East India Company reasons for starting up

East India Company reasons for starting up

The Company really began as a London reaction to what the Dutch had started to do. Most Asian goods coming into London, principally spices, were coming through the medium of the Levant Company, which had been in existence from the late Elizabethan period and was trading to a lot of the world of the eastern Mediterranean. Spices and other Asian goods were coming up through the Red Sea, carried by Arab and Persian traders into the Western world to be re-distributed. All of a sudden, this Levant trade is seen to be under threat, because the Dutch are imitating the Portuguese and have begun to go round the Cape and bring goods directly into Amsterdam, Rotterdam and the other ports. Pepper is suddenly worth a quarter of what it was before. So it's no coincidence that in the first subscription--that is, the first proposal that is floated in the City of London for having an English East India Company--nearly a quarter of the initial listed names are actually Levant merchants. They are diversifying in the face of a potential commercial threat.