White was born in Bristol, England, at the end of English Civil War and was the son of a merchant trader.
The laws of the charter given to the Company provided that any English ships trading between the East of India and England might be seized and fined £1000.
On White's outward journey east of India, he employed a Greek man named Constantine Phaulkon as his assistant.
In 1676, whilst White was living in Ayutthaya, the capital of Siam,[1] his wife left their mansion in Fort St. George and joined him there.
In 1681, the Siamese Court ordered the forfeiture of White's house and factor that he administered for the East India Company.
In 1681, the Dutch merchant Van Vliet accused White of lending Phaulkon a considerable amount of money that belonged to the company.
It is believed that White had a coloured servant who served Mr. Strangh and Mr. Yale in 1683 on their trip to India.
Money was sent home and they were to purchase landed estates on behalf of their wards in case he did not survive or, if he did, he would live the life of a country gentleman.
In his book The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India, Philip J Stern relates Macaulay's observations that "Sir Josiah Child was likened to every villain imaginable – Oliver Cromwell, Louis XIV, Goliath and Satan", and who was tarred as the "Despot on Leadenhall Street".
The war with Siam does not seem to be the main factor in the company's charter being withdrawn, but the imposition of martial law and infliction of capital punishment that was enacted in response to the unrest that had broken out in St Helena.
[2] In 1691, White wrote and published a pamphlet titled "An account of the trade to the East Indies"; this was very well received, translated into Dutch, and was still being reprinted one hundred years later.
Kirti N. Chaudhuri a historian that had access to the East India Company accounts came to the conclusion that the East India Company had exported in the period set out by George White (1675-1683) the amount of £3,544,750 this leaving some £955,280 being exported privately.
Under this arrangement, the merged company lent to the Treasury a sum of £3,200,000, in return for exclusive privileges for the next three years, after which the situation was to be reviewed.