Warm welcome
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Warm welcome

Arriving in India in 1743, Robert Clive was treading the familiar route of young entrepreneurs intent on making their fortune. He could not have foreseen his eventual emergence as unwitting creator of the empire.

By the time Clive took his place in the offices of the British East India Company, trading posts had been established along the east and west coasts.

The company was born in 1612 after the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 allowed the British to break the trade monopoly of the Portuguese. For more than a century speculators had only been able to covet India's lucrative trade in spices, cotton, sugar and raw silk.

Emerging victorious from skirmishes with the Portuguese intent on fending off unwelcome competition, British traders found a warm welcome from their Indian hosts delighted at the prospects of increased opportunities and a refreshingly different attitude. There was an eagerness to adopt local culture, and languages, including Persian, the unifying language under the Moguls.

Many English traders were seduced by the unique charms of the flesh, for some so strong that they would never return home.

But the business acumen of the British investors would have counted for little without the mutual support and partnership of Indian bankers and merchants acting as go-betweens with the local community. But in creating the credit networks fundamental to commercial success, they became the architects of their own downfall. In the relentless drive for expansion, it was inevitable that a power shift would result.

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