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DM Dr. Martin Erdmann Dr. Martin Erdmann The author of books on theology and history

“The British East India Company had its own military of 250,000 soldiers. No other country in the world at the time, apart from Russia, had more soldiers than that one company.”

Geopolitics & Empire · Geopolitics & World Affairs · October 2026

“The British East India Company had its own military of 250,000 soldiers. No other country in the world at the time, apart from Russia, had more soldiers than that one company.” — Dr. Martin Erdmann, Geopolitics & Empire

Context

Asked about the abuses of the Dutch and British trading empires, Erdmann describes how the East India Company took over Bengal and pushed opium into China. He uses the size of its army to show how far a private firm could act as a state.

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Transcript

Geopolitics & Empire
Dr. Martin Erdmann

…me just mention that too. I do recommend it, but you also have to understand the traps being set for you. If you understand the system and want to get out of it, there are traps set deliberately by those who manage the mercantilist system for you to fall into if you try to get out of that system.

Speaker 1

…the things that the empires did, the British Empire, you talk about the Dutch. I think you said the Dutch was also one of the worst. The things that they did to the local populations around the world, just enslaving them, extracting and taking everything from them. It's, yeah, it's unbelievable.

Dr. Martin Erdmann

Yes. Well, they used opium on a very large scale, especially the Dutch East India Company initially in India, but when it was taken over by the British East India Company and they expropriated the local population, that company, it was a company, had its own military of 250,000 soldiers. And to put that into perspective, no other country in the world at the time, and we are talking about the 16th and 17th hundreds, no other country apart from Russia had more soldiers than that one company, British East India Company. And they conquered Bengal. Bengal was the most prosperous province of India, what we know India now to be. And they took away the land from the native population and forced the native population into growing opium, meaning poppy seeds. They wanted to harvest poppy seeds in order to produce opium. Opium is a very addictive substance. And eventually they shipped that opium to China and more or less addicted the whole country of China and…

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

More from Geopolitics & Empire

“The sovereign right to issue money had previously been in the hands of a monarch who was at least nominally accountable to his subjects. And that changed with the institution of the Bank of England. All of a sudden, the sovereign right to issue money was permanently transferred to private hands that were accountable to no one. That is mercantilism in its essence.” — Dr. Martin Erdmann, Geopolitics & Empire “If you open books on the history of economics, you will always read that mercantilism existed between the 16th and 18th century, and then it was outmoded and something else took its place. But the true reality of the matter is it has never ended. It has assumed different modes and different manifestations and different terms, but it has never stopped.” — Dr. Martin Erdmann, Geopolitics & Empire