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.The combinedeffect of these differences was the installation of an empire in Indiathat had more in common with non-capitalist empires than hadEngland s earlier settler colonies in Ireland and America, or even theplantation colonies in the Caribbean.Beginning as a commercial empire dominated by a monopolistictrading company, British domination gradually took the form of aterritorial empire dominated by the imperial state.In both theseguises, the empire was essentially non-capitalist in its logic.Yet thetransition from one to the other, and the subsequent evolution ofBritish imperial rule, were shaped by Britain s capitalist development.In the early modern period, when British merchants becameseriously interested in trade with Asia, India was at the height of itseconomic power, with a vast commercial apparatus and great productive capacities, especially in the manufacture o f textiles.TheEnglish East India Company was an unambiguously non-capitalistinstitution, which entered into trade in the region in much the sameway as other trading companies had done, relying on monopolies,advanced maritime technology and military power to establish commercial advantage over its European rivals.At the same time, neitherthe Company nor the imperial state were, at first, interested in - or,indeed, capable o f - direct territorial rule in India; and there was a O v e r s e a s Expansi on of Economi c Imperati ves 1 1 1general reluctance to overextend imperial rule, which seemed far toodangerous and costly, especially against such a formidable adversary.There was in any case no need for territorial rule, as long as theempire remained a commercial one, and it was likely that the costs itwould impose on commerce would outweigh the benefits.But, by the second half o f the eighteenth century, the Companywas taking a different approach.It had begun to show less interest inIndia as a vast commercial opportunity than as a source o f revenue,seeking not commercial profits but surpluses extracted directly fromproducers in the age-old manner of non-capitalist extra-economicexploitation in the form of tax and tribute.The more the attractionso f empire as a source of revenue increased, the more the territorialimperative grew.As the empire in India was becoming more, notless, a traditional form o f non-capitalist imperialism, based on extra-economic extraction of tribute by way o f taxation, it also becamemore and more a military despotism.In pursuit o f this non-capitalist form o f wealth, the Companyused its power, economic and military, to establish property relationsin India that would ensure a reliable source of revenue.Far from modernizing India, the Company, with the help o f the British state,reverted to older, non-capitalist forms.This strategy o f traditional-izing Indian society has been blamed for reversing India s economicand social development by entrenching, or even creating, archaicforms of landlord-peasant relations:The many members of India s once-great military market-placeand erstwhile manufacturing economy, who now were pushedout on to the land, did not become traditional peasants bychoice; nor, by doing so, did they challenge the dictates of theircolonial masters.Indeed.in a large number of areas thetraditionalization of society appears to have been promoted by 1 1 2 Empi re of Capi talthe logic of colonial institutions themselves.It was the Anglo-Hindu lawcourts which enforced the rule of the Brahmanic castesystem and disseminated it to deeper social levels.It was thetribunals of the colonial bureaucracy which decreed agrariansociety to be based on the self-sufficient village community andthe privileges of royalty and aristocracy to be founded on ancientprerogatives held since time immemorial.The assertion ofIndia s Tradition in this context reflected as much an accommodation to the new colonial order as a rejection of it.India became a subordinate agricultural colony under thedominance of metropolitan, industrial Britain; its basic culturalinstitutions were disempowered and fixed in unchanging traditional forms; its civil society was subjected to the suzereigntyof a military despotic state.11Just as local landed classes in India depended on extracting surplusesfrom peasants in the non-capitalist manner, the empire o f the EastIndia Company rested on the same foundation.O f course, this meantmore and more military adventures, to ensure its territorial base.The role o f the imperial state in these developments was deeplyambiguous.In the early years o f the Company s activities in India,the state had largely refrained from interfering in the Company saffairs; but it became increasingly involved in the late eighteenthcentury, and there was a clear shift in British imperial policy fromcommercial imperialism to territorial empire.Without the intervention o f the British state, the Company could not have secured itspredominance in India nor its capacity to transform Indian society.In the process, imperial rule in India became more, rather than less,a traditional kind o f militaristic and despotic imperial state, a formo f military fiscalism , depending on traditional peasants and aristocracies to generate revenue
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