India

The commerce of British India was managed entirely by the East India Company, which started coastal trading posts in the seventeenth century but by the middle of the eighteenth century had taken on many of the aspects of a state. It had a monopoly over trade within the Empire with India, China, and the East Indies, which picked up considerably (increasing sevenfold) between 1727 and the outbreak of the Seven Years War, mostly as the result of an explosion in American consumption of tea, textiles (effectively banned from sale in England by the various "Calico Acts" passed by Parliament), and other commodities.