An Historiographical Review of Philip J. Stern’s, “‘A Politie of Civill & Military Power’: Political Thought and the Late Seventeenth-Century Foundations of the East India Company-State”
In his article, “A Politie of Civill & Military Power”: Political Thought and the Late Seventeenth-Century Foundations of the East India Company-State[1], historian Philip J. Stern describes the East India Company as a ‘Company-State’; this is certainly an applicable term to utilise to represent the Company’s history. It reflects its more stately activities whilst demonstrating the Company’s retention of trade and mercantile interests. However, the term lacks historical depth and nuance. It comes across as a more surface-level analysis of the Company’s 274-year-long existence. Instead, I would posit that a better historiographical term would be merchant/mercantile dominion — as in, referring to the other dominions of the British Empire. This term more accurately describes the sort of state that the East India Company represents, whilst also reflecting the root and core interests of the Company. To describe the history of the East India Company as ‘company-state’ both over states the more political and state like nature of the Company, whilst also placing too much importance upon what the Company literally was and not what its interests were — it was a company, yes, but the focus here should be placed upon its mercantile interests and efforts, not purely its existence as a company. In addition to this, merchant and or mercantile is a more appropriate descriptor of the kind of state that the EIC’s political development represented — likewise, with dominion as a descriptor for the specific type of state the EIC constituted.
Stern’s article seeks to explore “an alternative vision of the pre-Plassey East India Company”[2]; utilising a multi-layered argument that focuses on “the ways in which the particular form of Company sovereignty was constituted”[3], as well as “an understanding of state and sovereignty in early modern Europe and Asia in which something like a Company-State made sense.”[4] This is certainly an appropriate evaluation of the Company’s history, and is very much in keeping with its actions. The Company does engage in political activities independent of English — and later, British — foreign policy. It actively pursued a more aggressive and expansionist policy with regard to the East Indies in the years following the 1680s, and especially in the early 1700s when the Mughal Empire began to decline and collapse. We can see the beginnings of this development under the leadership of Sir Josiah Child, when he effectively personally led the Company to war against the Mughal Empire. The subsequent conflict, The Anglo-Mughal War was a complete disaster for the Company, and nearly saw its presence in India destroyed entirely; it was only due to the auspices of the Mughal emperor that the Company was allowed to retain a presence in India, and in exchange, the Company effectively subordinated itself to the Mughal Empire with respects to India. Certainly the Kingdom of England would not have pursued a war against the Mughals in the 1680s; and yet it was the Company that represented the Anglo in the war, not England itself. Clearly then, we can see how the Company acted as an independent entity with its own foreign policy — separate from London. Thus, we can see that Stern’s company-state certainly does match with the history of the Company. We can see how it acted as a state, functioning and operating an independent foreign policy from England itself. This is further demonstrated by the fact that it was Clive of India who spearheaded the Company’s first major expansion into India — that being the conquest of Bengal. Robert Clive was operating entirely under, through and in conjunction with, the EIC — not the British government, per se. He adopted a strategy for the Company that saw it advance its position in India. The key takeaway here being that he expanded the Company’s land, explicitly for the Company — albeit, the Company’s expansion was in-line with the expansionary ideas of Britain herself. From this it is clear to see that the Company did act as an independent state; it operated its own foreign policy that was distinct from London and the British Empire as a whole. Thus. it becomes clear to us that the Company is, “best […] characterized as an Ancien Regime state, a conglomerate of territorial possessions, rights and pretensions exercised in a certain area without definite boundaries […]”[5] a phrase that historian Jurrien van Goor used to describe the 18th century Dutch East-India Company.
In summary, Stern suggests that “Divorcing, or at least historicizing, the necessary connection between national state and sovereignty, and envisioning them both as composite, opens the prospect of historical contexts [..]”[6]; which would allow the historian to accept that “entities other than territorial states can begin to make legitimate (externally recognized) claims of final authority.”[7] Certainly, the Company’s history fits within that purview, and yet, even with Clive’s expansion into Bengal, the contours of the EIC’s limited stateliness begin to appear. The conquest, whilst successful for the Company, was ultimately its undoing. The Company’s conquest of Bengal caused a litany of financial troubles, which thereafter required consistent and continuous government intervention to keep it afloat. The Regulating Act of 1773, the Tea Act of 1773 also, and the East India Company Act of 1784 all were aimed at stabilising the Company and its territories by bringing them under Parliamentary control, as well as attempting to salvage Company finances — as demonstrated by the aforementioned Tea Act. Less than two decades after its first major expansion into India, the Company was already subsumed under Parliaments supervision. Its autonomy was then further stripped with the 1813 Charter and the 1833 Charter (formalised via the St. Helena Act of 1833). These acts reduced the Company’s trade to that of opium to China, and then in 1833, it removed its trading rights entirely, reducing the Company to a purely desk-job role in managing India in Britains name.
However, the limiting of the Company’s autonomy began long before Plassey. In the 1680s, Sir Josiah Child made continual calls to militarise and arm the Company in the name of protecting trade. This was a significant step in advancing the Company’s more stately nature, and yet, it was a recommendation that Child explicitly requested Parliaments support for; he says, “who-ever governs a Trade so remote from England, and by such a multitude of hands as the Company are for∣ced to imploy [sic], should have some extraordinary Power committed to them […]”[8] and that it should be “protected and defended by the Laws of the Provinces, which are of the same force as Acts of Parliaments with us”.[9] Throughout his work, Childs repeatedly makes calls for the Company to operate within the purviews and boundaries of Parliament, such as when he states that, having made his argument in full, “having satisfied my self [sic] […] I am […] confi∣dent, that whatever the Parliament does, they will do it justly; and so wisely as to make the best of a bad Bargain.”[10] With this in mind, it seems clear to me that Stern’s view of the Company as ‘state’ seems an oversight. State implies a great degree of autonomy, of nationality, of independence; and whilst the Company certainly began with a great degree of independence to function as it wished in the East Indies, this independence was stripped away from it gradually. Once the Company began to seek an empire in the East-Indies, once it began nation building — per se — its autonomy was reduced. It was reduced more and more as its conquests continued until it was reduced to governing India in Britain’s name, not even allowed the right to trade or maintain a monopoly. I would posit, therefore, that the state that the EIC represents is more akin to the various dominions of the later British Empire — such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand. These dominions had autonomy financially and with micromanagement levels of state, but their foreign policy was decided in and by London. The EIC, is the opposite of this; it had foreign policy autonomy to make war and peace as it wished, and had a great degree of financial freedom, but this was gradually reduced. Whereas the dominions of Britain gained greater autonomy, the EIC had its autonomy reduced. Canada went from a colony, to a dominion, to a fully independent state, free from London’s control; the EIC, went from something more like the dominions, to effectively a colony, before being completely dissolved in 1874. Even within judicial matters, the Company subsumed itself to greater political sovereignty. This is demonstrated within the Skinner Brothers’ case, where the Brothers leant on the support of the House of Lords. In response, the Company sought help from the House of Commons, eventually winning the case[11]. Herein it is clear that the Company’s stately nature was limited, having to rely on the support of a greater political sovereign than its own when dealing with matters that specifically related to the Company and its affairs.
The EIC also lacked many of the defining qualities that one might expect from a state. In particular, the Company lacked many defining cultural attributes that would otherwise set it aside from the English. Especially in the period Stern specificies when presenting his argument — that the EIC was a state by early modern comparisons (making reference to early modern Europe and Asia, for example) — the lack of a distinct culture presents the Company as little more than an extension of England itself. Certainly the Company had defining qualities, but these were all within the context of contemporary English/British culture. Look at its architecture in India, for example; it’s all in an English baroque style, with East India House in London being designed in a “fashionable Palladian style […] including Corinthian pilasters and heavy moulding […] [with] Lavish Georgian furnishing […]”.[12]Whilst this architecture certainly had elements of local Indian architectural norms, the main thematic elements were distinctly English. Even within East India House in London, the very art the Company itself commissioned reflects a reminder that the Company was in service first and foremost to England. Within this building was the artwork The East Offering its Riches to Britannia[13]. Within the work, the Company is represented indirectly — between the east and Britannia itself, there sits a ship flying the flag of the EIC. The artwork first and foremost displays the power and might of the British Empire, with the EIC as a humble servant of it. It’s not prominently featured in the work — nor does the work present the Company as wholly grand or necessary to Britannias riches and wealth. Thus, we can see that even within its own offices, the Company did not aggrandise itself; it did not prominently display itself as a distinct cultural entity, instead merely a part of the wider British Empire — not something distinct from it, which a stately entity would want to demonstrate. Alongside this, when the Company did have an opportunity to create a distinct regional identity for itself, it did so for purely pragmatic reasons. Take for example, Madras. The settlement was built by the Company and became a great success, largely due in part to the Company allowing Portuguese missionaries to preach in Madras, as well as housing and accommodating migrants fleeing the Mughal Empire’s expansion. Naturally, then, many different peoples coexisted in Madras, and yet no distinct Company culture emerged. The acceptance of differing peoples and faiths was a pragmatic necessity to ensure Madras’ survival and prosperity, not a holistic choice.
At home in Britain itself, the Company’s presence was relatively minimal and minor. Given that it was a vast importer and exporter of goods, one might expect that it would have a large maritime presence within English ports; yet this just isn’t the case. The closest the Company came to holding a major presence was its ownership of the Blackwall Yard. The Company built the yard in the early 1610s to construct its own ships for its trade. Previously, the Company had employed the practice of hiring out or otherwise leasing ships already in service. The Blackwall Yard was thus built to ensure the Company would have access to its own ships. And yet, less than 40 years after its opening, the yard was sold off. This was done because maintaining the yard was simply too expensive. The same thing had happened when the Company operated the Deptford Yard — it became too expensive to manage and was sold off. The cost of the yard was largely attributed to accommodating the workforce. The yard required extensive numbers of shipwrights, carpenters, masonry, ironsmiths, etc., all of whom had to be catered to. Many complained of the long distance required to travel to the yard, as it was some distance outside of the then city limits of London. The Company also attempted to prevent certain traditional rights, privileges and practices from going on at the yard. It had been a traditional privilege of carpenters that they could take wood scraps out of the yard — most likely to sell. The Company, instead, attempted to prevent this, leading the carpenters to strike and riot. The wider point here is that the Company’s control over its own infrastructure in England was poor, if not non-existent. The yard was too expensive and was sold off, despite the obvious advantages of producing one’s own ships for merchant fleets. Certainly, being unable to maintain something as vital as a ship yard to a maritime, thalassocratic entity like the EIC seems rather unstately. Though the yard continued to produce ships mostly for use within and by the EIC, the Company fell back on the practice of hiring out ships — a definitively unstately practice.
For these reasons — a lack of a distinct, definitive culture, a failure to act in a stately manner when it comes to necessary productions of resources (i.e., ships) and the failures and consequences that came from conquest, requiring subordination to and control from government — Sterns definition of the Company as state feels lacking in historical depth. Certainly, it is an acceptable surface level analysis of the Company, but it lacks nuance. It fails to adequately define the sort of state-entity the EIC was and became, whilst also not recognising that for being a supposed state, the time in which the Company appears and its traditionally described in state-like terms, was actually the time in which it was being brought under government oversight and control — the time where its stately nature was being dramatically reduced. Company is a perfectly reasonable term to use when describing the Company, though it is very literal. Merchant/mercantile more accurately describes the nature of the Company by focusing on what its core focus was. Throughout its 274 year history, mercantilism remained prevalent and important, as seen by acts such as the Tea Act of 1773 and the 1813 Charter. Even at its end, when it was reduced to an administrative role in India, it still oversaw Britain’s selling of opium to the Qing Dynasty, facilitating that trade. For that reason I shall focus the rest of this work on the other half of Stern’s term — state.
The other major issue with Stern’s historiographical term is that it lacks nuance. It doesn’t adequately explain why the Company adopted state-like political and administrative machinery. The modern nation state began to develop in the 1800s, whereas prior states had varying levels of nationality to them. Certainly, 17th century England was on its way to developing itself into a modern nation state, but it lacked the political insight, control and machinery to function as a nation state does today. As such, to begin trading into the East-Indies, a region that was thousands of miles away and required months of travel to reach — was not directly feasible. Certainly this is where the Company stepped in — to bridge that gap — but trading over such a vast distance in the 17th century was incredibly difficult. If a decision was made in England, it could take half a year for said decision to reach India, by which point the circumstances in the East-Indies could have changed dramatically, negating or otherwise voiding the decision. Then, the communication back to London could take another half a year. This was a problem noted by Child himself, when he stated that the East-India trade was “a Trade so remote from England […].”[14] The point is, communication was slow, and decision-making was naturally affected by the great time and distance travel between the East-Indies and England took. As such, what could the Company do? It could simply accept that, and try to reign in merchants’ independence whilst operating in the East-Indies; or, it could develop state-like qualities within its presence in the East-Indies, such that decision making, on the ground, was more effective, more useful, and much quicker. The necessities of operating in the East-Indies required the development of political machinery within the East-Indies itself. This is a lesson that all early modern European colonial powers learned. The Dutch East-India Company (the VOC) learned this practice in securing influence and control over Indonesia, transforming it into an “Ancien Regime state, a conglomerate of territorial possessions, rights and pretensions exercised in a certain area without definite boundaries”[15]; likewise France, Spain and Portugal all did too. Spain’s New World Empire was, for most of its history, a collection of technically independent kingdoms: the Vice-Royalties. They were officially referred to as kingdoms, such as the Kingdom of New Spain and The Kingdom of New Granada. The point being, that nearly all the European colonial powers in the Early Modern Period understood the need to develop a sense of political autonomy and independence within their far flung colonies so that they could operate and function more efficiently, not because these colonies sought independence from their genesis.
In conclusion, whilst I agree that Stern’s descriptor of the EIC as Company-state is an applicable historiographical term, it lacks nuance and depth. It fails to address the true nature of the Company as a political entity, overselling the degree of statehood and stateliness the Company enjoyed. In reality, the Company quickly became subsumed under Parliamentary supervision, guidance and eventually, control. As the EIC expanded in India, its autonomy was reduced and weakened until it was virtually a colony of Britain in all but name. To describe the Company’s history as state certainly misses out the nuance of why the EIC developed stately political machinery as well as the sort of state that the Company was defined as. Perhaps then it is necessary to further examine the history of the Company and refine and develop the labels we ascribe to it and its history. Bearing in mind the Company’s history is nearly 300 years long and still impacts India and Britain in many ways, further study of its history certainly seems appropriate and fruitful.
[1] Stern, P. J. (2008). “A Politie of Civill & Military Power”: Political Thought and the Late Seventeenth-Century Foundations of the East India Company-State. Journal of British Studies, 47(2), 257. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25482756, p.257.
[2] Stern, “A Politie of Civill & Military Power”, p.257.
[3] Stern, “A Politie of Civill & Military Power”, p.257.
[4] Stern, “A Politie of Civill & Military Power”, p.257.
[5] J. van Goor, “Seapower, Trade, and State Formation: Pontianak and the Dutch,” in Trading Companies in Asia, 1600–1830, ed. J. van Goor (Utrecht, 1986), 85.
[6] Stern, 2008, p. 261.
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[7] Thomas Biersteker and Cynthia Weber, “The Social Construction of State Sovereignty,” in State Sovereignty as Social Construct, ed. Thomas Biersteker and Cynthia Weber (Cambridge, 1996), 1–21, 1–3, 19 n. 7.
[8] “A treatise wherein is demonstrated […]” In the digital collection Early English Books Online. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/a32839.0001.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed May 1, 2025, p.16.
[9] Child, “A treatise wherein is demonstrated […]”, p.5.
[10] Child, “A treatise wherein is demonstrated […]”, p.43.
[11] “Encyclopædia Britannica 11 Ed. Vol. 25 (Shuválov, Peter Andreivich to Subliminal Self) : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming.” Internet Archive, 1 Jan. 1970, archive.org/details/Encyclopaediabri25chisrich_201303/page/n215/mode/2up, p.192.
[12] Roy, Malini. East India Company Headquarters on Leadenhall Street — Asian and African Studies Blog, 25 Jan. 2017, blogs.bl.uk/asian-and-african/2017/01/east-india-company-headquarters-on-leadenhall-street.html.
[13] Roma, Spiridione. The East Offering Its Riches to Britannia. 1778, British Library, 96 Euston Road, London, Greater London NW1 2DB England, https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/the-east-offering-its-riches-to-britannia-191140. Accessed 1 May 2025.
[14] Child, “A treatise wherein is demonstrated […]”, p.16.
[15] Van Goor, “Seapower, Trade, and State Formation,” p.85.
Bibliography:
“A treatise wherein is demonstrated […]” In the digital collection Early English Books Online. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/a32839.0001.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed May 1, 2025
“Encyclopædia Britannica 11 Ed. Vol. 25 (Shuválov, Peter Andreivich to Subliminal Self) : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming.” Internet Archive, 1 Jan. 1970, archive.org/details/Encyclopaediabri25chisrich_201303/page/n215/mode/2up.
J. van Goor, “Seapower, Trade, and State Formation: Pontianak and the Dutch,” in Trading Companies in Asia, 1600–1830, ed. J. van Goor (Utrecht, 1986).
Roma, Spiridione. The East Offering Its Riches to Britannia. 1778, British Library, 96 Euston Road, London, Greater London NW1 2DB England, https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/the-east-offering-its-riches-to-britannia-191140. Accessed 1 May 2025.
Roy, Malini. East India Company Headquarters on Leadenhall Street — Asian and African Studies Blog, 25 Jan. 2017, blogs.bl.uk/asian-and-african/2017/01/east-india-company-headquarters-on-leadenhall-street.html.
Stern, P. J. (2008). “A Politie of Civill & Military Power”: Political Thought and the Late Seventeenth-Century Foundations of the East India Company-State. Journal of British Studies, 47(2), 257. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25482756.
Thomas Biersteker and Cynthia Weber, “The Social Construction of State Sovereignty,” in State Sovereignty as Social Construct, ed. Thomas Biersteker and Cynthia Weber (Cambridge, 1996), 1–21, 1–3, 19 n. 7.
