East India Company

The East India Company was formed by 218 knights and Queen Elizabeth I who granted its Royal Charter on December 31st [1600]. However, it made little impression on the [Dutch] control of the [spice trade] and could not establish a lasting outpost in the [East Indies] in the early years. Yet it succeeded beyond measure in establishing military dominance and a political empire for [Britain] in the East.

By the early nineteenth century, the East India Company extended across most of [India], [Burma], [Singapore] and [Hong Kong], and a fifth of the world's population was under its authority. The Company had at various stages defeated [China], occupied the [Phillipines], conquered [Java] and imprisoned [Napoleon] on its island of [St. Helena]. It had solved its cash crisis needed to buy tea, by illicitly exporting Indian-grown [opium] to China.

It was the largest single commercial enterprise the world had ever seen, with revenues derived not only from trade but also through tax-collecting. Yet as it became the administrative arm of the [British Empire], the Company attracted men of selfless zeal [Bentinck], [Lawrence] and Edwardes who saw their work in India as an opportunity to bring an enlightened regime to bear on a country that had suffered under previous conquerors.

When the East India Company finally reverted to the [Crown] in [1874], the [Times] reported, "It is just as well to record that it accomplished a work such as in the whole history of the human race no other company ever attempted and as such is ever likely to attempt in the years to come."