东印度公司
译者注：1、东印度公司向中国贩卖鸦片，导致了中英第一次鸦片战争爆发。
2、这篇原文暗示中国在搞新殖民主义，请读者鉴别。
3、本译者翻译这篇文章是为了学习英语。
The East India Company
东印度公司
The Company that ruled the waves
统治大洋的公司
As state-backed firms once again become forces in global business, we ask what they can learn from the greatest of them all
现在，国有控股公司成为了全球贸易的主力军，但我们不禁要问，我们能从东印度公司这家伟大的公司学到什么。
A POPULAR parlour game among historians is debating when the modern world began. Was it when Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press, in 1440? Or when Christopher Columbus discovered America, in 1492? Or when Martin Luther published his 95 theses, in 1517? All popular choices. But there is a strong case to be made for a less conventional answer: the modern world began on a freezing New Year’s Eve, in 1600, when Elizabeth I granted a company of 218 merchants a monopoly of trade to the east of the Cape of Good Hope.
历史学家对世界现代史何时开始一直争论不休。世界现代史是要从1440年约翰·顾登堡发明印刷机开始算起？是从1492年克里斯多弗·哥伦布发现美洲算起？还是从1517年马丁·路德发表了95篇论文算起？这些重要事件发生的年份都能作为世界现代史开始的年份。1600年，英国伊丽莎白女王授予由218名商人合作成立的东印度公司独享东好望角地区贸易权；现在，人们将这个年份作为世界现代史的开端，没有多少人提出异议。
The East India Company foreshadowed the modern world in all sorts of striking ways. It was one of the first companies to offer limited liability to its shareholders. It laid the foundations of the British empire. It spawned Company Man. And—particularly relevant at the moment—it was the first state-backed company to make its mark on the world.
东印度公司的运作制度惊人地预示了现代世界运行的各种特征，这真让人吃惊。东印度公司是世界历史上第一家对股东承担有限责任的公司。众所周知，正是有限责任公司制度奠定了大英帝国的经济基础，也导致了公司人的出现。此外，东印度公司是世界上第一家获得政府扶持并因此扬名于世界的公司，这与现在的国有控股公司的情况极为相似。
Twenty years ago, as the state abandoned the commanding heights of the economy in the name of privatisation and deregulation, it looked as if these public-private hybrids were doomed. Today they are flourishing in the emerging world’s dynamic economies and striding out onto the global stage.
在东印度公司成立前二十年，英国政府就不再依靠私有化和撤销管制来促进经济发展；在那时，人们觉得公私混合的经济组织模式似乎已经走到了尽头。现在，新兴国家的公私混合的经济组织成为了世界上最具活力的经济组织，他们正大踏步地走向全球市场。
State-controlled companies account for 80% of the market capitalisation of the Chinese stockmarket, more than 60% of Russia’s, and 35% of Brazil’s. They make up 19 of the world’s 100 biggest multinational companies and 28 of the top 100 among emerging markets. World-class state companies can be found in almost every industry. China Mobile serves 600m customers. Saudi Arabia’s SABIC is one of the world’s most profitable chemical companies. Emirates airlines is growing at 20% a year. Thirteen of the world’s biggest oil companies are state-controlled. So is the world’s biggest natural-gas company, Gazprom.
在中国、俄罗斯和巴西，国有控股企业的市值分别占到其所在国股市的80%、60%多和35%。在世界的前一百强跨国公司中，来自这三个新型国家的国有控股公司就占了19个席位，在三个新兴国家的前一百强公司中，有二十八家公司属于国有控股企业。几乎在所有行业都有自己的世界级国有控股企业：中国移动公司拥有六亿用户，沙特阿拉伯的沙特基础工业公司是世界上最赚钱的化工公司，阿联酋航空公司的业务量以每年百分之二十的速度递增，世界最大规模的前十三家石油公司都是国有控股企业，世界规模最大的天然气公司——俄罗斯天然气工业股份公司，也国有控股企业。
State-owned companies will continue to thrive. The emerging markets that they prosper in are expected to grow at 5.5% a year compared with the rich world’s 1.6%, and the model is increasingly popular. The Chinese and Russian governments are leading a fashion for using the state’s power to produce national champions in a growing range of “strategic” industries.
人们有理由相信，国有企业将会继续焕发勃勃生机。依靠国有控股企业的发展，新兴市场国家经济增长率是一年百分之五点五，而发达国家的经济增长率是一年百分之一点八，国有控股企业这种企业组织形式越来越受到人们的欢迎。中国和俄罗斯都采取了利用政府权力来扶持战略工业内的国家级大型国有控股企业发展，而且所谓的战略工业的数量也在不断上升；中国和俄罗斯在这方面开创了先河。
The parallels between the East India Company and today’s state-owned firms are not exact, to be sure. The East India Company controlled a standing army of some 200,000 men, more than most European states. None of today’s state-owned companies has yet gone this far, though the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) has employed former People’s Liberation Army troops to protect oil wells in Sudan. The British government did not own shares in the Company (though prominent courtiers and politicians certainly did). Today’s state-capitalist governments hold huge blocks of shares in their favourite companies.
应当指出，东印度公司和现在国有企业在很些方面不尽相同。东印度公司控制了一支二十万人的军队，比当时大部分欧洲国家的军队人数还多。虽然中国海洋石油总公司在苏丹聘请了中国人民解放军的退役军人来负责保卫油井的工作，但现在没有几家国有控股企业能够拥有军队了。英国政府没有在东印度公司持有股份，（虽然不少英国大臣和政治家却是东印度公司的股东），而现在的国家资本主义政府却持有他们所扶持企业的股份。
Otherwise the similarities are striking. Both the Company and its modern descendants serve two masters, keeping one eye on their share price and the other on their political patrons. Many of today’s state-owned companies are monopolies or quasi-monopolies: Brazil’s Petrobras, China Mobile, China State Construction Engineering Corporation and Mexico’s Federal Electricity Commission, to name but a few of the mongrel giants that bestride the business world these days. Many are enthusiastic globalisers, venturing abroad partly as moneymaking organisations and partly as quasi-official agents of their home governments. Many are keen not only on getting their government to provide them with soft loans and diplomatic muscle but also on building infrastructure—roads, hospitals and schools—in return for guaranteed access to raw materials. Although the East India Company flourished a very long time ago, in a very different world, its growth, longevity and demise have lessons for those who run today’s state companies and debate their future, lessons about the benefits of linking a company’s interests to a nation’s and the dangers of doing so.
除此之外，现在的国有控股公司很多方面与东印度公司有着惊人的相似之处。不论是历史上的东印度公司还是现在的国有控股企业都要注意两个方面，他们一方面要注意他们股份的价格，另一方面要揣摩担任政府要职的各个股东的想法。现在很多的国有控股企业是垄断企业或准垄断企业；如巴西石油、中国移动、中国建筑工程总公司和墨西哥联邦电力都是垄断性质的企业，能够达到世界级企业规模而不属于政府控股的企业是少之又少。很多国有控股企业现在都热衷于走全球化经营路线，纷纷到外国进行投资；造成这种现象的一个原因是全球化经营的确让企业赚到了钱，另一个原因是他们扮演了他们国家政府的非正式代言人的角色。这些国有控股企业不仅热衷于获取政府的资金和外交政策的支持，还热衷于在资本输入国家建设公路、医院和学校这样的基础设施，他们这样做就是为了更加容易地获取工业原料。尽管东印度公司已经湮灭在了历史的长河里，现在的世界也与东印度公司所处时期的世界大不相同，但东印度公司的发展历程、在历史曾长期生存的事实和他的大规模管理体系都对现在的大型国有控股公司管理人思考他们公司的未来发展有参考价值，并对与这些企业有着紧密联系的国家政府权衡对外投资的利弊有着借鉴作用。
The gifts of government
政府的赋予的权利
One of the benefits the Company derived from its relations with the state was limited liability. Before the rise of state-backed companies, businesses had imposed unlimited liability on their investors. If things went wrong, creditors could come after them for everything they possessed, down to their cufflinks, and have them imprisoned if they failed to pay. Some firms had already been granted limited liability, and the Company’s officers persuaded Queen Elizabeth that it should be given this handy status too.
东印度公司从英国政府那里得到的第一个好处就是有限责任制度。在被政府扶持的公司出现之前，生意人对其投资人承担无限经济责任；一旦这些生意人经营不善，他们的债主有权利拿走他们的一切，如果这样他们还不能偿还所欠款项，他们将被被关进监狱。在东印度公司成立之前，一些公司已经被赋予了承担有限责任的权利，东印度公司因此劝说伊丽莎白女王也给予东印度公司享受承担有限责任的权利。
A second benefit of state backing was monopoly. In the 17th century, round-the-world voyages were rather like space missions today. They involved huge upfront costs and huge risks. Monopoly provided at least a modicum of security. The third benefit was military might. The Company’s Dutch and Portuguese competitors could all call on the power of their respective navies. The English needed to do likewise in order to unlock investors’ purses.
英国政府给予东印度公司的第二个好处就是垄断经营权。在十七世纪，环球航行的难度和现在的航天任务的相差无几，环球航行需要耗费大量的金钱和承担高风险。垄断经营为当时的环球航行提供了极其有限的经济保障。第三个好处就是给予了东印度公司组建军队的权利；这是因为当时荷兰和葡萄牙的公司是东印度公司的直接竞争者，他们能得到本国海军的庇护；为了维护英国投资人的利益，英国政府只能采取让公司组建军队的措施。
Still, getting into bed with the government was risky for the Company. It meant getting close to courtiers who wanted to extract revenue from it and exposing itself to politicians who wanted to rewrite its charter. The Whig revolutionaries who deposed James II in 1688 briefly promoted a competing outfit that the Company first fought and eventually absorbed. Rival merchants lobbied courtiers to undermine its monopoly. But for the most part it dealt with these political problems brilliantly. Indeed its most valuable skill—its “core competence” in the phrase beloved of management theorists—was less its ability to arrange long-distance voyages to India and beyond than its ability to manage the politicians back home.
虽然如此，东印度公司与英国政府走得太近，让其自身也处在了危险的境地——那些英国大臣满脑子想的是如何对东印度公司收税，而那些政客却是想着如何改写东印度公司的章程。1688年爆发的辉格党革命废黜了詹姆斯二世国王，让一些和东印度公司有利益冲突的机构随之公开与东印度公司作对，但东印度公司最终吞并了这些机构。与东印度公司有商业冲突的商人也跑到各个英国大臣那里游说，试图逐渐撤销掉东印度公司的垄断经营权利。在大多数时候，东印度公司能够成功地应对这样的政治变动。实际上，东印度公司掌握的最有价值的技巧（也是他的“核心竞争力”）就是公司管理制度理论，正是得益于这种理论，东印度公司驾驭政治人物的能力要强过组织前往印度远洋航行的能力。
The Company created a powerful East India lobby in Parliament, a caucus of MPs who had either directly or indirectly profited from its business and who constituted, in Edmund Burke’s opinion, one of the most united and formidable forces in British politics. It also made regular gifts to the Court: “All who could help or hurt at Court,” wrote Lord Macaulay, “ministers, mistresses, priests, were kept in good humour by presents of shawls and silks, birds’ nests and attar of roses, bulses of diamonds and bags of guineas.” It also made timely gifts to the Treasury whenever the state faced bankruptcy. In short, it acted as what George Dempster, a stockholder, called a “great money engine of state”.
东印度公司在英国国会组建了一个东印度游说团队，该游说团队与东印度公司的业务或创建人有着直接或间接的联系；在艾德蒙·伯克眼里，这个游说团队是英国最有影响力的政治游说团体。麦考利勋爵如此写道：“只要是能在国会帮助或诋损东印度公司的人，不论是阁僚、情妇还是牧师，东印度公司利用披肩、丝绸、鸟巢、玫瑰花油、钻石甚至装满金币的钱包作为礼物送给他们，为的就是与他们保持良好的关系。”每当英国政府面临财政危机时，东印度公司总能及时地向英国财政部提供资助。乔治·丹普斯特是东印度公司的股东之一，他对此用一句话描述道：“东印度公司是英国政府的造币机器。”
The Company was just as adept at playing politics abroad. It distributed bribes liberally: the merchants offered to provide an English virgin for the Sultan of Achin’s harem, for example, before James I intervened. And where it could not bribe it bullied, using soldiers paid for by Indian taxes to duff up recalcitrant rulers. Yet it recognised that its most powerful bargaining chip, both home and abroad, was its ability to provide temporarily embarrassed rulers with the money they needed to pay their bills. In an era when governments lacked the resources of the modern tax-and-spend state, the state-backed company was a backstop against bankruptcy.
东印度公司在英国之外也是与政客打交道的好手，他们的商业人员擅长行贿；例如，东印度公司的商业人员为苏丹的各个酋长都进贡了一名英国处女，要不是詹姆斯一世国王对此事进行干预，这种事情会一直进行下去。如果贿赂手段在国外不起作用，东印度公司就采取武力来解决问题——东印度公司利用印度的税收养活了一支军队，其目的就是为了教训不听话的外国统治者。其实，东印度公司也发现对付令人讨厌的统治者的有效武器就是金钱，在英国如此，在国外也是如此。在一段时期里，每当英国政府缺少税收来源，东印度公司成为了防止英国政府破产的最后的保障。
State-backed monopolies are apt to run to fat and lose their animal spirits. The Company was a model of economy and austerity that modern managers would do well to emulate. For the first 20 years of its life it operated out of the home of its governor, Sir Thomas Smythe. Even when it had become the world’s greatest commercial operation it remained remarkably lean. It ruled millions of people from a tiny headquarters, staffed by 159 in 1785 and 241 in 1813. Its managers reiterated the importance of frugality, economy and simplicity with a metronomic frequency, and imposed periodic bouts of austerity: in 1816, for example, they turned Saturday from a half to a full working day and abolished the staff’s annual turtle feast.
占据垄断地位的国有控股企业的规模会变得越来越大，而企业的竞争意识却会逐渐丧失。公司是一种典型的经济组织形式，现代的公司管理人无一不遵循节俭办企业这一原则。在东印度公司成立之初的头二十年，托马斯·塞密尔先生这位东印度公司的主管人并没有管理东印度公司的经营活动。在东印度公司成为世界上最大的经济组织时，其管理组织仍然保持了较小的规模。东印度公司英国总部的人数在1785年是159人，而到1813年也不过是241人，而东印度公司在发展高峰时期的员工人数达到了数百万人。东印度公司的历届经理人都强调节俭的重要性，东印度公司的历届领导人都注重经济活动的节俭和管理程序的简化，并且东印度公司有周期性的精简开支活动；例如，在1816年，东印度公司总部就将星期六的半天班转变成了全天班，而且还撤销了一年一度的龟肉宴。
The Company’s success in preserving its animal spirits owed more to necessity than to cunning. In a world in which letters could take two years to travel to and fro and in which the minions knew infinitely more about what was going on than did their masters, efforts at micromanagement were largely futile.
东印度公司成功地保持了企业的竞争意识不是因为其领导人的英明，而是出于是公司生存的必要。在当时，向国外发送的一封信件并要得到回信这一过程要耗费两年的时间，东印度公司在国外的工作人员对国外实际情况的了解比呆在英国总部的高管要好得多，在这种情况下，东印度公司英国总部维持一个小机构的模式，其工作效率反而要好很多。
The Company improvised a version of what Tom Peters, a management guru, has dubbed “tight-loose management”. It forced its employees to post a large bond in case they went off the rails, and bombarded them with detailed instructions about things like the precise stiffness of packaging. But it also leavened control with freedom. Employees were allowed not only to choose how to fulfil their orders, but also to trade on their own account. This ensured that the Company was not one but two organisations: a hierarchy with its centre of gravity in London and a franchise of independent entrepreneurs with innumerable centres of gravity scattered across the east. Many Company men did extremely well out of this “tight-loose” arrangement, turning themselves into nabobs, as the new rich of the era were called, and scattering McMansions across rural England.
东印度公司还创作了一种被管理大师汤姆·彼得成为“张弛有度的管理模式”。一方面东印度公司让自己的员工与自己紧密联系在一起，以防止他们工作出轨，东印度公司教会自己的员工各种业务技能，连如何将货物捆绑结实这样的技巧都地教给员工；另一方面，东印度公司通过向员工下放经营权来提高管控水平，东印度公司的每个员工都有权以自己的方式执行自己的订单，而且还可以用自己的账户支付或收取货款。这些措施让东印度公司成为了事实上的两种组织结构：一个以在英国伦敦总部为中心的公司，另一种是遍布东半球，以各个地区主管为中心的营销网络。很多公司人在这种管理体制中过得如鱼得水，他们成功地让自己成为了富翁，在那个被称为“富裕年代”的时期，东印度公司员工购买的豪宅在英国乡村随处可见。
Money and meritocracy
金钱和精英教育
The Company repaid the state not just in taxes and tariffs, but also in ideas. It was one of the 18th and 19th centuries’ great innovators in the art of governing—more innovative by some way than the British government, not to mention its continental rivals, and outgunned only by the former colonies of America. The Company pioneered the art of government by writing and government by record, to paraphrase Burke. Its dispatches to and from India for the 15 years after 1814 fill 12,414 leather-bound volumes. It created Britain’s largest cadre of civil servants, a term it invented.
东印度公司回报给英国政府的不仅仅是上缴的税金和关税，还有新的管理理念。在十八世纪和十九世纪，东印度公司堪称是管理艺术的创新团体，在某些管理方面，东印度公司的创新比英国政府还要多，欧洲其他国家的管理系统还比不上比英国政府，只有英国的前北美殖民地在管理创新方面超过了东印度公司。伯克评价道：东印度公司的对管理制度进行创新，英国政府对这些新制度进行推广。
State-backed enterprises risk getting stuffed with powerful politicians’ half-witted nephews. The Company not only avoided this but also, in an age when power and money were both largely inherited, it pioneered appointment by merit. It offered positions to all-comers on the basis of exam performance. It recruited some of the country’s leading intellectuals, such as Edward Strachey, Thomas Love Peacock and both James and John Stuart Mill—the latter starting, at the age of 17, in the department that corresponded with the central administration in India, and rising, as his father had, to head it, on the eve of the Company’s extinction.
如果一家企业与政府有着紧密联系，该企业不少员工将是能力平庸的官二代。而东印度公司尽力避免让这些官二代进入公司；在东印度公司的规模和效益达到顶峰时，东印度公司首先采取任人唯贤的用人措施——东印度公司对员工职务的安排都是以员工的工作业绩为依据；此外，东印度公司还招聘了英国一流的知识分子，这些人包括爱德华·斯雷奇、托马斯·勒夫·皮科克、詹姆斯·斯图亚特·米尔和约翰·斯图亚特·米尔。约翰·斯图亚特·米尔在十七岁时就接受了相当于当时印度中央政府的东印度公司管理部门，就如同他的父亲所作的那样，约翰·斯图亚特·米尔成功地开展了管理工作，一直到东印度公司被撤销。
The Company also established a feeder college—Haileybury—so that it could recruit bright schoolboys and train them to flourish in, and run, India. These high-minded civil servants both prolonged the Company’s life when Victorian opinion was turning ever more strongly against it and also provided a model for the Indian and domestic civil service.
此外，东印度公司还建起了自己的对口大学——凯雷伯利学院，凯雷伯利学院为东印度公司招募并培养聪明的英国高中男孩，这些男孩最后都进入了东印度公司，并成为该公司管理印度的中坚力量。当维多利亚女王对东印度公司的态度发生转变，进而强烈反感东印度公司这一阶段，由这些高素质凯雷伯利学院毕业生组成的公务员设法延长了东印度公司的生存时间并且为后来的印度政府设立一个公务制度的样板。
The Company liked to think of itself as having the best of both private and public worlds—the excitement and rewards of commercial life, on the one hand, and the dignity and security of an arm of the state on the other. But the best of both worlds can easily turn into the worst.
东印度公司一直认为自己为私人和公众提供了一个最好的环境——一方面，东印度公司让英国的商业繁荣，另一方面，东印度公司的军队保障英国政府的安全和尊严。然而，在当时的条件下，最好的环境会在一夜之间转变为最差的环境。
The perils of imperialisation
国有化的危险
In the end, it was not rapacious politicians who killed the Company, but the greed and power of its managers and shareholders. In 1757 Sir Robert Clive won the battle of Plassey and delivered the government of Bengal to the Company. This produced a guaranteed income from Bengal’s taxpayers, but it also dragged the Company ever deeper into the business of government. The Company continued to flourish as a commercial enterprise in China and the Far East. But its overall character was increasingly determined by its administrative obligations in India. Revenue replaced commerce as the Company’s first concern. Tax rolls replaced business ledgers. Arsenals replaced warehouses. C.N. Parkinson summarised how far it had strayed, by 1800, from its commercial purpose: “How was the East India Company controlled? By the government. What was its object? To collect taxes. How was its object attained? By means of a standing army. What were its employees? Soldiers, mostly; the rest, Civil Servants.”
最后，导致东印度公司走向灭亡的不是贪婪的英国大臣，而是东印度公司经理人和股东的贪婪和权力欲望。罗伯特·克莱芙爵士的领导下，东印度公司打赢了1757年的普拉西战役，东印度公司由此得到了孟加拉的统治权，自然也获得了孟加拉税收征管的权利，但东印度公司随之将自己进一步卷入对政府事务的管理工作之中。虽然作为一家商业组织，东印度公司在中国和远东的业务开展得红红火火，但东印度公司最主要的角色是印度的统治人——在印度，东印度公司最关注不是商业利润而是税收情况。为此，东印度公司用税收清单代替了帐薄，军火库代替了仓库。1800年，东印度公司已经偏离了自己的商业运作的目的，C.N.帕金斯对此进行了评价：“东印度公司怎样控制印度？答案是自己组建政府。东印度公司的目标是什么？答案是收税。东印度公司如何达到自己的目标？答案是使用军队。东印度公司的雇员是些什么人？答案是绝大部分是军人，其余的都是公务员。”
The Company’s growing involvement in politics infuriated its mighty army of critics still further. How could it justify having a monopoly of trade as well as the right to tax the citizens of India? And how could a commercial organisation justify ruling 90m Indians, controlling 70m acres (243,000 square kilometres) of land, issuing its own coins, complete with the Company crest, and supporting an army of 200,000 men, all of which the East India Company did by 1800? Adam Smith denounced the Company as a bloodstained monopoly: “burdensome”, “useless” and responsible for grotesque massacres in Bengal. Anti-Company opinion hardened further in 1770 when a famine wiped out a third of the population of Bengal, reducing local productivity, depressing the Company’s business and eventually forcing it to go cap in hand to the British government to avoid bankruptcy.
东印度公司在印度不断地掌控政府事务，这让数量众多的英国批评人士极其不满：一个已经享有垄断经营权当公司怎么还有权在印度收税？一个商业组织怎么可以统治人口九千万，面积七千万英亩（二十四万三千平方公里）的印度？一个商业组织怎么可以在印度发行自己的货币？一个商业组织怎么可以拥有一支人数最多时达到二十万的军队？以及东印度公司在1880年所作的其他种种事情。亚当·史密斯谴责东印度公司是一个满身血污的垄断企业：东印度公司让人讨厌，对英国毫无好处，并且对孟加拉大屠杀负有直接责任。在1770年，孟加拉爆发饥荒，这场饥荒饿死了孟加拉的三分之一的人口，降低了孟加拉的生产能力，东印度公司也因此遭受严重亏损，不得不向英国政府寻求破产保护；也就是在这一时期，反对东印度公司的声音一浪高过一浪。
The government subjected the Company to ever-tighter supervision, partly because it resented bailing it out, partly because it was troubled by the argument that a company had no business in running a continent. Supervision inexorably led to regulation and regulation to nationalisation (or imperialisation). In 1784 the government established a board to direct the Company’s directors. In 1813 it removed its monopoly of trade with India. In 1833 it removed its monopoly of trade with China and banned it from trading in India entirely. In 1858, the year after the Indian mutiny vindicated the Company’s critics, the government took over all administrative duties in India. The Company’s headquarters in London, East India House, was demolished in 1862. It paid its last dividend in 1873 and was finally put out of its misery in 1874. Thus an organisation that had been given life by the state was eventually extinguished by it.
英国政府对东印度公司采取了更加严格的监管措施，一方是因为英国政府不愿意出手援助东印度公司，另一方面是反对的东印度公司统治印度的人太多了。对东印度公司的监管导致了英国政府对东印度公司的直接管理，直接管理有导致了英国政府对东印度公司采取国有化改制的结果——1784年，英国政府在东印度公司成立了监事会，对东印度公司董事会的决策进行指导；1813年，英国政府收回了东印度公司对印度的垄断经营权；1833年，英国政府收回了东印度公司对中国贸易的垄断权利，并在同年禁止东印度公司在印度进行贸易活动；1858年，印度爆发的兵变印证了英国批评人士对东印度公司的指责，英国政府接管了印度的统治权；1862年，东印度公司设在伦敦总部的房子（“东印度住宅”）被拆除；1873年，东印度公司进行了最后一次分红；1874年，东印度公司被正式结束。东印度公司这家被英国政府设立的公司，最终也被英国政府结束掉。
A dangerous connection
危险的联系
Ever since its ignominious collapse the Company has been treated as an historical curiosity—an “anomaly without a parallel in the history of the world”, as one commentator put it in 1858, a push-me pull-you the like of which the world would never see again. But these days similarly strange creatures are popping up everywhere. The East India Company is being transformed from an historical curiosity into a highly relevant case study.
就在东印度公司开始走下坡路的时候，人们也将东印度公司视为一个历史奇迹，一名评论员在1858年如此评价道：“世界上找不出一家能与东印度公司媲美的经济组织了。”这样的吹捧，是人们从未见过的。现在，与东印度公司类似的国有控股企业不断出现，东印度公司现在从一个历史事件变成为了一个学术界研究课题。
The Company’s history shows that liberals may be far too pessimistic (if that is the right word) about the ability of state monopolies to remain healthy. The Company lasted for far longer than most private companies precisely because it had two patrons to choose from—prospering from trade in good times and turning to the government for help in bad ones. It also showed that it is quite possible to rely on the government for support while at the same time remaining relatively lean and inventive.
东印度公司的历史说明，自由贸易主义者对国家控股垄断公司保持健康成长的能力过于悲观。东印度公司生存的时间比任何私有企业都长，这是因为东印度公司能够从两方面获得支持：在经济环境好的时候，通过贸易来赚钱；在经济环境差的时候，向政府寻求帮助。东印度公司还向人们展示了其可以在得到政府支持的同时保持企业的创新能力。
But the Company’s history also shows that mercantilists may be far too optimistic about state companies’ ability to avoid being corrupted by politics. The merchants who ran the East India Company repeatedly emphasised that they had no intention of ruling India. They were men of business who only dabbled in politics out of necessity. Nevertheless, as rival state companies tried to muscle in on their business and local princelings turned out to be either incompetent or recalcitrant, they ended up taking huge swathes of the emerging world under their direct control, all in the name of commerce.
但东印度公司的历史也表明重商主义者关于国家控股企业避免被卷入管理政府事务的能力方面过于乐观。管理东印度公司的商人一再强调自己是商人，没有统治印度目的，他们管理印度的政府事务是不得已而为之。虽然他们这样说，当其他的英国国有控股企业试图进入印度开展业务，或者他们发现印度的地方统治者是能力不行或者试图反抗，他们将索性以进行商业活动的名义直接对印度进行管理。
The Chinese state-owned companies that are causing such a stir everywhere from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (where they account for some of the biggest recent flotations) to the dodgiest parts of Sudan (where they are some of the few business organisations brave enough to tread) are no different from their East Indian forebears. They say that they are only in business for the sake of business. They dismiss their political connections as a mere bagatelle. The history of the East India Company suggests that it won’t work out that way.
从香港股市（最近被的几个大庄家搞得一塌糊涂）到最不稳定的苏丹（除了中国企业外，没有企业敢进入该地区了），中国国有控股企业都能搞点事情出来，这与东印度公司的做法如出一辙。这些中国国有控股企业声称他们只是在做生意，但他们与中国政府没有多少联系。东印度公司的历史表明他们的这种做法行不通。
