ABOUT US (No.11) :- The East India Company and the British Empire between the 17th and 19th-century :- (NB:- the flag is that of the East India Company as of 1801) English traders frequently engaged in hostilities with their Dutch and Portuguese counterparts in the Indian Ocean. The company achieved a major victory over the Portuguese in the Battle of Swally in 1612. The company decided to explore the feasibility of gaining a territorial foothold in mainland India, with official sanction of both countries, and requested that the Crown launch a diplomatic mission. The East India Company originally chartered as the Governor and Company of Merchants of London trading into the East Indies, and more properly called the Honourable East India Company, was an English, and from 1707, the British joint-stock company, formed to pursue trade with the East Indies, but ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent, Qing Dynasty of China, North-West Frontier Province and Balochistan. This company rose to account for half of the worlds trade, particularly trade in basic commodities that included cotton, silk, indigo dye, salt, saltpetre, tea and opium. The company also ruled the beginnings of the British Empire in India. In 1634, the Mughal emperor extended his hospitality to the English traders to the region of Bengal, and in 1717 completely waived customs duties for the trade. The company received a Royal Charter from Queen Elizabeth I, in 1600, which makes it the oldest among several later and similarly formed European East India Companies. The government owned no shares and had only indirect control. The company eventually came to rule large areas of India with its own private armies, exercising military power and assuming administrative functions. Company rule in India effectively began in 1757 after the Battle of Plassey and lasted until 1858 when, following the Indian Rebellion of 1857, and the Government of India Act of 1858 led to the British Crown assuming direct control of India under the British Raj. The company was dissolved in 1874 as a result of the East India Stock Dividend Redemption Act, which was passed as the Government of India Act, had rendered it vestigial, powerless, and obsolete. The official government machinery of the British Raj assumed its governmental functions and absorbed all its armies. The East India Company is, or rather was, an anomaly without a parallel in the history of the world. It originated from subscriptions, trifling in amount, of a few private individuals. It gradually became a commercial body with gigantic resources, and by the force of unforeseen circumstances assumed the form of a sovereign power, and One of the strangest parts of the history of the British Empire involves that commercial venture generally known as the East India Company. During its heyday, the East India Company not only established trade through Asia and the Middle East but also effectively became the ruler of territories vastly larger than the United Kingdom.
Posted on: Thu, 15 May 2014 13:33:20 +0000
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