This study examines the influence of commercial interests on the expansion of the British Empire in Western India in the age of Cornwallis and Wellesley. It questions some of the assumptions which have been accepted as explanations of British imperialism in that part of India. The chief of these is that the reform of the East India Company's administration in the 1780s brought the policy of the Bombay presidency under the firm control of the governor-general in Bengal and of the Court of Directors and the Board of Control in London.