In 1612, James I commissioned Sir Thomas Roe to visit the Mughal emperor Nur-ud-din Salim Jahangir (r. 1605-1627) to conclude a commercial treaty that would give the company the exclusive right to live and build factories in Surat and other areas. In return, the company offered to provide the emperor with goods and rarities from the European market. After a year of resistance, the EIC capitulated in 1690, and the company sent emissaries to the Aurangzeb camp to ask for forgiveness. The envoys of the society had to bow down to the emperor, pay high compensation and promise better behavior in the future. This uncertain push by society into property taxation may have seriously exacerbated the effects of a famine that struck Bengal in 1769-70, in which between seven and ten million people – or between a quarter and a third of the presidency`s population – may have died. [42] However, the company provided little relief, either through tax cuts or relief measures,[43] and the economic and cultural effects of the famine were felt decades later and even became the subject of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee`s novel Anandamath a century later. [42] The second objective was motivated by the fear of some business representatives of being perceived as foreign managers. They argued that the company should try to win its subjects by surpassing previous leaders in the region by supporting Indigenous learning. Guided by this belief, Benares Sanskrit College was founded in Varanasi in 1791 under the administration of Lord Cornwallis.
The promotion of knowledge about Asia had also attracted scientists to serve the company. Previously, in 1784, the Asiatick Society had been founded in Calcutta by William Jones, a puisne judge of the new Supreme Court of Bengal.