Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c3.48

c3.48

While discussing the mode of governing India, Ferguson raised the question of the purpose of this governance. According to him, the aim was to transfer as much as possible of the wealth of India to Europe. And this task, according to him, could not directly be conducted by servants and institutions of the British state. They would be too bound by rules and state discipline to do justice to the task. The transfer of wealth to Europe, he felt, would generally require the bending and breaking of rules as no major extraction or extortion from the ruled could be effectively done through instruments of the state. He therefore felt that the direct governance of India should be in the hands of the servants of a body like the E.I. Co., where the servants could when needed disobey orders and rules. But the company should be controlled and supervised by a high-power body constituted by the state. It is this logic and arguments that eventually led to the formation of the Board of Commissioners for the Affairs of India in 1784.