After the East India Company’s victory at Plassey in June 1757, its administration of Bengal expanded the power of a private corporation over trade and local governance. William Bolts, a company employee and later an independent merchant, worked in Calcutta and Benares, where he traded in woolens, saltpeter, opium, cotton, and diamonds. In 1768 he came into conflict with Company officials over private commerce, which employees were officially forbidden to conduct. He announced plans for a Calcutta newspaper containing information that he said concerned the public, but officials ordered him to leave Bengal. They also declared him bankrupt, a decision Bolts said caused the “irretrievable loss” of his fortune.
Bolts published Considerations on India Affairs in 1772, accusing the Company’s Bengal authorities of arbitrary power and describing the circumstances of his deportation. The book circulated widely and was translated into French, becoming an important contemporary account of Company rule. The Company continued trying to obstruct his independent Austrian-backed trading venture in India; its directors instructed officials in 1782 not to give offense to Austrian subjects only after urgent representations from Austria’s ambassador in London. The episode illustrates how a chartered monopoly could suppress commercial rivals and hostile information while exercising quasi-governmental authority, although the source does not report a modern court judgment or financial penalty against the Company for these actions.
