The British in India, the Dutch and the French in China and India

The entire gold and foreign exchange went into the british treasury. The dutch were not importing enormous quantities of goods from java, all that sugar cane and all that timber - they were actually paying for it not at all. What could france export to them? They already produced everything themselves. That is the only difference compared to the situation under the east india company. But it was such a clever mechanism that it fooled everybody. You do not have this situation anywhere, anywhere, except in a colonial system.