Biography:

Also known as the English or British East India Company or sometimes the “John Company,” the East India Company was founded on December 31, 1600 with a royal-charter from Elizabeth I.  The Honourable Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies had a virtual monopoly over English trade in the East. The organization was formally renamed in 1708 as the United Company of Merchants of England Trading to the East Indies (1708-1873).  In 1858 the crown disbanded the East India Company and the United Company of Merchants continued its trade without a royal charter until 1873.  The company was formed for the exploitation of trade routes with East and Southeast Asia and India.
 
The East India Company’s contemporary competitors were the Dutch East India Company who dominated the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) and the Portuguese who held influence in Japan and India. The Amboyna Massacre in 1623 marked the height of antagonism between the English and Dutch companies. Agents of the Dutch East India Company tortured and executed twenty men, ten of which were members of the English East India Company on the present-day island of Maluku, Indonesia. The aftermath of this incident barred the English from Indonesia and Japan. The company’s defeat of the Portuguese in India (1612) won them trading concessions from the Mughal Empire. They established trade in cotton, silk piece goods, indigo, and spices from South India. The company continued to expand into the Persian Gulf, Southeast Asia, and East Asia.
 
After the mid-18th century the cotton-goods trade declined, while tea became an important import from China. Beginning in the early 19th-century, the company financed the tea trade with illegal opium exports to China. Chinese opposition to this trade resulted in the Opium War (1839-42). The Chinese were ultimately defeated and the British won additional trading privileges.
 
The original company faced opposition to its monopoly, which led to the establishment of a rival company and the fusion (1708) of the two as the United Company of Merchants of England trading to the East Indies. The United Company was organized into a court of 24 directors who worked through committees. They were elected annually by the Court of Proprietors, or shareholders. When the company acquired control of Bengal in 1757, Indian policy was influenced by shareholders’ meetings, where votes could be bought by the purchase of shares. This led to government intervention. The Regulating Act (1773) and Pitt’s India Act (1784) established government control of political policy through a regulatory board responsible to Parliament. Thereafter, the company gradually lost both commercial and political control. Its commercial monopoly was broken in 1813, and from 1834 it was merely a managing agency for the British government of India. It ceased to exist as a legal entity in 1873.