system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How did the East India Company fit into many classical economists' theories (Smith, Ricardo, Say, Mill and Marx)?

I ask because it was such a dominating and novel economic force at the time, yet in all my economic history classes I have yet to read excerpts from any of the classicals discussing this company.
gpt
I can answer about Smith:

It fit into Smith's theories as the perfect example of what he wanted to get rid of. 

Remember, in Smith's day it was more or less impossible, technologically, for a big business to compete without government protections. Take away those protections, and big businesses would fall of their own weight. 

>To buy in one market, in order to sell, with profit, in another, when there are many competitors in both; to watch over, not only the occasional variations in the demand, but the much greater and more frequent variations in the competition, or in the supply which that demand is likely to get from other people, and to suit with dexterity and judgment both the quantity and quality of each assortment of goods to all these circumstances, is a species of warfare of which the operations are continually changing, and which can scarce ever be conducted successfully, without such an unremitting exertion of vigilance and attention, as cannot long be expected from the directors of a joint stock company. . . . The only trades which it seems possible for a joint stock company to carry on successfully, without an exclusive privilege, are those, of which all the operations are capable of being reduced to what is called a routine, or to such a uniformity of method as admits of little or no variation. Of this kind is, first, the banking trade; secondly, the trade of insurance from fire, and from sea risk or capture in time of war; thirdly, the trade of maintaining a navigable cut or canal; and fourthly, the similar trade of bringing water for the supply of a great city. 

In the EIC's case, it had a monopoly of trade to Asia. To Smith, if the Asia trade was profitable, there was no reason to keep people out of it. If it wasn't, there was no reason to encourage it (except for a limited time to establish it in the first place, that time having long passed when he was writing). 

True, the EIC, being big and awkward, would probably not be able to compete with small, entrepreneurial traders. That was fine. Smith, contrary to popular belief, did not like private enterprise and hate government per se--he disliked powerful private capitalistic interests getting favors from government. In fact, he distrusted capitalists *as a group*--to him, the interests of society as a whole were cheap goods and high wages, while the interests of capitalists were the opposite.

>The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it. 

On the colony trade specifically, he had this to say:

>Some nations have given up the whole commerce of their colonies to an exclusive company, of whom the colonies were obliged to buy all such European goods as they wanted, and to whom they were obliged to sell the whole of their own surplus produce. It was the interest of the company, therefore, not only to sell the former as dear, and to buy the latter as cheap as possible, but to buy no more of the latter, even at this low price, than what they could dispose of at a very high price in Europe. 

>Of the greater part of the regulations concerning the colony trade, the merchants who carry it on, it must be observed, have been the principal advisors. We must not wonder, therefore, if, in the greater part of them, their interest has been more considered than either that of the colonies or that of the mother country. 

And the following quotes refer to how the EIC had recently conquered Bengal and quickly turned it into a disaster area:

>It is a very singular government in which every member of the administration wishes to get out of the country, and consequently to have done with the government, as soon as he can, and to whose interest, the day after he has left it and carried his whole fortune with him, it is perfectly indifferent though the whole country was swallowed up by an earthquake. 

>No other sovereigns ever were, or, from the nature of things, ever could be, so perfectly indifferent about the happiness or misery of their subjects, the improvement or waste of their dominions, the glory or disgrace of their administration; as, from irresistible moral causes, the greater part of the proprietors of such a mercantile company are, and necessarily must be. 

>The government of an exclusive company of merchants is, perhaps, the worst of all governments for any country whatever.