The Global Financial Database has more equity history for India than for any other country. The British East India Co. was founded on December 31, 1600, preceding the founding of the Dutch East India Co. by one year. Originally, shares were issued for specific ventures to India, but in 1657, joint stock shares were issued and these shares continued to trade in London until the company was dissolved in 1874 and the British government took over ownership of the company. The East India Co. paid a consistent 10.5% dividend from 1793 until the company’s dissolution in 1874. From the late seventeenth century until the early eighteenth century, 95% of Asian imports into Britain come from Mughal India and consisted mainly of cottons and spices produced in India.\
The decline of Mughal India in the first half of the eighteenth century led to the rise of the British East India Co. which took over India from the Mughal Empire after its victory in the Battle of Plessey in 1757. During the 1800s, the manufacture of textiles moved from India to Britain as the Industrial Revolution enabled Britain to produce the textiles it had formerly imported from India.....MUCH MORE
During the 1850s, British investment in India boomed, establishing railroads, canals, shipping companies and utilities that were essential not only for the development of the Indian economy, but to enforce Britain’s control over the colony. Merchants in Manchester and London supported building railroads that linked India’s main ports to the interior to bring cotton and other goods to the rest of the world. However, these railroads did not prove profitable, and the British government had to guarantee the 5% dividends the India railroads paid.
In the 1860s, investment in India spread to other sectors. Banks, tea companies, telegraph companies and gold mines were the most popular investments in India. The civil war in the United States led to an increase in demand for cotton causing a bubble in equity markets which burst when the American civil war ended. Although cotton and clothing represented a large portion of India’s production, most of these companies used local capital rather than British funds.
Traders dealt in securities in Calcutta in 1830, trading shares of the East India Co. Twenty-Two stockbrokers met under banyan trees in front of Bombay’s Town Hall in 1855 to trade shares. Premchand Roychand was a native Indian who became a stock broker in 1849 and was a founding member of The Native Share and Stock Brokers Association which later became the Bombay Stock Exchange.
Roychand had earned his fortune when the American Civil War drove the price of cotton up. This led to a speculative bubble in 1864 in which Back Bay Reclamation stock rose from 5,000 rupees to 50,000 rupees. Money made from cotton was redirected into the stock market, and new companies were floated to unsuspecting speculators. The number of companies traded in Bombay grew from 10 in 1855 to 62 in 1862 and over 100 by 1864. The market crashed in May 1865 when the American Civil War ended and Back Bay Reclamation stock fell from 50,000 Rupees to 2,000. Bank of Bombay stock fell from 2,850 rupees to 87. Hundreds of time bargains matured on July 1, 1865 and many speculators were wiped out.
The stock brokers moved to Dalal (Brokers’) Street in 1874. The Bombay Stock Exchange was founded on July 9, 1875 as the Native Share and Stock Brokers Association and was the first stock exchange established in Asia. The Calcutta Stock Exchange incorporated in 1908. Stock exchanges opened up throughout India in the twentieth century. Nineteen former stock exchanges have closed in India since 2000. Today, most trading in Indian stocks takes place on either the Bombay Stock Exchange or the National Stock Exchange, founded in 1992. Both have a market cap of over $2 trillion....
Back in August I mentioned the $45 Tril. in passing:
"In Unprecedented, Shocking Proposal, BOE's Mark Carney Urges Replacing Dollar With Libra-Like Reserve Currency"
Dear Governor Carney,Thinking that would be enough to get the ball rolling but apparently not.
India would like their $45 trillion back and based on the responses to informal queries, would prefer it in dollars rather than a libra-like reserve currency.Yr. pal,
Climateer
I even included a handy link to the study the figure is based on:
How Britain stole $45 trillion from India
— Al Jazeera, December 19, 2018
Now, with Mr. Carney's imminent departure from the Bank of England it is probably time to get moving on it.
If interested, here is more of the backstory.
And to be fair India did get the English language and law so maybe shave a couple trillion off the tab.
