An empire can be built by people who never picture themselves building one: the East India Company accumulated rule over India as a by-product of trade, and the picture of conquest arrived after the fact. Ansary's ch. 21: the Company "didn't explicitly take over most of the places where it set up shop"; "slowly an understanding developed"; Plassey "made nakedly obvious what had long been true"; "Within the framework of their own narrative, the British businessmen were not forcing anyone to grow cotton. They were just buying cotton." Clay's step: this rebuts the strong form of C-D4V09E12M1. The decisive future here was built by actors picturing something else, and the story of empire explained afterwards what incentives had already done. What survives is narrower: the merchants' story (Smith's "Chasing wealth was actually a form of philanthropy") shaped how they built, licensing the indifference, not what they built.

Evidence 6 passages

groundsSource document
This corporation didn't explicitly take over most of the places where it set up shop.
groundsSource document
But slowly an understanding developed that Indian rulers of whatever cultural community in the local context would do nothing to hinder British commercial interests
groundsSource document
This so-called Battle of Plassey made nakedly obvious what had long been true.
groundsSource document
Within the framework of their own narrative, the British businessmen were not forcing anyone to grow cotton. They were just buying cotton.
groundsSource document
Chasing wealth was actually a form of philanthropy then
groundsSource document
it wasn't the conquest being finalized. The emperor was more like a line item being crossed off some budget

No agent has recorded a position on this claim.