East India Company in North America

Although its Charter only gave the East India Company a monopoly on trade to the east of the Cape of Good Hope, the sheer scale of its enterprise meant that the Company had a significant influence on the newly emerging American colonies.  Indeed the American historian Henry Newton Stevens maintained that the Mayflower which participated in the third voyage of the Company was the same ship that later was to take the Pilgrim's on their voyage from Plymouth.

In the early days of the seventeenth century the small circle of influential merchants in the City of London who formed the East India Company in 1600 had their fingers in a number of other trading pies.  The Governor of the East India Company in its first decade, Sir Thomas Smyth, was also the first Governor of the Virginia Company founded in 1606, and the two companies shared their headquarters in Smyth's house, along with that of the Levant Company.  The Virginia Company was the first British colonial enterprise in North America, following on the naming of the state after the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth I.  The Virginia Company founded the colonial port of Jamestown on Chesapeake Bay, now a colonial heritage site.

One of the key issues at the time of the foundation of the Company was the search for the "North West Passage" over the top of North America to the Indies, considered of vital interest because of the continued dominance of the sea routes east by the Spanish and Portuguese.  The Company financed expeditions in order to find the supposed passage, and on one such voyage, the Captain, Henry Hudson, was cast ashore to die by his mutinous crew in the bay which now bears his name.  Forced to share the sea lanes on the more conventional route to China and the Spice Islands, the Company had little contact with America until it had successfully established its trade in India; then private traders or "interlopers" based in new England caused many headaches for the Company by joining in with the trade, and as the company saw it, interfering with their monopoly.  The situation was aggravated by the activities of American pirates on the trading lanes between India and the Middle East.  Eventually the Company gave a contract to the newly appointed governor of New York to get rid of this menace.  He found a well armed ship and an experienced commander named Captain Kidd, who soon, far from suppressing piracy, became one of its most notorious practitioners until his capture and execution in 1701.

The Yale Brothers
The second generation American brothers Elihu and Thomas Yale, forged notable careers for themselves in the Company's service.  Elihu rose to become the Governor of Madras, and from there in 1689 he sent Thomas on what was the Company's first direct trading mission to China, paving the way for the eventual opening up of that unknown country to the Company's traders.  Although his brother was later disgraced, Elihu returned to America with the fortune that he had earned in India, donating part of it to his old school, which, in gratitude, renamed itself "Yale College" in 1718.