[dragonwriter]

> the liberal East India Company

What liberal East India Company? There were a number of EICs, but all of them I can think of (certainly most especially the British) were mercantilist and parts of mercantilist national policies, not liberal.

The mercantilism of British policy and the British EIC were, actually, a quite important factor in both the US push for independence and its ideological connection with liberalism.

While liberalism might eventually have become a nearly consensus ideology in the West, but it certainly wasn’t in the late 18th Century and it certainly wasn’t the ideology of or behind colonialism.

[trasz3]

It wasn’t the ideology behind, sure, but the end result was the same.

[dragonwriter]

> It wasn’t the ideology behind, sure, but the end result was the same.

That’s unsupportable with evidence because we don’t have a world to test the effects of liberalism in an environment where it isn’t a reaction against established mercanitilism in a number of empires, one of which alone controls a sizable fraction of the globe, but I’m going to say, no, its not.

(I will admit that one problem with economic liberalism is that it tends to entrench existing inequalities, including those produced by pre-existing mercantilist arrangements, but that’s very different than producing the same results.)