Editing East India Company (section)

==== Colonial monopoly ====
{{Further|Great Britain in the Seven Years' War}}
[[File:The East offering its riches to Britannia - Roma Spiridone, 1778 - BL Foster 245.jpg|thumb|''[[The East Offering its Riches to Britannia]]'' - Roma Spiridone, 1778 - BL Foster 245]]
[[File:E India House.jpg|thumb|An engraving of [[East India House]], Leadenhall Street (1766)]]

The Seven Years' War (1756–1763) resulted in the defeat of the French forces, limited French imperial ambitions, and stunted the influence of the Industrial Revolution in French territories.{{citation needed|date=December 2023}} [[Robert Clive]], the Governor-General, led the company to a victory against [[Joseph François Dupleix]], the commander of the French forces in India, and recaptured Fort St George from the French. The company took this respite to seize [[Battle of Manila (1762)|Manila]] in 1762.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.regiments.org/wars/18thcent/56philip.htm |title=The Seven Years' War in the Philippines |website=Land Forces of Britain, the Empire and Commonwealth |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040710132157/http://www.regiments.org/wars/18thcent/56philip.htm |archive-date=10 July 2004 |access-date=4 September 2013}}</ref>{{better source needed|reason=Citation is to a hobbyist website; there must be peer reviewed academically published sources for this.|date=November 2016}}

By the [[Treaty of Paris (1763)|Treaty of Paris]], France regained the five establishments captured by the British during the war ([[Pondicherry district|Pondichéry]], [[Mahé, India|Mahe]], [[Karaikal]], [[Yanam, French India|Yanam]] and [[Chandernagar]]) but was prevented from erecting fortifications and keeping troops in Bengal (art. XI). Elsewhere in India, the French were to remain a military threat, particularly during the War of American Independence, and up to the capture of Pondichéry in 1793 at the outset of the French Revolutionary Wars without any military presence. Although these small outposts remained French possessions for the next two hundred years, French ambitions on Indian territories were effectively laid to rest, thus eliminating a major source of economic competition for the company.{{citation needed|date=May 2023}}

In May 1772 the EIC stock price rose significantly. In June [[Alexander Fordyce]] lost £300,000 [[Short (finance)|shorting]] EIC stock, leaving his partners liable for an estimated £243,000 in debts.<ref>[[Tyler Goodspeed]]: ''Legislating Instability: Adam Smith, Free Banking, and the Financial Crisis of 1772''</ref> As this information became public, 20–30 banks across Europe collapsed during the [[British credit crisis of 1772-1773]].<ref>{{cite news |date=2015-03-04|title=The East India Company: The original corporate raiders {{!}} William Dalrymple|url=http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/04/east-india-company-original-corporate-raiders|access-date=2020-09-08|work=The Guardian|language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://recession.tips/the-credit-crisis-of-1772/|title = The Credit Crisis of 1772 – Recession Tips|date = 26 November 2021}}</ref> In India alone, the company had bill debts of £1.2 million. It seems that EIC directors [[Sir James Cockburn, 8th Baronet|James Cockburn]] and [[George Colebrooke]] were "[[Bull (stock market speculator)|bulling]]" the Amsterdam market during 1772.<ref>[[Lucy Sutherland|Sutherland, L.]] (1952) The East India Company in eighteenth-century politics, Oxford UP, p. 228; SAA 735, 1155</ref> The root of this crisis in relation to the East India Company came from the prediction by [[Isaac de Pinto]] that 'peace conditions plus an abundance of money would push East Indian shares to 'exorbitant heights.'<ref name="sro.sussex.ac.uk">{{Cite web|url=http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/55337/1/Joanna_Rudd_New_Commercial_Voices_Paper.pdf|title=The International Lender of Last Resort- An Historical Perspective by Joanna Rudd|date=15 November 2012 }}</ref>

{{blockquote|In September the company took out a loan from the Bank of England, to be repaid from the sale of goods later that month. But with buyers scarce,
most of the sale had to be postponed, and when the loan fell due, the company's coffers were empty. On October 29 the bank refused to renew the loan. That decision set in motion a chain of events that made the American Revolution inevitable. The East India Company had eighteen million pounds of tea sitting in British warehouses. A huge amount of tea as assets which were lying unsold.  Selling it in a hurry would do wonders for its finances.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.americanheritage.com/1772two-hundred-and-twenty-five-years-ago |title=1772 Two Hundred And Twenty-five Years Ago. Tea and Antipathy by Frederic D. Schwarz |publisher=American Heritage Volume 48|date= 1997|accessdate=2022-05-25}}</ref> }}

On 14 January 1773 the directors of the EIC asked for a government loan and unlimited access to the tea market in the American colonies, both of which were granted.<ref>Sutherland, L. (1952), pp. 249–251</ref> In August 1773 the [[Bank of England]] assisted the EIC with a loan.<ref>Clapham, J. (1944) The Bank of England, p. 250</ref>

The East India Company had also been granted competitive advantages over colonial American tea importers to sell tea from its colonies in Asia in American colonies. This led to the [[Boston Tea Party]] of 1773 in which protesters boarded British ships and threw the tea overboard. When protesters successfully prevented the unloading of tea in three other colonies and in Boston, Governor [[Thomas Hutchinson (governor)|Thomas Hutchinson]] of the [[Province of Massachusetts Bay]] refused to allow the tea to be returned to Britain. This was one of the incidents which led to the [[American Revolution]] and independence of the American colonies.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Mitchell|first1=Stacy|title=The big box swindle|date=19 July 2016 |url=https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/7/19/stacy-mitchell|access-date=20 April 2018|archive-date=21 July 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210721154922/https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/7/19/stacy-mitchell|url-status=live}}</ref>

The company's trade monopoly with India was abolished in the [[Charter Act 1813]]. The monopoly with China was ended in [[Saint Helena Act 1833|1833]], ending the trading activities of the company and rendering its activities purely administrative.