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Why, one might ask, should the name The British India Company limited be Re-registered as a British Company and why by an Ex Merchant Navy Captain who was born in a little village on the Island of Lewis in the Western Islands of Scotland and an Indian Businessman who was born in a little village in Punjab North India?

There are many answers to this. Some are altruistic while others are as follows. A name with such a history is like a beautiful old house or an old painting or a precious piece of furniture. It is the history that is valuable. All 347 years of History. This history, like old masterpieces, should be preserved and not forgotten. A large part of that history is connected directly and in-directly to the Punjab and to the Islands and Highlands of Scotland.

It is now almost 60 years since India, quite rightly, became independent. India is now a forward thinking, politically, commercially and culturally strong democratic nation with over one billion inhabitants.

The British East India Company Limited which Captain William G.MacDonald managed to Re-Register on 14th September 2004, after a great deal of serious negotiations, is to be an international trading company and it will never be involved in politics. The company which started as The Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies by a coterie of enterprising and influential businessmen on 31st December 1600 (Later becoming The British East India Company Limited) was also a trading company until in 1858 The British Government had the company nationalised and this, like most nationalised companies, was its eventual downfall.

What is the attraction for those two aforementioned businessmen to rekindle this famous name? Well the Isle of Lewis in itself has a colourful history with exploiters, explorers and entrepreneurs laying claim to its beautiful shores and Punjab in North India has a history in itself going back many thousands of years and many hundreds of years involving the British India Company. It was the Punjabi’s who were brought to East Africa to cultivate the land by the British East India Company. Punjabi’s are among the best farmers in the world as such, they were taken to East Africa and to the West Indies to cultivate the land and grow sugar (the sugar cane is a plant of India) Rum was made in India from the sugarcane before the West Indies were discovered by Europeans. It was the Punjabi Indians who first made rum in the West Indies.

One of The British East India Company’s most famous and colourful employees became the owner of the Isle of Lewis namely Sir James Matheson who in 1816 was dismissed by his uncle in Calcutta, India for not delivering the sailing papers to a ship that was about to sail for China. His uncle, who was also working for The British East India Company at the time, threatened to send him back to Scotland to become a crofter (small time farmer) in the Western Isles  if he did not show more initiative. Instead, he stowed away to China joining up with another Scot Dr William Jardine who was also an employee of The British East India Company to form what is today, the largest trading company in the far east. Namely Jardine Matheson Limited. James Matheson did return to the Western Isles not to become a crofter but to buy the whole island and to build a castle which in the mid 19th Century was reputed to be more beautiful than Balmoral, the Queens Scottish Home.

The company, Jardine Matheson, is now one of the oldest British Trading Company and it is still controlled by the offspring’s of its founding fathers.