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Stakeholder Choice: A Colonial Trader Quest

How should I model the governance of the Raj?

  • Easier than they were: How things are modeled now

    Votes: 5 16.1%

  • Realistically: Do it historical justice

    Votes: 26 83.9%
  • Total voters
    31
  • Poll closed .
Voting is open
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kilopi505 said:
@mouli, are we involved in the salt industry? Can we build salterns?
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You're not involved, no, and the salt trade has gone on for centuries using the natural salt flats in Gujarat. Not to mention that it's heavily taxed and regulated as a means of easy revenue for the Company and later the Empire.
 
[X]The Tata Offer
[X]To Expand into Singapore

Even today Tata is in steel, autos and other industries. This is someone to have as a friend.
 
Doing some admittedly quick research it seems besides textile mills, paper mills and breweries were to of the largest manufactured markets in India before WW1. Otherwise Cement is a good that could make a descent product if we can get it set up with the growth of cities.
 
@mouli?

Are we dealing with dried fish? As in selling them into the interior of India? To the Himalayas? Could we make a monopoly on that?

...the dried fish kings of India. Sending dried fish to the unlikeliest places.
 
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kilopi505 said:
@mouli?

Are we dealing with dried fish? As in selling them into the interior of India? To the Himalayas? Could we make a monopoly on that?

...the dried fish kings of India.
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That just...isn't something that there is yet the market, the contacts, and the money for. Like, that requires, at base, mass cheap food processing to be worth your while. Not a workable proposition. You'll need to get in on canning in the 1890s.
As far as an earlier Swadeshi is concerned, remember that industrialization is itself a nationalist act in many eyes. And that Indian independence was most certainly not always nonviolent - Gandhi has yet to come, after all. The big, big thing that you can influence is twofold: (a) The nascent use of industrialization as a tool to build a national identity, and (b) The buildup of an organized network for either independence or empowerment.
 
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An Important Historical Note
  • Informational
    • I have been doing further reading from recent historical work (Tharoor mostly) and have come to the conclusion that: (1) The updates are not too bad at present, factually, but (2) The way I have handled things is far too liberal for the way British rule actually operated. To wit, the following:
    • Shipbuilding is a British monopoly or required a Viceregal dispensation in India post 1850
    • Shipping along any route save for short-range coastal required a British business ownership stake post 1813
    • Railroads and steam engines are a British monopoly or require Viceregal dispensation
    • Steel was a British monopoly, and Jamsetji Tata lobbied from 1883 until the day he died for a permit. He would never receive one, but his sons would. Mostly because the empire needed steel by then.
    • Diamonds and gold extraction are British or Princely owned.
    • Distilleries require Government special permits for mass manufacture.
    The above is an incomplete list. The above also does not include internal tolls and taxes, export duties levied on any Indian goods leaving Indian ports by the British, and the like.
    To deal with this, I have placed a poll above. If you want me to continue with things as they are and ignore the above historical fact, I will do so in the interest of making this entertaining. It won't do it justice, but it will be entertaining.
    If you want me to do it historical justice, vote in the poll above for that option. In that case, the next update will also have options to work more closely wtih the great undergrounds of Asia. The tongs, the Indian port gangs, the nationalists, and more. And I will out of some degree of nationalism be also modeling butterflies from your actions causing changes in the nationalist movement.
     
  • Informational
    • mouli said:
    • Steel was a British monopoly, and Jamsetji Tata lobbied from 1883 until the day he died for a permit. He would never receive one, but his sons would. Mostly because the empire needed steel by then.
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    So... that kinda wrecks our plans for early Steel Mill, doesn't it? Hmm, that definitely makes me more willing to go for textiles, since it's a market the British aren't monopolizing.
     
    Hmm. If we go for textiles next turn, we'll be limited to the two budget we can borrow, which I can see two options for.
    1) We focus on competition with the Tatas, using our own sources of cotton and dyes to gain the advantage in that area of the textile market.
    2) We focus on Singapore, expanding our control of the rubber trade and/or trying to get into the Opium one.

    Either way, I think 2 Money (the maximum we can borrow) isn't enough to cover both.
     
    Chimeraguard said:
    Hmm. If we go for textiles next turn, we'll be limited to the two budget we can borrow, which I can see two options for.
    1) We focus on competition with the Tatas, using our own sources of cotton and dyes to gain the advantage in that area of the textile market.
    2) We focus on Singapore, expanding our control of the rubber trade and/or trying to get into the Opium one.

    Either way, I think 2 Money (the maximum we can borrow) isn't enough to cover both.
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    Will we have income from these sources coming in again at the start of next turn? If so, rubber is expected profit 1, textiles are expected profit 1.5, prorated for setup time (and we hit expectation this round, so an average turn.)
     
    mouli said:
    I have been doing further reading from recent historical work (Tharoor mostly) and have come to the conclusion that: (1) The updates are not too bad at present, factually, but (2) The way I have handled things is far too liberal for the way British rule actually operated. To wit, the following:
    • Shipbuilding is a British monopoly or required a Viceregal dispensation in India post 1850
    • Shipping along any route save for short-range coastal required a British business ownership stake post 1813
    • Railroads and steam engines are a British monopoly or require Viceregal dispensation
    • Steel was a British monopoly, and Jamsetji Tata lobbied from 1883 until the day he died for a permit. He would never receive one, but his sons would. Mostly because the empire needed steel by then.
    • Diamonds and gold extraction are British or Princely owned.
    • Distilleries require Government special permits for mass manufacture.
    The above is an incomplete list. The above also does not include internal tolls and taxes, export duties levied on any Indian goods leaving Indian ports by the British, and the like.
    To deal with this, I have placed a poll above. If you want me to continue with things as they are and ignore the above historical fact, I will do so in the interest of making this entertaining. It won't do it justice, but it will be entertaining.
    If you want me to do it historical justice, vote in the poll above for that option. In that case, the next update will also have options to work more closely wtih the great undergrounds of Asia. The tongs, the Indian port gangs, the nationalists, and more. And I will out of some degree of nationalism be also modeling butterflies from your actions causing changes in the nationalist movement.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    Internal tolls? As in every dirt road is suddenly a toll road?

    ...are the British even intending on India being a profitable colony in the first place if almost everything they do is wrecking the population of their colony?

    Did the British of this time have an idea of say, replacing all the Indians with British immigrants by starving the Indians to death? Which is ridiculous because how many British are there at this time compared to Indians at this time?
     
    kilopi505 said:
    Internal tolls? As in every dirt road is suddenly a toll road?

    ...are the British even intending on India being a profitable colony in the first place if almost everything they do is wrecking the population of their colony?

    Did the British of this time have an idea of say, replacing all the Indians with British immigrants by starving the Indians to death? Which is ridiculous because how many British are there at this time compared to Indians at this time?
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    What are you talking about, of course India is and will remain profitable.... for the British upper class.

    That their policies wreck India itself isn't a mistake or some unintended consequence of their actions, it's part of the entire point. A strong India might decide they don't need the British after all and *shudders* declare independence! They're looking at it very much as a zero-sum game.
     
    Yep. The lower classes of India being poor don't really matter against British profit because it is not a settler colony intended to be integrated in to the core. Rather, India to the British is a mixture of a collaborator/protectorate state with the local princes, and a resource-extraction colony. You can get plenty of riches sucking the place dry like a leech when you have that category of colony.
     
    ...oh God.

    And I am about to suggest we start the Indian Pharmaceutical Industry by producing morphine and chloral hydrate.

    We are in position to do that, what with our dye business, no?
     
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