STEFANO BOSCUTTI - Colonial drug dealers

Our modern world was built on imperial and colonial drug dealing.

Trading in tobacco, sugar, tea, and opium was the foundation of our modern Western world. Britains’s empire upon which the sun never set, the slave trade and conquest of North and South America, the Caribbean, and South and East Asia all depended on the dealing of these drugs on a global scale by the world’s first chartered corporations.

Britain’s East India Company was founded in London as a joint-stock trading company is 1600. It was a law unto itself. It coined its own currency, monopolised trade routes and had the British navy mercilessly quell any rebellions.

At its peak the East India Company was the largest corporation in the world with quasi-governmental powers. It had a standing private army of 280,000 well-trained and well-equipped soldiers, twice the size of the British army at the time.

It waged full-scale war, imprisoned and executed convicts, negotiated treaties, flew its own flag and established colonies. Its slogan was simple and to the point. ‘By command of the King and Parliament of England.’

Its flag was copied by the United States who retained the red stripes and replaced the Union Jack in the the top left hand corner with a blue field of white stars.