A brief aside shifts from Vickers and Standard Oil to the East India Company as an earlier model of commercial monopoly. Its security forces amounted to a private army, and the Company also operated naval forces. The speakers even invoke a balloon section as a playful 'air force' comparison. Beneath the joke is a useful distinction: the Company combined trade, territorial control, and armed power on a scale that later industrial monopolies did not.
Notable Point · 1:04:42-1:06:00
The East India Company as an armed commercial power
A joking comparison of monopolies points to the East India Company's territorial reach and its own army and navy.