<
https://unwall.app/www.nytimes.com/2026/08/28/opinion/ai-power-lobbying-military-britain-east-india-company.html>
"At noon on Feb. 13, 1788, huge crowds gathered outside Parliament to witness
members of the House of Lords process into Westminster Hall. They were there to
impeach the man who ran much of India as the East India Company’s governor
general of Bengal. This was the moment when the British state finally flexed
its muscles to take on the greatest corporate oligarch of his day, the Elon
Musk of 18th-century London.
In addition to about 170 lords in attendance, there were judges, lawyers and
numerous members of the House of Commons. According to a celebrated account of
the opening, the queen was “dressed in fawn colored satin, her headdress plain,
with a very slender sprinkling of diamonds,” and took her place in the audience
along with three of her children. Edward Thurlow, who presided over the trial,
summed up the proceedings with a statement that is as true today as it was
then: “Corporations,” he said, “have neither bodies to be punished nor souls to
be condemned. They therefore do as they like.”
We still speak of the British conquering India. In reality, the conquest of the
Indian subcontinent between 1756 and 1803 was the work not of a nation-state
but of a private company, the East India Company. Headquartered in a small
office in London, it was answerable to nobody but its shareholders.
While its original focus was the spice trade and then the export of Indian
textiles, it was authorized from the start by its charter to found and run
colonies and wage war. From its maiden voyage in 1601, it used violence to
conduct its business and enhance its profits. By 1788, it was not just
Britain’s biggest corporation and largest employer; it was the company that had
conquered what was then the richest country on earth: Mughal India, whose
bejeweled loot helped power Britain into the Industrial Revolution.
Here, as in so much of imperial history, commerce, colonization and brute
corporate power walked in lock step. As Tolstoy later wrote in a letter
published by Gandhi, “A commercial company enslaved a nation comprising 200
million people.” All that made the East India Company the most powerful
corporation in history — until now. For in the past decade, Big Tech has, too,
begun to take on the attributes of sovereign states, and in many ways is now as
powerful as the East India Company at its height."
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
