The Birth of Empire: The East India Company (2014) User Reviews

British Centric Documentary

[kvdbm · 7/10 · 4 October 2018]

Although it puts on the facade of a critical documentary on the EIC, this is clearly a Birtish centric documentray. The whole thing is viewed through a British lens.

This is ample clear, when the episode ends with claims like the English language has become a legacy and a boon in the globalized world.(This is said by an Indian, but it's definitely not a majority opinion). It's like forcing a man to live on a boat with no means of sustenance and then giving him a fishing rod as a boon. The British may have left a lot of their own legacies to survive and persist in India, but they have destroyed many more that we may have claimed as our own - they just needed time to evolve by themselves.

The episodes give a vivid account of the tragedies on the British, but why they happened and the things that the British government in India did that may have caused them are glossed over. Maybe this is because the written accounts from the perspective of the British were more articulate, but I had hoped for a more balanced approach.

It's not a bad commentary, but it doesn't do justice to the Indian people.

Impressive account of East India Company

[safenoe · 9/10 · 10 November 2017]

An impressive two part series hosted by Dan Snow who travels to India to interview various folk about the history and influence of the esteemed East India Company. There are stories of sadness and also of jubilation as the UK spread its influence across the oceans to India, and the impact is felt to this day with English being a primary language in India and cricket of course.

I didn't realize many Brits suffered health and emotional problems working in India for the Company, and some died on Indian soil.

A complete whitewashing of history

[mjo87 · 1/10 · 2 November 2019]

I think calling it a British-centric documentary is an understatement. It completely glazes over the violence of the company - how it forced the trade agreements, won territories through violence, coerced the rulers to serve them. It just says British were successful traders and got permits from the Mughal empire... also Many of the initial expeditions were actually just British "traders" stealing (I think it's called piracy) other countries' goods from their ships. I'm neither British, nor Indian or South Asian, but a European with a keen eye for history that doesn't whitewash the violence. The way this documentary skips multiple facts is incredible and in some ways a true mirror of what majority of the British people know about the "Empire" (which is often that South Asians at least got railways...). I went to school in Britain and was shocked how little they learn and further how little accountability they take for destroying the resources of an entire subcontinent and getting terribly rich as a state on the back of it (while millions died in famines).

If you want an accurate description of the rise of the EIC, please read "the Anarchy", by William Dalrymple, a British historian living in New Delhi for decades. Just don't watch this whitewashed documentary that claims to be objective.

Extremely poor account of documentary

[hsinghal-36392 · 1/10 · 21 June 2020]

The reporting of the documentary has been extremely supercilious, like the Empire to eliminate the barbaric acts of the Empire and provide an extremely biased and inappropriate story.

Just poor journalism for some preconceived object.