Honourable East India Company
The East India Company (EIC), originally chartered as the Governor and Company of Merchants of London trading into the East Indies, and often called the Honourable East India Company, was an English and later (from 1707) British joint-stock company and megacorporation formed for pursuing trade with the East Indies but which ended up trading mainly with only the Indian subcontinent, North-west frontier province and Balochistan.
The East India Company traded mainly in cotton, silk, indigo dye, salt, saltpetre, tea and opium. The Company was granted a Royal Charter by Queen Elizabeth in 1600, making it the oldest among several similarly formed European East India Companies. Shares of the company were owned by wealthy merchants and aristocrats. It was an example of an English joint stock company. 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, the Government of India Act 1858 led to the British Crown assuming direct control of India in the era of the new British Raj.
The Company was dissolved in 1874 as a result of the East India Stock Dividend Redemption Act passed one year earlier, as the Government of India Act had by then rendered it vestigial, powerless and obsolete. Its functions had been fully absorbed into the official government machinery of British India and its private Presidency armies had been nationalised by the British Crown.
Read more about Honourable East India Company: Founding, Foothold in India, Expansion, Regulation of The Company's Affairs, Indian Rebellion of 1857, Establishments in Britain, Legacy, Flags, Ships, Records
Famous quotes containing the words honourable, east, india and/or company:
“The Right Honourable gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests, and to his imagination for his facts.”
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan (17511816)
“Richard. Give me a calendar.
Who saw the sun today?
Ratcliffe. Not I, my lord.
Richard. Then he disdains to shine, for by the book
He should have braved the east an hour ago.
A black day will it be to somebody.”
—William Shakespeare (15641616)
“India is an abstraction.... India is no more a political personality than Europe. India is a geographical term. It is no more a united nation than the Equator.”
—Winston Churchill (18741965)
“These studies which stimulate the young, divert the old, are an ornament in prosperity and a refuge and comfort in adversity; they delight us at home, are no impediment in public life, keep us company at night, in our travels, and whenever we retire to the country.”
—Marcus Tullius Cicero (10643 B.C.)