00:21:52,040 --> 00:21:55,240
Speaker 1: country doesn't even benefit from us. Well, England does in

442
00:21:55,359 --> 00:21:58,280
Speaker 1: one way. This is how the tax. But know this

443
00:21:58,320 --> 00:22:02,000
Speaker 1: is how gets ta okay this, yeah, I've heard this.

444
00:22:02,240 --> 00:22:04,640
Speaker 1: So the Chinese were the only place to get tea,

445
00:22:04,960 --> 00:22:06,440
Speaker 1: you know, China was the only place where it grew

446
00:22:06,480 --> 00:22:09,760
Speaker 1: at this point, not anymore. And China only wanted silver.

447
00:22:10,600 --> 00:22:13,359
Speaker 1: They wanted the specie, the hard currency. Now sounding like

448
00:22:13,400 --> 00:22:18,320
Speaker 1: a Sidmyer civilization, Yeah, that's exactly what's happening. Here's another quote.

449
00:22:18,480 --> 00:22:22,040
Speaker 1: The relatively undervalued silver and Bengal proved a profitable source

450
00:22:22,040 --> 00:22:24,520
Speaker 1: to finance the growing tea trade with China. Within a

451
00:22:24,560 --> 00:22:26,840
Speaker 1: span of just three years, some seven d and twenty

452
00:22:26,840 --> 00:22:29,720
Speaker 1: thousand pounds of specie was sent out of Bengal to China.

453
00:22:30,000 --> 00:22:32,119
Speaker 1: The widespread corruption and plunder by the servants of the

454
00:22:32,119 --> 00:22:34,320
Speaker 1: company not only transferred the wealth of the country to

455
00:22:34,400 --> 00:22:37,119
Speaker 1: these individuals, but was also sent out of the country

456
00:22:37,119 --> 00:22:40,800
Speaker 1: through ingenious means. Now this meant that very quickly, being

457
00:22:40,840 --> 00:22:43,439
Speaker 1: Golf's hard currency, ran out the parts of India the

458
00:22:43,440 --> 00:22:46,560
Speaker 1: company owned only had so much silver and gold and whatever.

459
00:22:46,840 --> 00:22:49,439
Speaker 1: The sheer lack of currency meant that Indians could no

460
00:22:49,520 --> 00:22:53,199
Speaker 1: longer buy and sell things. The local economy collapsed, and

461
00:22:53,240 --> 00:22:56,159
Speaker 1: this also meant that suddenly the company had no money

462
00:22:56,359 --> 00:22:58,800
Speaker 1: since they weren't willing to send silver over from India

463
00:22:58,840 --> 00:23:01,159
Speaker 1: so they could just buy things. The company sort of

464
00:23:01,160 --> 00:23:03,600
Speaker 1: twiddle it's them and failed to import grain from outside

465
00:23:03,640 --> 00:23:06,159
Speaker 1: to avert the millions of deaths. In fact, they banned

466
00:23:06,160 --> 00:23:08,959
Speaker 1: the importation of grain between different regions of India and

467
00:23:09,000 --> 00:23:12,280
Speaker 1: seized boats to prevent it. Jesus, here's what one comes

468
00:23:13,240 --> 00:23:16,000
Speaker 1: them products down at the company's store. Well, they're not

469
00:23:16,000 --> 00:23:20,040
Speaker 1: buying those anymore because the company doesn't have the money

470
00:23:20,080 --> 00:23:23,639
Speaker 1: to stop the famine. Vicious circle. No one's at fault, right,

471
00:23:24,000 --> 00:23:26,439
Speaker 1: How could it possibly ever have been prevented? This is

472
00:23:26,480 --> 00:23:28,640
Speaker 1: just what had to happen. No one could have foreseen.

473
00:23:28,680 --> 00:23:32,320
Speaker 1: This is the Irish potato famines. Sorry, like quiz you

474
00:23:32,640 --> 00:23:35,960
Speaker 1: on stuff even research? But was that also corporate ization?

475
00:23:36,560 --> 00:23:39,040
Speaker 1: That not in the same way, but it involved a

476
00:23:39,080 --> 00:23:41,800
Speaker 1: lot of very rich landown story. Yeah, that's it. We

477
00:23:41,840 --> 00:23:44,440
Speaker 1: will be talking about that. I'm talking about Victoria at

478
00:23:44,480 --> 00:23:47,440
Speaker 1: some point. Yeah, here is a quote from a company

479
00:23:47,440 --> 00:23:50,520
Speaker 1: worker at the time about what Bingal was like during

480
00:23:50,520 --> 00:23:52,800
Speaker 1: this famine. This is a guy who who's watching it

481
00:23:52,840 --> 00:23:56,360
Speaker 1: as a white dude who has enough food. Quote. All

482
00:23:56,359 --> 00:23:59,280
Speaker 1: through the stifling summer of seventeen seventy, the people went

483
00:23:59,359 --> 00:24:02,199
Speaker 1: on dying. The husbandmen sold their cattle, they sold their

484
00:24:02,200 --> 00:24:05,320
Speaker 1: implements of agriculture. They devoured their seed grain. They sold

485
00:24:05,320 --> 00:24:08,080
Speaker 1: their sons and daughters, till at length no buyer of

486
00:24:08,160 --> 00:24:11,119
Speaker 1: children could be found. They ate the leaves of trees

487
00:24:11,160 --> 00:24:13,960
Speaker 1: and the grass on the field. And in June seventeen seventy,

488
00:24:14,240 --> 00:24:16,720
Speaker 1: the resident at the Durbar affirmed that the living were

489
00:24:16,760 --> 00:24:19,119
Speaker 1: feeding on the dead day and night. A torrent of

490
00:24:19,200 --> 00:24:22,520
Speaker 1: famished and disease stricken wretches poured into the great cities.

491
00:24:22,800 --> 00:24:25,360
Speaker 1: At an early period of the year. Pestilence had broken out.

492
00:24:25,520 --> 00:24:28,520
Speaker 1: In March, we find smallpox at the Morschetta Bad. The

493
00:24:28,600 --> 00:24:31,040
Speaker 1: streets were blocked up with promiscuous heaps of the dying

494
00:24:31,080 --> 00:24:33,800
Speaker 1: and dead. In Terment cannot do its work quick enough.

495
00:24:34,080 --> 00:24:37,040
Speaker 1: Even the dogs and jackals, the public scavengers of the East,

496
00:24:37,080 --> 00:24:40,440
Speaker 1: became unable to accomplish their revolting work, and the multitude

497
00:24:40,440 --> 00:24:43,520
Speaker 1: of mangled in festering corpses at length threatened the existence

498
00:24:43,560 --> 00:24:48,200
Speaker 1: of the citizens. And even through all this, the East

499
00:24:48,240 --> 00:24:52,560
Speaker 1: India Company keeps increasing taxes on the farmers, which must

500
00:24:52,560 --> 00:24:56,040
Speaker 1: not even mean anything anymore, Like fine, no, they're still

501
00:24:56,040 --> 00:24:59,119
Speaker 1: growing food, it's just being taken from them while they're starving.

502
00:25:00,119 --> 00:25:02,960
Speaker 1: So why don't they just eat the food that they're harvesting?

503
00:25:03,040 --> 00:25:05,520
Speaker 1: Right then there's guys with guns there, but yeah, and

504
00:25:05,760 --> 00:25:07,440
Speaker 1: they've got to like, bad things will happen if you

505
00:25:07,440 --> 00:25:09,480
Speaker 1: don't pay your time. What's crazy is they treat it

506
00:25:09,520 --> 00:25:12,720
Speaker 1: like it's business, like they have some god given right

507
00:25:12,800 --> 00:25:15,399
Speaker 1: to do this because they created this abstract thing we

508
00:25:15,440 --> 00:25:20,080
Speaker 1: call like a business plan structure. But really it boils

509
00:25:20,119 --> 00:25:22,160
Speaker 1: down to robbery because at the end of the day,

510
00:25:22,160 --> 00:25:24,480
Speaker 1: it's always just like, well, why couldn't China come trade

511
00:25:24,480 --> 00:25:26,920
Speaker 1: directly for silver with India? Well, because we'd kill them

512
00:25:26,920 --> 00:25:30,200
Speaker 1: all and we'd shoot it. You, that's what it comes

513
00:25:30,240 --> 00:25:33,239
Speaker 1: down to, you the guns. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So the

514
00:25:33,280 --> 00:25:36,399
Speaker 1: taxes on the Bengalese people are higher in seventeen seventy

515
00:25:36,400 --> 00:25:38,639
Speaker 1: and seventy one, the year the famine starts. Then in

516
00:25:38,720 --> 00:25:42,439
Speaker 1: seventeen sixty nine to seventy, the year that preceded the famine.

517
00:25:42,480 --> 00:25:44,280
Speaker 1: I mean, you work on a grain farm and you

518
00:25:44,320 --> 00:25:49,399
Speaker 1: go home and eat your dead sibling, your children you

519
00:25:49,480 --> 00:25:52,359
Speaker 1: sold a long time ago. Yeah, So in April of

520
00:25:52,440 --> 00:25:56,040
Speaker 1: seventeen seventy quote astoundingly, the Council, acting on the advice

521
00:25:56,080 --> 00:25:59,080
Speaker 1: of the Muslim Minister of Finance Mohammed Rezakan, added ten

522
00:25:59,119 --> 00:26:01,480
Speaker 1: percent to the land acts of the ensuing year, but

523
00:26:01,560 --> 00:26:04,000
Speaker 1: the distress continued to increase at a rate that baffled

524
00:26:04,000 --> 00:26:06,960
Speaker 1: official calculation. In the second week of May, the central

525
00:26:07,000 --> 00:26:09,480
Speaker 1: government awoke to find itself in the midst of universal

526
00:26:09,520 --> 00:26:14,399
Speaker 1: and irredeemable starvation. So some company officers advised basically cutting

527
00:26:14,400 --> 00:26:16,520
Speaker 1: taxes and giving back some of what they'd taken so

528
00:26:16,560 --> 00:26:18,960
Speaker 1: the people wouldn't starve to death. But that just didn't happen.

529
00:26:19,440 --> 00:26:24,399
Speaker 1: I can't because they want some were living people to

530
00:26:24,440 --> 00:26:27,800
Speaker 1: work the field. I really thought their response would be

531
00:26:28,240 --> 00:26:31,040
Speaker 1: give them all a pittance of food. They're even like,

532
00:26:31,800 --> 00:26:33,840
Speaker 1: I don't know if we shouldn't even give them that.

533
00:26:33,960 --> 00:26:36,280
Speaker 1: It's not the company is a big force. Make like,

534
00:26:36,320 --> 00:26:37,639
Speaker 1: the company is a big force of making some of

535
00:26:37,640 --> 00:26:39,960
Speaker 1: these calls. But a lot of it's just individuals being like, Yeah,

536
00:26:40,000 --> 00:26:41,640
Speaker 1: but if we give some of it back, then I'll

537
00:26:41,640 --> 00:26:43,080
Speaker 1: be able to steal less. And I want to be

538
00:26:43,119 --> 00:26:45,000
Speaker 1: home in a year with a pile of money, so

539
00:26:45,160 --> 00:26:49,160
Speaker 1: I'll just keep stealing for another year. Still totally reliance

540
00:26:49,160 --> 00:26:51,680
Speaker 1: on most of the people being like and that's worth

541
00:26:51,720 --> 00:26:54,280
Speaker 1: watching everyone starved to death around me while I'm here.

542
00:26:54,320 --> 00:26:56,800
Speaker 1: If we've learned one thing about corporations from the last

543
00:26:56,800 --> 00:26:58,840
Speaker 1: four hundred years, it's that they have a great deal

544
00:26:58,840 --> 00:27:03,200
Speaker 1: of foresight. Yeah, and never murder in poison themselves out

545
00:27:03,200 --> 00:27:06,480
Speaker 1: of like sci fi movies where there's a desert planet,

546
00:27:06,560 --> 00:27:09,639
Speaker 1: but so but the evil corporate lady lives in like

547
00:27:09,680 --> 00:27:13,480
Speaker 1: a glass pyramid filled with water. Always seems so over

548
00:27:13,520 --> 00:27:17,240
Speaker 1: the top, but it's real. It's reality. Boy, howdy has

549
00:27:17,240 --> 00:27:20,879
Speaker 1: it happened? So yeah. By May seventeen, seventy one third

550
00:27:20,920 --> 00:27:24,520
Speaker 1: of the Bengalese population six out of every seventeen people

551
00:27:24,760 --> 00:27:28,520
Speaker 1: was dead. Company officials estimated one half of the cultivators

552
00:27:28,520 --> 00:27:31,560
Speaker 1: and pairs of revenue will perish with hunger. The sheer

553
00:27:31,640 --> 00:27:36,240
Speaker 1: scale of the devastation was terrible for the company's bank statement.

554
00:27:38,080 --> 00:27:40,800
Speaker 1: By October, the company started to notice that an awful

555
00:27:40,800 --> 00:27:42,600
Speaker 1: lot of the workers they relied on had been quote

556
00:27:42,640 --> 00:27:46,960
Speaker 1: destroyed by the famine. Oh so we're already using business

557
00:27:47,000 --> 00:27:51,240
Speaker 1: devil speak. They're already euphemizing it. Um, some of our

558
00:27:51,720 --> 00:27:59,040
Speaker 1: bipedal product was destroyed a transaction. Yeah. Quote the failure

559
00:27:59,119 --> 00:28:02,200
Speaker 1: of a single up following a year of scarcity had

560
00:28:02,240 --> 00:28:05,800
Speaker 1: wiped out an estimated ten million human beings. God, so

561
00:28:05,840 --> 00:28:08,560
Speaker 1: that's the death toll of this first famine, ten million.

562
00:28:09,359 --> 00:28:12,760
Speaker 1: The famines continued though, off and on through the seventeen seventies.

563
00:28:12,960 --> 00:28:16,080
Speaker 1: In seventeen eighty, another big famine hit and again one

564
00:28:16,200 --> 00:28:20,159
Speaker 1: third of Bengal just died. Revenue plummeted. The British government

565
00:28:20,160 --> 00:28:22,400
Speaker 1: started to get involved. Even to people at the time,

566
00:28:22,600 --> 00:28:24,560
Speaker 1: what was happening was seen as horrific, and the press

567
00:28:24,560 --> 00:28:27,560
Speaker 1: attack the East India Company. By seventeen eighty four, the

568
00:28:27,560 --> 00:28:30,760
Speaker 1: British government started to pass the first regulations limiting the

569
00:28:30,800 --> 00:28:34,240
Speaker 1: company's powers, really limiting any company's powers. This is the

570
00:28:34,280 --> 00:28:37,840
Speaker 1: birth of regulation and corporations. It's because the corporation killed

571
00:28:37,880 --> 00:28:40,560
Speaker 1: ten million people, probably more like twelve to fifteen at

572
00:28:40,600 --> 00:28:43,680
Speaker 1: that point. It's roughly a holocaust to a holocaust and

573
00:28:43,680 --> 00:28:46,480
Speaker 1: a half worth of human beings. You hear me slowing

574
00:28:46,480 --> 00:28:49,680
Speaker 1: down because my brains just grappling with actually trying to

575
00:28:49,760 --> 00:28:53,080
Speaker 1: absorb in. Oh, and there's another that's real that we

576
00:28:53,200 --> 00:28:55,720
Speaker 1: were like, this way of organizing humans seems to be

577
00:28:55,760 --> 00:28:59,480
Speaker 1: making money. Oh, it also kills people. Well, that's fine,

578
00:28:59,640 --> 00:29:02,320
Speaker 1: unless goes too far. When did it go too far?

579
00:29:02,440 --> 00:29:04,600
Speaker 1: When did we go like, maybe it has gone too far?

580
00:29:05,240 --> 00:29:09,120
Speaker 1: When ten million people were dead, Well, ten million people died,

581
00:29:09,240 --> 00:29:11,360
Speaker 1: and then ten years later, maybe we should do another

582
00:29:11,560 --> 00:29:13,760
Speaker 1: probably five or six million people died. And then in

583
00:29:13,840 --> 00:29:16,840
Speaker 1: eighteen hundred ten percent of all of India died. There's

584
00:29:16,840 --> 00:29:19,080
Speaker 1: not even a death count for that. It's just roughly

585
00:29:19,120 --> 00:29:24,719
Speaker 1: one billion people in India today. But probably if we're

586
00:29:24,760 --> 00:29:27,360
Speaker 1: trying to take the whole East India Company's death toll

587
00:29:27,400 --> 00:29:30,520
Speaker 1: from famine, it wouldn't be outrageous to assume somewhere in

588
00:29:30,560 --> 00:29:33,960
Speaker 1: the million deaths by this whole over the whole course

589
00:29:33,960 --> 00:29:35,800
Speaker 1: of this whole period. So it's good to know that

590
00:29:35,880 --> 00:29:39,400
Speaker 1: humanity does have a point where you're like, is this

591
00:29:39,600 --> 00:29:42,719
Speaker 1: too many people that you can for me to have

592
00:29:42,800 --> 00:29:48,160
Speaker 1: slightly bigger houses? Yeah? Uh so, Yeah. In seventeen eighty four,

593
00:29:48,200 --> 00:29:50,880
Speaker 1: they start regulating the Company. In seventeen eighty eight, Edmund

594
00:29:51,080 --> 00:29:53,480
Speaker 1: or someone Burke, I forget which Burke gives a speech

595
00:29:53,520 --> 00:29:56,920
Speaker 1: at the impeachment trial of India's Governor General. Because they're like,

596
00:29:57,720 --> 00:30:00,120
Speaker 1: you've killed like twenty million people, you should probably not

597
00:30:00,240 --> 00:30:04,280
Speaker 1: have this job. So Burke called the company quote a

598
00:30:04,360 --> 00:30:08,360
Speaker 1: rogue state, waging war, administering justice, minting coin and collecting

599
00:30:08,360 --> 00:30:15,880
Speaker 1: revenue over Indian territory. He didn't exaggerate. Horace Walpole, a

600
00:30:15,880 --> 00:30:18,280
Speaker 1: Whig member of Parliament, said at the time that quote,

601
00:30:18,400 --> 00:30:20,959
Speaker 1: the oppressions of India, and even of the English settled

602
00:30:21,000 --> 00:30:23,520
Speaker 1: there under the rape and cruelties of the servants of

603
00:30:23,520 --> 00:30:26,320
Speaker 1: the company have now reached England and created a general

604
00:30:26,320 --> 00:30:29,520
Speaker 1: clamor here to such monopolies were imputed the late famine

605
00:30:29,520 --> 00:30:31,800
Speaker 1: of Bengal and the loss of three million they didn't

606
00:30:31,840 --> 00:30:34,160
Speaker 1: know the whole total of its inhabitants. A tithe of

607
00:30:34,200 --> 00:30:38,320
Speaker 1: these crimes was sufficient to inspire horror. So the famine

608
00:30:38,320 --> 00:30:42,320
Speaker 1: of seventeen seventy, seventeen eighty and seventeen ninety nine. It

609
00:30:42,440 --> 00:30:45,320
Speaker 1: is likely, and these are other historians to me saying this,

610
00:30:45,480 --> 00:30:47,920
Speaker 1: that the famines the East India Company brought onto India

611
00:30:48,160 --> 00:30:51,440
Speaker 1: where the single greatest atrocity, the single worst disaster of

612
00:30:51,480 --> 00:30:54,760
Speaker 1: the entire seventeen hundreds of that whole century. It was

613
00:30:54,840 --> 00:30:56,880
Speaker 1: the beginning of the end for the East India Company too,

614
00:30:56,960 --> 00:30:59,200
Speaker 1: although businessmen would continue to trade and profit off of

615
00:30:59,200 --> 00:31:02,280
Speaker 1: her for nearly a tree. India continued to suffer famines,

616
00:31:02,280 --> 00:31:04,520
Speaker 1: which led to unrest in war, which led to uprisings

617
00:31:04,520 --> 00:31:08,280
Speaker 1: and crackdowns. This led the East India Company's army to expand,

618
00:31:08,320 --> 00:31:10,400
Speaker 1: which led them to take over more and more of India,

619
00:31:10,480 --> 00:31:13,840
Speaker 1: until pretty soon they controlled basically all of India and

620
00:31:13,840 --> 00:31:16,600
Speaker 1: had an army of two hundred thousand soldiers. A guy

621
00:31:16,680 --> 00:31:19,000
Speaker 1: named Lord Wellesley eventually wound up in charge, and he

622
00:31:19,040 --> 00:31:21,480
Speaker 1: became the company's most successful general. He's the guy who

623
00:31:21,520 --> 00:31:24,400
Speaker 1: expanded them from sort of the eastern coast of India

624
00:31:24,480 --> 00:31:28,320
Speaker 1: all the way into what's now Pakistan and eventually Afghanistan.

625
00:31:28,880 --> 00:31:31,160
Speaker 1: According to the wonderful book Return of a King. By

626
00:31:31,200 --> 00:31:34,840
Speaker 1: seventeen ninety six, quote the company was expanding rapidly out

627
00:31:34,840 --> 00:31:37,560
Speaker 1: from its coastal factories to conquer much of the interior.

628
00:31:37,880 --> 00:31:41,680
Speaker 1: Wellesley's Indian campaigns would ultimately annex more territory than all

629
00:31:41,720 --> 00:31:46,200
Speaker 1: of Napoleon's conquests in Europe. Yeah. This eventually brought the

630
00:31:46,200 --> 00:31:50,200
Speaker 1: East India Company to the doorstep of Afghanistan. In eighteen sixteen,

631
00:31:50,240 --> 00:31:53,080
Speaker 1: the British East India Company extended an offer of asylum

632
00:31:53,120 --> 00:31:56,760
Speaker 1: to Shah Shuja, the exiled king of Afghanistan. In eighteen

633
00:31:56,760 --> 00:31:59,400
Speaker 1: thirty nine, due to a basically minor dispute with the

634
00:31:59,440 --> 00:32:03,440
Speaker 1: Afghan from it, the East India Company invaded Afghanistan, conquered

635
00:32:03,480 --> 00:32:05,760
Speaker 1: the country and placed Shah Shuja on a throne as

636
00:32:05,760 --> 00:32:08,160
Speaker 1: a puppet Lord Auckland, who was the guy who had

637
00:32:08,200 --> 00:32:11,120
Speaker 1: ordered the invasion, and the company quickly lost interest in

638
00:32:11,200 --> 00:32:15,960
Speaker 1: their conquest of Afghanistan and immediately invaded China next because

639
00:32:16,160 --> 00:32:18,520
Speaker 1: it feels it seems like they feel that, well, you

640
00:32:18,600 --> 00:32:23,080
Speaker 1: got to invade something that's not mandatory, you're allowed to stop.

641
00:32:23,160 --> 00:32:25,320
Speaker 1: Let me explain it to you, Michael. They've been selling

642
00:32:25,320 --> 00:32:28,400
Speaker 1: opium to China and it had created a horrific endemic

643
00:32:28,480 --> 00:32:31,040
Speaker 1: drug problem that was crippling the local economy and killing

644
00:32:31,040 --> 00:32:34,280
Speaker 1: people in huge So the Chinese government band opium sales,

645
00:32:34,640 --> 00:32:37,160
Speaker 1: and so they had to invade China to keep selling

646
00:32:37,160 --> 00:32:40,440
Speaker 1: them deadly just like it's like, yeah, we funked up

647
00:32:40,480 --> 00:32:43,280
Speaker 1: India until it's stopped bleeding money, so we have to

648
00:32:43,320 --> 00:32:45,400
Speaker 1: move on to a new place and funk that place up,

649
00:32:45,400 --> 00:32:50,120
Speaker 1: So let's stop the bleeding. I'm of the opinion that

650
00:32:51,120 --> 00:32:53,680
Speaker 1: this is all fine. Well know that the great heroes

651
00:32:53,720 --> 00:32:58,400
Speaker 1: in history are probably the afghan people, because the East

652
00:32:58,440 --> 00:33:01,560
Speaker 1: India Company is on a tear killing people by the millions,

653
00:33:01,600 --> 00:33:06,920
Speaker 1: conquering land, and then they take over Afghanistan and they

654
00:33:06,960 --> 00:33:10,840
Speaker 1: find themselves the rulers of Afghanistan, a country that has

655
00:33:10,920 --> 00:33:14,040
Speaker 1: nothing of value for the East India Company. It's not profitable.

656
00:33:14,640 --> 00:33:17,400
Speaker 1: So they have this huge army in Afghanistan that they

657
00:33:17,440 --> 00:33:20,160
Speaker 1: start needing to cut back on. And they can't cut

658
00:33:20,160 --> 00:33:22,720
Speaker 1: back on the army because Afghanistan is big and hard

659
00:33:22,720 --> 00:33:25,600
Speaker 1: to control, so they stopped paying bribes to all of

660
00:33:25,640 --> 00:33:28,960
Speaker 1: these local war lords, which means the local warlords start

661
00:33:29,000 --> 00:33:32,520
Speaker 1: attacking the army, which means there's eventually a gigantic revolution

662
00:33:32,560 --> 00:33:36,800
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan that ousts the garrison, the Company's giant army

663
00:33:36,840 --> 00:33:39,240
Speaker 1: in Kabul and wipes it out in the mountain passes

664
00:33:39,240 --> 00:33:42,080
Speaker 1: of Afghanistan. And there, you know, these are British soldiers

665
00:33:42,080 --> 00:33:45,080
Speaker 1: with muskets, unrifled guns that aren't good at very long range.

666
00:33:45,320 --> 00:33:48,200
Speaker 1: The Afghans have these weapons called Jezail Cheese, which are

667
00:33:48,200 --> 00:33:52,280
Speaker 1: basically sniper rifles. So they're hiding in the mountains murdering

668
00:33:52,680 --> 00:33:56,440
Speaker 1: huge numbers of British soldiers and their Indian sepoys, and

669
00:33:56,800 --> 00:33:59,440
Speaker 1: they just massacre this entire British army. It's a huge,

670
00:33:59,720 --> 00:34:03,760
Speaker 1: huge disaster. Uh. And this disaster comes after years of

671
00:34:03,800 --> 00:34:07,800
Speaker 1: declining revenues for the East India Company and ballooning expenses. Finally,

672
00:34:07,840 --> 00:34:10,359
Speaker 1: all of this helps kill the East India Company as

673
00:34:10,400 --> 00:34:14,000
Speaker 1: a global power. In eighteen fifty eight, the British government

674
00:34:14,040 --> 00:34:16,880
Speaker 1: finally decided that letting a for profit enterprise governed the

675
00:34:16,920 --> 00:34:19,080
Speaker 1: lives of tens of millions of people and like a

676
00:34:19,160 --> 00:34:23,040
Speaker 1: fifth of the world was a really bad idea. Instead

677
00:34:23,080 --> 00:34:27,319
Speaker 1: they give it to a queen. Yeah, there's there's if.

678
00:34:27,360 --> 00:34:32,120
Speaker 1: I feel like the Afghan uprising just delayed what we're

679
00:34:32,160 --> 00:34:34,840
Speaker 1: already So it was it was like there was this

680
00:34:34,880 --> 00:34:38,080
Speaker 1: weird chance at the very beginning of corporate history that

681
00:34:38,360 --> 00:34:41,239
Speaker 1: corporations and governments could have merged then become one and

682
00:34:41,280 --> 00:34:43,200
Speaker 1: the same. In the East India Company could have been

683
00:34:43,239 --> 00:34:46,479
Speaker 1: like literally the empire and just own the world, and

684
00:34:46,719 --> 00:34:50,440
Speaker 1: they stop that from happening for five years. It's still

685
00:34:50,480 --> 00:34:54,440
Speaker 1: gonna happen, but it could have happened really fast. There's

686
00:34:54,480 --> 00:34:57,960
Speaker 1: news today that President Donald Trump is considering a plan

687
00:34:58,080 --> 00:35:00,600
Speaker 1: by Eric Prince, the founder of Blackwater, to basically put

688
00:35:00,600 --> 00:35:03,040
Speaker 1: private mercenaries in charge of the war of An Afghanistan

689
00:35:03,120 --> 00:35:05,520
Speaker 1: and have a guy who Erik Prince is described as

690
00:35:05,520 --> 00:35:10,319
Speaker 1: a viceroy run Afghanistan for the Western Powers. So there's

691
00:35:10,360 --> 00:35:13,200
Speaker 1: a chance the Afghans might get to stop the next

692
00:35:13,200 --> 00:35:18,440
Speaker 1: stage ship. Of course, Trump has named six to the

693
00:35:18,480 --> 00:35:23,440
Speaker 1: Council of Operance. Yeah, like everything's becoming So I will

694
00:35:23,480 --> 00:35:26,920
Speaker 1: tell you one thing about Afghanistan. Nobody wins when they

695
00:35:27,000 --> 00:35:29,800
Speaker 1: fight there, other than not even after the Afghan people

696
00:35:29,800 --> 00:35:32,400
Speaker 1: don't even win. Everybody loses, but you don't win. And

697
00:35:32,520 --> 00:35:35,600
Speaker 1: usually when you quote unquote win or are are holding

698
00:35:35,640 --> 00:35:38,920
Speaker 1: it for a while, you're just they're being hot standing

699
00:35:39,000 --> 00:35:43,000
Speaker 1: around and it It's worth noting that when we invaded Afghanistan,

700
00:35:43,160 --> 00:35:45,719
Speaker 1: the guy we put in charge of the country was

701
00:35:45,760 --> 00:35:48,600
Speaker 1: a dude named Hamid Karzai who was an ascendant of

702
00:35:48,680 --> 00:35:51,480
Speaker 1: Shah Shuja. The people the East India company put in

703
00:35:51,560 --> 00:35:55,040
Speaker 1: charge of Afghanistan, who was then massacred after the revolution.

704
00:35:55,120 --> 00:36:00,000
Speaker 1: It's a small, small, awful world, dumb, dumb world. So yeah.

705
00:36:00,120 --> 00:36:03,520
Speaker 1: In eighteen fifty eight, India becomes the property of Queen Victoria,

706
00:36:03,600 --> 00:36:06,280
Speaker 1: who we will almost certainly discuss in a subsequent episode.

707
00:36:06,680 --> 00:36:09,880
Speaker 1: The East India Company survives for another few years, but

708
00:36:09,960 --> 00:36:12,400
Speaker 1: it is dissolved for good in eighteen seventy four by

709
00:36:12,400 --> 00:36:16,440
Speaker 1: the East India Stock Redemption Act. This ever, shall we

710
00:36:16,480 --> 00:36:19,960
Speaker 1: get our tea? Who's to say at this point, I'm

711
00:36:19,960 --> 00:36:24,600
Speaker 1: sure there's competitors. So that's that's the era of heroic

712
00:36:24,640 --> 00:36:29,120
Speaker 1: commerce slog. What does that have to do with the

713
00:36:29,160 --> 00:36:34,799
Speaker 1: Boston Tea party? They just brought the tea that yeah, yeah, yeah.

714
00:36:34,880 --> 00:36:41,320
Speaker 1: It's really just like the militarization aspect, and that's crazy

715
00:36:41,400 --> 00:36:44,200
Speaker 1: that we're going down that road again. And I left

716
00:36:44,239 --> 00:36:46,840
Speaker 1: out there's so because we didn't really talk about North America.

717
00:36:46,880 --> 00:36:48,759
Speaker 1: There's a lot of the story of these companies, and

718
00:36:48,960 --> 00:36:51,279
Speaker 1: we didn't even because there's just so much totally because

719
00:36:51,320 --> 00:36:54,759
Speaker 1: I don't know about that, but the things I do know.

720
00:36:55,080 --> 00:36:57,600
Speaker 1: It's so this is like the template for like ouran

721
00:36:57,719 --> 00:36:59,839
Speaker 1: contra all kinds of ship that I do know about

722
00:36:59,880 --> 00:37:02,200
Speaker 1: the I'm like, oh, this is the first time people

723
00:37:02,200 --> 00:37:05,200
Speaker 1: were like, let's do this particular kind of It's a

724
00:37:05,239 --> 00:37:07,800
Speaker 1: template for Iran, it's a template for all these ideas.

725
00:37:07,840 --> 00:37:10,680
Speaker 1: It's a template for colonialism, and thus all these colonial

726
00:37:10,719 --> 00:37:13,080
Speaker 1: wars have their start here. This is a big part

727
00:37:13,120 --> 00:37:15,920
Speaker 1: of the origin of our problems with race in the

728
00:37:16,040 --> 00:37:19,840
Speaker 1: United States, because these corporations really jump start the slave

729
00:37:19,880 --> 00:37:23,880
Speaker 1: trade because they're depopulating these islands of the natives, and

730
00:37:23,920 --> 00:37:25,759
Speaker 1: then they need to move slaves in to work the

731
00:37:25,800 --> 00:37:29,759
Speaker 1: spice plantations. It seems like it's almost and it's inevitable

732
00:37:29,760 --> 00:37:32,319
Speaker 1: because you're reaching this technological threshold where we now we

733
00:37:32,320 --> 00:37:35,080
Speaker 1: have compasses and sextant so we can get further away.

734
00:37:35,280 --> 00:37:38,080
Speaker 1: It's just like in any community, there's going to be

735
00:37:38,120 --> 00:37:43,239
Speaker 1: some bastards. You have job security for sure, and this

736
00:37:43,320 --> 00:37:45,960
Speaker 1: is the first time that you're like, oh, the bastards

737
00:37:46,000 --> 00:37:48,359
Speaker 1: operate on a global level now, because it's the first

738
00:37:48,360 --> 00:37:50,879
Speaker 1: time this clive motherfucker can go all the way over

739
00:37:50,920 --> 00:37:53,479
Speaker 1: there and funck everything up and come all the way back.

740
00:37:54,840 --> 00:37:59,600
Speaker 1: It's remarkable. It's the birth of something horrible, some Cathulu

741
00:37:59,680 --> 00:38:02,960
Speaker 1: type monster. Yeah, that is destined to destroy us all

742
00:38:03,000 --> 00:38:05,960
Speaker 1: I firmly believe, and this is the to get and

743
00:38:06,040 --> 00:38:08,240
Speaker 1: I think the tiniest bit to political just to explain

744
00:38:08,239 --> 00:38:10,520
Speaker 1: somet of my own beliefs, because I've received some negative

745
00:38:10,520 --> 00:38:14,160
Speaker 1: feedback from people over a few episodes for anti capitalist

746
00:38:14,280 --> 00:38:17,279
Speaker 1: rants and stuff. Ill on what the internet? That's not

747
00:38:17,320 --> 00:38:19,880
Speaker 1: the Internet. I know I'm not anti capitalist. I'm enjoying

748
00:38:19,880 --> 00:38:22,279
Speaker 1: a delightful bag of Darrino's right now. I understand that,

749
00:38:23,400 --> 00:38:25,200
Speaker 1: God damn it is good. I think they'd have to

750
00:38:25,280 --> 00:38:28,200
Speaker 1: eventually pay you for it to be considered capitalism though, Yeah,

751
00:38:28,680 --> 00:38:34,160
Speaker 1: that's fair. But me buying the products, me enjoying a good, clean,

752
00:38:34,440 --> 00:38:38,600
Speaker 1: fancy new phone is capitalism. It's not that I'm saying, Oh,

753
00:38:38,680 --> 00:38:40,880
Speaker 1: this system all needs to be torn down tomorrow and

754
00:38:40,880 --> 00:38:43,160
Speaker 1: I have a solution. It's that I'm saying when we

755
00:38:43,200 --> 00:38:45,839
Speaker 1: start talking about how like all the deaths from communism

756
00:38:45,840 --> 00:38:47,440
Speaker 1: and stuff like you hear on the right people be

757
00:38:47,480 --> 00:38:50,000
Speaker 1: like communisms killed ninety million People's man, there's a lot

758
00:38:50,040 --> 00:38:52,360
Speaker 1: tens and millions of people have died under communist governments.

759
00:38:52,520 --> 00:38:54,680
Speaker 1: I will never argue that with you, But if you

760
00:38:54,719 --> 00:38:58,480
Speaker 1: think capitalism's death toll isn't as higher for much even

761
00:38:58,560 --> 00:39:00,759
Speaker 1: much higher, because it's been going on for four hundred years.

762
00:39:01,440 --> 00:39:04,320
Speaker 1: You are not paying attention to the actual facts, in

763
00:39:04,360 --> 00:39:07,600
Speaker 1: the actual history. Everything we do that we elevate to

764
00:39:07,600 --> 00:39:12,399
Speaker 1: an ideology kills buckets of people. That's what people do.

765
00:39:12,920 --> 00:39:15,960
Speaker 1: So don't get on your high horse. If you like capitalism.

766
00:39:15,960 --> 00:39:17,400
Speaker 1: I'm not going to argue with you about the right

767
00:39:17,440 --> 00:39:18,839
Speaker 1: way to run the world because I don't know what

768
00:39:18,840 --> 00:39:21,720
Speaker 1: it is. But don't get on your high horse because

769
00:39:21,760 --> 00:39:24,719
Speaker 1: whatever you believe, there's blood on your hands, or there's

770
00:39:24,719 --> 00:39:26,680
Speaker 1: blood on the hands of the thing that you believe in.

771
00:39:27,320 --> 00:39:31,600
Speaker 1: You don't like this show, now, I couldn't agree more

772
00:39:32,600 --> 00:39:36,440
Speaker 1: as Jack Johnson saying about so long he's a wise man,

773
00:39:36,560 --> 00:39:40,600
Speaker 1: my friend, we've all got the blood on our hands. Yeah,

774
00:39:41,200 --> 00:39:43,480
Speaker 1: I think this is I was really happy to be

775
00:39:43,520 --> 00:39:46,160
Speaker 1: on this episode because it ectoes something I do. Definitely believe.

776
00:39:46,640 --> 00:39:50,960
Speaker 1: There's no bigger bastard than the abstract system that develops

777
00:39:50,960 --> 00:39:53,960
Speaker 1: its own momentum. Yeah, because Robert Clive, if you told

778
00:39:54,040 --> 00:39:56,400
Speaker 1: him when he came to India, your actions will kill

779
00:39:56,440 --> 00:39:58,359
Speaker 1: tens of millions of people. I think the guy might

780
00:39:58,360 --> 00:40:00,719
Speaker 1: have killed himself. And like we don't think of him

781
00:40:00,760 --> 00:40:06,560
Speaker 1: as hitler, Yeah, because he never never exactly. So it's

782
00:40:06,600 --> 00:40:09,719
Speaker 1: just there's nothing. Nothing will funk you up, like a

783
00:40:09,760 --> 00:40:12,160
Speaker 1: group of self interested people who none of them think

784
00:40:12,160 --> 00:40:15,520
Speaker 1: of themselves as guiding the thing. The thing just it's

785
00:40:15,560 --> 00:40:18,000
Speaker 1: too late now, the things rolling. Yeah, And they don't

786
00:40:18,040 --> 00:40:20,200
Speaker 1: think about the larger system. They're just like, how can

787
00:40:20,239 --> 00:40:21,680
Speaker 1: we get money out of this place? They don't think

788
00:40:21,719 --> 00:40:25,680
Speaker 1: about what allows a region this large and densely populated

789
00:40:25,719 --> 00:40:28,799
Speaker 1: to not get wiped out by famine constantly? Is it

790
00:40:28,840 --> 00:40:31,480
Speaker 1: maybe that they've built systems over the course of millennia

791
00:40:31,520 --> 00:40:33,360
Speaker 1: that you should pay attention. It's now your job to

792
00:40:33,400 --> 00:40:36,360
Speaker 1: think that you're in sub Block C six of s

793
00:40:37,000 --> 00:40:40,040
Speaker 1: District nine and you're supposed to make this number number

794
00:40:40,120 --> 00:40:43,960
Speaker 1: increased tax revenues by four and that's all you're supposed

795
00:40:44,000 --> 00:40:46,520
Speaker 1: and you kind of trust that someone well, if there

796
00:40:46,560 --> 00:40:48,160
Speaker 1: was going to be a famine that would kill everyone,

797
00:40:48,280 --> 00:40:59,920
Speaker 1: someone up the chain exactly. Damn dude. Yeah, anyway, anytally

798
00:41:00,040 --> 00:41:02,880
Speaker 1: you want to plug your stuff, No, I'm want to

799
00:41:02,880 --> 00:41:07,200
Speaker 1: be associated with UM. You can buy all our wonderful

800
00:41:07,239 --> 00:41:10,839
Speaker 1: products on now. We are opening a merging store soon.

801
00:41:10,960 --> 00:41:13,279
Speaker 1: But you can find the content that might inspire. What

802
00:41:13,400 --> 00:41:16,719
Speaker 1: island is your merch store up? The only island with

803
00:41:16,760 --> 00:41:20,320
Speaker 1: the right cotton for us are Yeah, our baseball caps

804
00:41:20,320 --> 00:41:25,520
Speaker 1: are currently being freightered over from the Cayman Islands. Already

805
00:41:25,560 --> 00:41:29,320
Speaker 1: sketchy money wise, but over at small Beans. Small Beans

806
00:41:29,360 --> 00:41:31,799
Speaker 1: is the name of my outfit and you can find

807
00:41:31,800 --> 00:41:36,120
Speaker 1: all of our content there. We do podcasts, sketches, occasional songs,

808
00:41:36,280 --> 00:41:39,600
Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff. And I am personally on Twitter

809
00:41:39,719 --> 00:41:44,400
Speaker 1: at Swain Underscore Corp. You can find me on Twitter

810
00:41:44,440 --> 00:41:46,920
Speaker 1: at I right, okay. I have a book on Amazon

811
00:41:47,000 --> 00:41:49,239
Speaker 1: call a Brief History Advice. Uh. And you can find

812
00:41:49,239 --> 00:41:52,520
Speaker 1: this website on the internet at Behind the Bastards dot com.

813
00:41:52,560 --> 00:41:54,920
Speaker 1: And you can also find us on Twitter at at

814
00:41:54,960 --> 00:41:59,440
Speaker 1: Bastard's Pod. You can find us on Instagram same way. Uh.

815
00:41:59,480 --> 00:42:03,800
Speaker 1: And that's that's the episode. So check back in UM

816
00:42:04,080 --> 00:42:07,680
Speaker 1: next Tuesday and there will be another episode and probably

817
00:42:07,760 --> 00:42:11,319
Speaker 1: something just as depressing and frightening. That's my goal. I

818
00:42:11,360 --> 00:42:14,239
Speaker 1: hope it is. I hope it really is. UM. So

819
00:42:14,520 --> 00:42:22,000
Speaker 1: have a good week and I love you about h