Empires – The Might of Money - yet more methods of gaining control - section (iii)

In the previous video we looked at how Empires come into being, specifically with regard to Miliary Might.
In this video I will focus on the Might of Money.
The use of force, or carrying out a Coup d’Etat, are means by which one country can control another. But these are rather obvious methods.
There are other, more stealthy means of gaining control –
 by making trade deals with the target nations.
 by the exercise of power in some financial concern, or other.
It should be said that money matters. Without money, Empires would struggle to survive.
Empires usually fall in no small part to monetary woes. The fall of both Roman Empire and the British Empire are good examples of this happening.
We use money every day as a means of exchange, but money more than just that. Money is important for another reason also. Money is a tool. And it can be used for the good, benefitting people, or it can be used for the bad, harming people. In this respect money then can be a weapon. It can be turned into a weapon of sorts and used for whatever nefarious purposes so desired.
Let’s turn our attentions back the British Empire again. More particularly, let’s look at The East India Company (that British vanguard) and its operations in the Indian subcontinent.
The Company turned the money into a weapon, not literally perhaps, but near enough. With the money they made from trading The Company were able to set up a standing army. In the first 150 years after it was established it employed a few hundred soldiers as guards. The following is an extract from Wikipedia. “The great expansion came after 1750, when it had 3,000 regular troops. By 1763, it had 26,000; by 1778, it had 67,000. It recruited largely Indian troops and trained them along European lines. The military arm of the East India Company quickly developed into a private corporate armed force used as an instrument of geo-political power and expansion instead of its original purpose as a guard force. Because of this, the EIC became the most powerful military force in the Indian subcontinent.

So, all that said, let’s have a look at the first of the two points I made regarding methods, the trade deals that are done with the target nations.

The best way to explain this is by way of an example. As I said in the previous video, the history of Persia is very interesting indeed and understanding it can give many insights into the world of geopolitics. So, let’s look at what happened in Persia …
The British Empire became interested in Persia once oil was discovered there in early 1900s. In 1908, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (the APOC) was set up.
I should say at this juncture, before we proceed any further, we often find a blending of state and company interests when it comes to Empires – indeed so much so that it’s not easy to see where one ends and the other begins. As a side note, the Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini defined “Fascism” as being the merger of state and company interests. But anyway