The East India Company and Perceptions of Indian Culture Throughout the 16th century, the Indian Ocean was filled with lucrative trade. Incredible amounts of capital and resources were exchanged all throughout the Indian Ocean from the Middle East to the shores of Japan. At the heart of all this trade stood the Indian subcontinent, whose merchants and monarchs accumulated vast amounts of wealth by taking advantage of their geographic position relative to the international market. Although the larger dynasties of Europe had learned of the vast material wealth of Asia through the travels of Marco Polo and other European explorers as early as the 14th century, it wasn’t until the 1600s that the first legitimate European trading companies set up shop in the east to bring Asiatic commodities to the European continent at a large scale. The first of said companies, the British East India Company, created under Elizabeth I of England, would bring not only great wealth, but also eventual colonization to the people of the India. The British East India Company arrived in the Indian subcontinent with purely economic goals. The merchants in the company adapted to Indian culture extremely well, quickly making friends with the monarchs of different Indian states, adopting and practicing Indian religions, marrying Indian women, and learning the vernacular languages of the continent so that they could seamlessly blend into the already thriving market. As English influence in the Indian economy grew, so did their political influence. Many monarchs of Indian nation-states saw alliance with British traders as advantageous both to political stability and economics and welcomed the foreigners with open arms, some even offering them a percentage of tax income and conforming to English social regulations. Although the adaptation to Indian culture was fiscally advantageous to the