Pressure from Leadenhall: The East India Company Lobby, 1660–1678

Dramatic evidence of the vital role played by the British East India Company in Britain's rise to preeminence in world trade is revealed in the intimate relations between the Company, Parliament, and Charles II. Britain needed an agency for pressing the struggle against the resourceful Dutch, and the King needed revenue. The Company needed assurance in the form of a charter that its existence would be continuous; Navigation Acts to give meaning to its trading monopoly; laws against “interlopers” in its trading areas; and relief from mercantilist prejudices so that it could buy for cash where British goods were not in demand. Government and Company provided each other with all these, in a pragmatic arrangement that overrode prejudices and political sensitivities.