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."