The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company

by William Dalrymple

Trade was flourishing, too. Since the low point of the Company’s near bankruptcy in 1772, exports from Bengal had grown fivefold and now exceeded Rs15 million, or around £5 million. There was every sign that this looked likely to continue.27 Fine Bengali textiles – especially cotton piece goods, muslins and fine silks – were selling well, to the tune of Rs28 million* annually, as was Malwa opium and Gujarati cotton; but the biggest success story was tea from China.28 By 1795, tea sales had doubled in less than a decade to 20 million pounds (9,000 tons); one former director of the EIC wrote that it was as if tea had become ‘the food of the whole people of Great Britain’.29 The only thing holding back further growth was the question of supply: ‘the demand for Bengal goods exceed double the quantity that can be procured,’ Cornwallis reported back to London. As a result, the shortages of bullion which had paralysed the Bengal economy in the 1770s were now long forgotten: the Calcutta mint was now striking Rs2.5 million** of coins each year.30 In every way, the Company holdings in eastern India – the Three Provinces of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa – were now effectively the richest of all the regional post-Mughal successor states dotted around South Asia, with resources many times greater than any of their rivals.