Page:History of India Vol 6.djvu/294

 234 THE FIRST ENGLISH EAST INDIA COMPANY Frobisher's northwestern expeditions (1576-1578), be- ginning in exploration and ending in a gold mania. They developed into the voyages, partly of discovery though chiefly for plunder, of whose corsair-command- ers Drake forms the heroic figure-head. But side by side with these buccaneering ventures grew up more peaceable yet armed enterprises whose chief, if not sole, object was trade. Of this last class the Levant or Turkey Company long survived as the type. The East India Company exemplifies that type of armed sea-trade on its largest scale, and with the fullest pow- ers of expansion and of self-defence. So also in regard to its working mechanism the East India Company stands to us as the final expres- sion of the co-operative principle in the Elizabethan period. From the very first, as noted in the Court Minutes, September 25, 1599, the adventurers declared " that the trade of the Indias being so far remote from hence cannot be traded but in a joint and a united stock. " From the first also they insisted that the con- tributions of members should be in money, and not in kind; that neither ships nor goods should be accepted from any adventurer " as his stock " or in lieu of his subscription in cash. A corporation so constituted seems closely to resemble a modern joint stock com- pany, but the resemblance is by no means complete. Its nature was rather that of a modern syndicate formed to obtain from the crown a concession of the East India trade for a certain number of years, and then to work the concession by means of successive