British East India Company Founded
Elizabeth I granted a royal charter to the Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies on 31 December 1600, giving 218 subscribers a fifteen-year monopoly on English trade east of the Cape. Its origin was Dutch. A Dutch expedition had returned from the Indies in 1599 with a cargo that quadrupled the price of pepper in London, and English merchants concluded they had to compete or be excluded. It began far smaller than its Dutch rival, capitalised at about £68,000 against the VOC's 6.4 million guilders, and it was for its first decades a series of separately financed voyages rather than a permanent company. It was also beaten out of the spice islands. The massacre of English factors at Amboyna in 1623 effectively ended its ambitions in the Moluccas, and it turned instead to India — Surat from 1612, Madras from 1639, Bombay acquired from the crown in 1668, and Calcutta founded in 1690. The redirection turned out to be fortunate. Indian cotton textiles became a larger and more durable trade than spices ever were, and calico and chintz reshaped European dress. The company's character changed after Plassey in 1757 and the grant of the diwani of Bengal in 1765, which made it the tax collector of thirty million people. Parliament regulated it progressively from 1773, ended its Indian monopoly in 1813 and its China monopoly in 1833. It was wound up after the rebellion of 1857, and the crown took India directly. A trading venture had acquired and governed a subcontinent, which is the fact the whole history turns on.
- Year: 1600 CE
- Category: Economic
