East India Company

he Honourable East India Company (HEIC), often colloquially referred to as "John Company", and simply as the East India Company[1] or the "Company Bahadur" in India, was an early joint-stock company (the Dutch East India Company was the first to issue public stock). It was granted an English Royal Charter by Elizabeth I on December 31, 1600, with the intention of favouring trade privileges in India. The Royal Charter effectively gave the newly created HEIC a 21 year monopoly on all trade in the East Indies. The Company transformed from a commercial trading venture to one that virtually ruled India as it acquired auxiliary governmental and military functions, until its dissolution in 1858 following the events of the Indian Rebellion of 1857.

Based in London, the company presided over the later creation of the British Raj. In 1617, the Company was given trade rights by Jahangir the Mughal Emperor. One hundred years later, it was granted a royal dictate from Emperor Farrukhsiyar exempting the Company from the payment of custom duties in Bengal, giving it a decided commercial advantage in the Indian trade. A decisive victory by Sir Robert Clive at the Battle of Plassey in 1757 established the Company as a military as well as a commercial power. By 1760, the French were driven out of India, with the exception of a few trading posts on the coast, such as Pondicherry. In South-East Asia, the company would establish the first trading posts and exert its military dominance leading to the eventual establishment of British Malaya, Hong Kong and Singapore as British Crown Colonies.

The Company also had interests along the routes to India from Great Britain. As early as 1620, the company attempted to lay claim to the Table Mountain region in South Africa; later it occupied and ruled St Helena. Piracy was a severe problem for the Company. This problem reached its peak in 1695, when pirate Henry Avery captured the Great Mughal's treasure fleet. The Company was held responsible for that raid, because according to Indian popular opinion of the time, all pirates were by definition English. Later, the Company unsuccessfully employed Captain Kidd to combat piracy in the Indian Ocean; it also cultivated the production of tea in India. Other notable events in the Company's history were that it held Napoleon captive on St Helena, and made the fortune of Elihu Yale. Its products were the basis of the Boston Tea Party in Colonial America.

Its shipyards provided the model for St Petersburg, while elements of its administration, the Honourable East India Company Civil Service (HEICS), survive in the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), the successor to the Indian Civil Service (ICS). Its corporate structure was the most successful early example of a joint stock company. However, the demands of Company officers on the treasury of Bengal contributed tragically to the province's incapacity in the face of a famine, which killed millions of people in 1770-1773.

British and other European settlements in India

Its impact was not all positive. It was also an aggressive party and destroyed monasteries in Tibet and helped cause the Opium wars as a promoter of opium smuggling. As such it served to diminish the popularity of England and Europeans in Tibet and China.

The Company was founded as The Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies[2] by a coterie of enterprising and influential businessmen, who obtained the Crown's charter for exclusive permission to trade in the East Indies for a period of fifteen years. The Company had 125 shareholders, and a capital of £72,000. Initially, however, it made little impression on the Dutch control of the spice trade and at first it could not establish a lasting outpost in the East Indies. Eventually, ships belonging to the company arrived in India, docking at Surat, which was established as a trade transit point in 1608. In the next two years, it managed to build its first factory (as the trading posts were known) in the town of Machilipatnam on the Coromandel Coast of the Bay of Bengal. The high profits reported by the Company after landing in India (presumably owing to a reduction in overhead costs effected by the transit points), initially prompted King James I to grant subsidiary licenses to other trading companies in England. But, in 1609, he renewed the charter given to the Company for an indefinite period, including a clause which specified that the charter would cease to be in force if the trade turned unprofitable for three consecutive years.

The Company was led by one Governor and 24 directors who made up the Court of Directors. They were appointed by, and reported to, the Court of Proprietors. The Court of Directors had ten committees reporting to it.
On the 1st March, 1801, the debts of the East India Company to £5,393,989 their effects to £15,404,736 and their sales increased since February 1793, from £4,988,300 to £7,602,041.