East India Company shown as Bad Guys

[lwhitehead]

Hi I was wondering why the British East India Company as bin shown as Bad Guys in Movies, in the Pirate of Caribbean series and Behind the Mask movie. In the 18th Century there shown as greedy Corp like in Wall Street.

LW

[Mission]

Hollywood often uses corporations as the villain because they don't have to deal with interest groups accusing them of bias against them. (Remember the big flap over the use of headhunters in the second movie?) If you take a step back and think about movies and TV shows from the past 30 or 40 years where some external force is the villain, you'll find an awful lot of 'evil' corporations. They're a safe villain for Hollywood to use because they don't usually fight back. (Particularly when they've been out of business for 150 years.)

[William Brand]

It's also an easy choice to pitch rich against poor and call the rich villainous. The difference between the vastly rich and the common sailor in the Dutch East India company was staggering and this often causes resentment and sense of Robin Hood justice.

[lwhitehead]

It was the Dutch East India Company that behaved in real life that the fictional British East Indian Company is shown in the Movies, like in Beyond the Mask movie.

Would a English Company like that use and train Assassin's, Mercs yes but full trained killers I don't know.

LW

[Fox]

The East India Company also make good bad guys because historically they raped India dry, drove the country into poverty, and generally stomped their big colonial boots over the rights of the natives.

Oh, no, wait, they didn't actually do that stuff, but why let the facts get in the way of a good story?

[Mission]

Hollywood has a history of not letting facts get in the way of a good story... or even a good visual.

[Swashbuckler 1700]

Considering that EIC was an organisation hundreds of years ago it is unusually funny coincident that they weren't actually what one could call "evil". At least in its era's standards. Probably one of the most human trading companies of the age in that time's standards. Royal African company for example trades slaves. The East India Company... spices, silks and the like. I think they really didn't even use "gunboat diplomacy" in the extent it was used later in 1800s in Asia by European nations and US when the term was born. The EIC had armies and warships but they could have used them even more. Sure they conquered regions and probably forced some Indians to work for them in poor conditions, but most organisations or countries did something like that back then.

I don't know how much of India's troubles are caused by the colonialism but those problems which were created where probably born mostly during the later actual British Rule, not the Company's.

Edited October 7, 2015 by Swashbuckler 1700

[Mission]

That's an interesting point about the slaves. While slavery was accepted, there was controversy even at that time about whether it was humane. The EICs decision to stay out of it may have been a moral decision or it may have just been a business decision, but they do appear to have stayed out of that market.

Oh, and as Ed's last comment suggests, he doesn't really think they were the primary source of India's listed problems.

[William Brand]

We also call 'evil' what once was common. For example, it was common in colonization to move into an area and eat local, available food and fauna to extinction. Sailers and settlers alike would destroy local fish & bird populations, an idea that most people would find horrible today, but was seen as pragmatic survival then without regard to eco systems. Movies turn a hard microscope on previous practice and we could go back in time and find a lot of what we consider 'evil' everywhere, but biased and educated evil.

Look at Mission. He's studied enough period medicine to know that there's more voodoo and hoodoo in period medicine than healing. It's horrific stuff.

[Mission]

Actually the only thing I'd say was patently wrong about period medicine was humor theory. Much of the rest of it was doing the best they could with the knowledge they had.

[William Brand]

Oh I know, that's what makes the monster-izing of the past so unfair at times. We look back from our air-conditioned homes in front of high speed internet, but through a glass darkly and angrily judge those who came before. It so easy to misjudge a people who had the knowledge they were limited to from a seat of comfortable survival. I'm no hunter-gatherer. I had orange juice, hashbrowns and two delicately fried eggs this morning while surfing the net.

But it's like anything. Take the 'well' wars of the Bible for instance. Tribes going to war over a well in the middle of nowhere. It's so easy to judge from a place of indoor plumbing, but when you're in the desert...your perspective becomes thirsty and focused really damn quick.

The British Empire gets the enemy card a lot. Some of it's deserved, but even then, we're placing blames from the perspective and enlightenment we have now, not then. Hindsight and all that.

Are we wandering too far from your original question? Mission and I could go back and forth all day. You should join us for gate duty.

[lwhitehead]

Well in the late 18th Century Warin Hasting got caught with his hand in the cookie jar, the problem was the members were did private trade which made them rich instead of the Company, that one of the reasons why India was plundered Men of low cunning wanted to inrich themselves.

Don't forget about the South Sea Bubble in 1720,

LW

[Mission]

The practice of carrying private goods aboard a merchant ship to sell upon return home appears to have been pretty widespread at this time. Although I don't keep them in my notes, I recall seeing multiple references to it in various sea journals. Some of them are in such an offhand way that I just figured it was a standard practice either permitted by the company or treated in a 'Don't ask, don't tell' fashion.