East India Company

The East India Company (EIC), also known as the Honourable East India Company (HEIC), East India Trading Company (EITC), the English East India Company or the British East India Company, and informally known as John Company,[2] Company Bahadur,[3] or simply The Company, was an English and later British joint-stock company.[4] It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (India and South East Asia), and later with Qing China. The company ended up seizing control of large parts of the Indian subcontinent, colonised parts of Southeast Asia and Hong Kong after the First Opium War, and maintained trading posts and colonies in the Middle Eastern Gulf called Persian Gulf Residencies.[5]

East India Company
IndustryInternational trade, drug trafficking (mainly opium)[1]
FateThe Government of India Act 1858 of the British Parliament had the Company to cede all its territories in India to the British Crown.
Founded31 December 1600 (1600-12-31)
FoundersJohn Watts, George White
Defunct1 June 1874 (1874-06-01)
Colonial India
British Indian Empire
Imperial entities of India
Dutch India1605–1825
Danish India1620–1869
French India1668–1954

Portuguese India
Casa da Índia1434–1833
Portuguese East India Company1628–1633

British India
East India Company1612–1757
Company rule in India1757–1858
British Raj1858–1947
British rule in Burma1824–1948
Princely states1721–1949
Partition of India

Originally chartered as the "Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East-Indies",[6][7] the company rose to account for half of the world's trade,[8] particularly in basic commodities including cotton, silk, indigo dye, salt, spices, saltpetre, tea, and opium. The company also ruled the beginnings of the British Empire in India.[8][9] In his speech to the House of Commons in July 1833, Lord Macaulay explained that since the beginning, the East India Company had always been involved in both trade and politics, just as its French and Dutch counterparts had been.[10]

The company received a Royal Charter from Queen Elizabeth I on 31 December 1600, coming relatively late to trade in the Indies. Before them the Portuguese Estado da Índia had traded there for much of the 16th century and the first of half a dozen Dutch Companies sailed to trade there from 1595. These Dutch companies amalgamated in March 1602 into the Dutch East India Company (VOC), which introduced the first permanent joint stock from 1612 (meaning investment into shares did not need to be returned, but could be traded on a stock exchange). By contrast, wealthy merchants and aristocrats owned the EIC's shares.[11] Initially the government owned no shares and had only indirect control until 1657 when permanent joint stock was established.[12]

During its first century of operation, the focus of the company was trade, not the building of an empire in India. Following the First Anglo-Mughal War,[13] the company interests turned from trade to territory during the 18th century as the Mughal Empire declined in power and the East India Company struggled with its French counterpart, the French East India Company (Compagnie française des Indes orientales) during the Carnatic Wars of the 1740s and 1750s in southern India. The battles of Plassey and Buxar, in which the company defeated the Nawabs of Bengal, left the company in control of the proto-industrialised Mughal Bengal with the right to collect revenue, in Bengal and Bihar,[14][15] and a major military and political power in India. In the following decades it gradually increased the extent of the territories under its control, controlling the majority of the Indian subcontinent either directly or indirectly via local puppet rulers under the threat of force by its Presidency armies, much of which were composed of native Indian sepoys. The company invaded the Dutch island of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in 1795.[16]

By 1803, at the height of its rule in India, the East India company had a private army of about 260,000—twice the size of the British Army, with Indian revenues of £13,464,561 (equivalent to £229.9 million in 2019) and expenses of £14,017,473 (equivalent to £239.3 million in 2019).[17][18] The company eventually came to rule large areas of India with its private armies, exercising military power and seizing administrative functions.[19] Company rule in India effectively began in 1757 and lasted until 1858, when, following the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the Government of India Act 1858 led to the British Crown's assuming direct control of the Indian subcontinent in the form of the new British Raj.

The company's army played a notorious role in the unsuccessful Indian Uprising (also called the Indian Mutiny) of 1857–58, in which Indian soldiers in the company's employ led an armed revolt against their British officers that quickly gained popular support as a war for Indian independence.[20] During more than a year of fighting, both sides committed atrocities, including massacres of civilians, though the company's reprisals ultimately far outweighed the violence of the rebels. The rebellion brought about the effective abolition of the East India Company in 1858.[20]




James Lancaster commanded the first East India Company voyage in 1601

In 1577 Francis Drake set out on an expedition from England to plunder Spanish settlements in South America in search of gold and silver. In the Golden Hind he achieved this but also by sheer luck sailed across the Pacific Ocean in 1579, known then only to the Spanish and Portuguese. Drake eventually sailed into the East Indies and came across the Moluccas, also known as the Spice Islands and met with Sultan Babullah. In return for linen, gold and silver, a large haul of exotic spices including cloves and Nutmeg were traded – the English initially not knowing of their huge value.[21] Drake returned to England in 1580 and became a celebrated hero; his eventual circumnavigation raised an enormous amount of money for England's coffers, and investors received a return of some 5000 per cent. Thus started what was an important element in the eastern design during the late sixteenth century.[22]

Soon after the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, the captured Spanish and Portuguese ships with their cargoes enabled English voyagers to potentially travel the globe in search of riches.[23] London merchants presented a petition to Queen Elizabeth I for permission to sail to the Indian Ocean.[24] The aim was to deliver a decisive blow to the Spanish and Portuguese monopoly of Far Eastern Trade.[25] Elizabeth granted her permission and on 10 April 1591 James Lancaster in the Bonaventure with two other ships sailed from Torbay around the Cape of Good Hope to the Arabian Sea on one of the earliest English overseas Indian expeditions. Having sailed around Cape Comorin to the Malay Peninsula, they preyed on Spanish and Portuguese ships there before returning to England in 1594.[24]

The biggest capture that galvanised English trade was the seizure of a large Portuguese carrack, the Madre de Deus by Sir Walter Raleigh and the Earl of Cumberland at the Battle of Flores on 13 August 1592.[26] When she was brought in to Dartmouth she was the largest vessel that had been seen in England and her cargo consisted of chests filled with jewels, pearls, gold, silver coins, ambergris, cloth, tapestries, pepper, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, benjamin (a tree that produces frankincense), red dye, cochineal and ebony.[27] Equally valuable was the ship's rutter (mariner's handbook) containing vital information on the China, India, and Japan trades. These riches aroused the English to engage in this opulent commerce.[26]

In 1596, three more English ships sailed east but all were lost at sea.[24] A year later however saw the arrival of Ralph Fitch, an adventurer merchant who, along with his companions, had made a remarkable fifteen-year overland journey to Mesopotamia, the Persian Gulf, the Indian Ocean, India and Southeast Asia.[28] Fitch was then consulted on the Indian affairs and gave even more valuable information to Lancaster.[29]


On 22 September 1599, a group of merchants met and stated their intention "to venture in the pretended voyage to the East Indies (the which it may please the Lord to prosper), and the sums that they will adventure", committing £30,133 (over £4,000,000 in today's money).[30][31] Two days later, "the Adventurers" reconvened and resolved to apply to the Queen for support of the project.[31] Although their first attempt had not been completely successful, they nonetheless sought the Queen's unofficial approval to continue. They bought ships for their venture and increased their capital to £68,373.

The Adventurers convened again a year later, on 31 December, and this time they succeeded; the Queen granted a Royal Charter[24] to "George, Earl of Cumberland, and 215 Knights, Aldermen, and Burgesses"[citation needed] under the name, Governor and Company of Merchants of London trading into the East Indies.[24] For a period of fifteen years, the charter awarded the newly formed company a monopoly[32] on English trade with all countries east of the Cape of Good Hope and west of the Straits of Magellan.[citation needed] Any traders in breach of the charter without a licence from the company were liable to forfeiture of their ships and cargo (half of which went to the Crown and the other half to the company), as well as imprisonment at the "royal pleasure".[33]


Early voyages to the East IndiesEdit

Sir James Lancaster commanded the first East India Company voyage in 1601 aboard the Red Dragon.[35] After capturing a rich 1,200 ton Portuguese carrack in the Malacca Straits the trade from the booty enabled the voyagers to set up two "factories" – one at Bantam on Java and another in the Moluccas (Spice Islands) before leaving.[36] They returned to England in 1603 to learn of Elizabeth's death but Lancaster was Knighted by the new King James I.[37] By this time, the war with Spain had ended but the company had successfully and profitably breached the Spanish and Portuguese duopoly, with new horizons opened for the English.[25]


Early in 1608 Alexander Sharpeigh was appointed captain of the company's Ascension, and general or commander of the fourth voyage. Thereafter two ships, Ascension and Union (captained by Richard Rowles) sailed from Woolwich on 14 March 1608.[38] This expedition would be lost.[39]

East India Company Initial expeditions[39]
1603 3 60,450 11,160 1,142 48,140
1606 3 58,500 17,600 7,280 28,620
1607 2 38,000 15,000 3,400 14,600 Vessels lost
1608 1 13,700 6,000 1,700 6,000
1609 3 82,000 28,500 21,300 32,000
1610 4 71,581 19,200 10,081 42,500
1611 4 76,355 17,675 10,000 48,700
1612 1 7,200 1,250 650 5,300
1613 8 272,544 18,810 12,446
1614 8 13,942 23,000
1615 6 26,660 26,065
1616 7 52,087 16,506

Initially, the company struggled in the spice trade because of the competition from the already well-established Dutch East India Company. The English company opened a factory in Bantam on Java on its first voyage, and imports of pepper from Java remained an important part of the company's trade for twenty years. The Bantam factory closed in 1683.

Company ships docked at Surat in Gujarat in 1608. The company established its first Indian factory in 1611 at Masulipatam on the Andhra Coast of the Bay of Bengal; and a second at Surat in 1612. The high profits reported by the company after landing in India initially prompted James I to grant subsidiary licences to other trading companies in England. However, in 1609 he renewed the East India Company's charter for an indefinite period, with the proviso that its privileges would be annulled if trade was unprofitable for three consecutive years.

Foothold in IndiaEdit





— Nuruddin Salim Jahangir, Letter to James I.


The company, which benefited from the imperial patronage, soon expanded its commercial trading operations. It eclipsed the Portuguese Estado da Índia, which had established bases in Goa, Chittagong, and Bombay – Portugal later ceded Bombay to England as part of the dowry of Catherine of Braganza on her marriage to King Charles II. The East India Company also launched a joint attack with the Dutch United East India Company (VOC) on Portuguese and Spanish ships off the coast of China, which helped secure EIC ports in China.[41] The company established trading posts in Surat (1619), Madras (1639), Bombay (1668), and Calcutta (1690). By 1647, the company had 23 factories, each under the command of a factor or master merchant and governor, and 90 employees[clarification needed] in India. The major factories became the walled forts of Fort William in Bengal, Fort St George in Madras, and Bombay Castle.

In 1634, the Mughal emperor Jahangir extended his hospitality to the English traders to the region of Bengal,[42] and in 1717 completely waived customs duties for their trade. The company's mainstay businesses were by then cotton, silk, indigo dye, saltpetre, and tea. The Dutch were aggressive competitors and had meanwhile expanded their monopoly of the spice trade in the Straits of Malacca by ousting the Portuguese in 1640–1641. With reduced Portuguese and Spanish influence in the region, the EIC and VOC entered a period of intense competition, resulting in the Anglo-Dutch Wars of the 17th and 18th centuries.



The tension was so high between the Dutch and the British East Indies Trading Companies that it escalated into at least four Anglo-Dutch Wars between them:[44] 1652–1654, 1665–1667, 1672–1674 and 1780–1784.





Indian exports of textiles to Europe (pieces per year)[49]
Years EIC VOC France EdI Denmark Total
Bengal Madras Bombay Surat EIC (total) VOC (total)
1665–1669 7,041 37,078 95,558 139,677 126,572 266,249
1670–1674 46,510 169,052 294,959 510,521 257,918 768,439
1675–1679 66,764 193,303 309,480 569,547 127,459 697,006
1680–1684 107,669 408,032 452,083 967,784 283,456 1,251,240
1685–1689 169,595 244,065 200,766 614,426 316,167 930,593
1690–1694 59,390 23,011 89,486 171,887 156,891 328,778
1695–1699 130,910 107,909 148,704 387,523 364,613 752,136
1700–1704 197,012 104,939 296,027 597,978 310,611 908,589
1705–1709 70,594 99,038 34,382 204,014 294,886 498,900
1710–1714 260,318 150,042 164,742 575,102 372,601 947,703
1715–1719 251,585 20,049 582,108 534,188 435,923 970,111
1720–1724 341,925 269,653 184,715 796,293 475,752 1,272,045
1725–1729 558,850 142,500 119,962 821,312 399,477 1,220,789
1730–1734 583,707 86,606 57,503 727,816 241,070 968,886
1735–1739 580,458 137,233 66,981 784,672 315,543 1,100,215
1740–1744 619,309 98,252 295,139 812,700 288,050 1,100,750
1745–1749 479,593 144,553 60,042 684,188 262,261 946,449
1750–1754 406,706 169,892 55,576 632,174 532,865 1,165,039
1755–1759 307,776 106,646 55,770 470,192 321,251 791,443
1760–1770 0
1771–1774 652,158 182,588 93,683 928,429 928,429
1775–1779 584,889 197,306 48,412 830,607 830,607
1780–1784 435,340 79,999 40,488 555,827 555,827
1785–1789 697,483 67,181 38,800 803,464 803,464
1790–1799 787,000 2,200,000 4,500,000
– 1790–1792 727,717 170,442 38,707 936,866 936,866
1800–1809 1,331,000 1,824,000
1810–1819 1,358,000
1820–1829 431,000
1830–1839 6 271,000 478,000 3,000,000
1840–1849 304,000 2,606,000
1850–1859 2,279,000



Slavery 1621–1843Edit

The East India Company's own archives suggest that its involvement in the slave trade began in 1684, when a Captain Robert Knox was tasked with purchasing 250 slaves from Madagascar to be transported to St. Helena.[50] However, according to the Encyclopædia Britannica, it was the early 1620s when the East India Company began transporting slave labor to and using it in its facilities across Asia and the Atlantic.[51] Allen (2015) suggests that it was 1621.[52]

According to Bonnie Pinkston's paper, the East India company continued to use slaves across their territories until abolition. This would be 1843 when the British India – Indian Slavery Act of 1843 came into force,[53][54] and this is confirmed by the explicit exclusion of the East Indian Company's territories from the United Kingdoms Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, abolishing slavery in most of the British Empire. The East India Company did pass an Act in 1811 ending the transportation of new slaves into its territories.

Professor Richard B. Allen's book European Slave Trading in the Indian Ocean 1500–1850 includes sources on the British East Indian Company's involvement and other European nations' activities.[52] In 1758, 500 people were transported to Bombay to meet a shortfall in local labour. The East India Company was facing financial difficulties, so an order came from the directors to purchase and transport these slaves.[55]






Mughal convoy piracy incident of 1695Edit






Attempt at annexing AfghanistanEdit

The British East India Company unsuccessfully attempted to annex Afghanistan in 1839.[62][63]

Forming a complete monopolyEdit

Trade monopolyEdit

Rear view of the East India Company's Factory at Cossimbazar


This allowed any English firm to trade with India, unless specifically prohibited by act of parliament, thereby annulling the charter that had been in force for almost 100 years. When the East India Company Act 1697 (9 Will. c. 44) was passed in 1697, a new "parallel" East India Company (officially titled the English Company Trading to the East Indies) was floated under a state-backed indemnity of £2 million.[65] The powerful stockholders of the old company quickly subscribed a sum of £315,000 in the new concern, and dominated the new body. The two companies wrestled with each other for some time, both in England and in India, for a dominant share of the trade.[64]



In the following decades there was a constant battle between the company lobby and Parliament. The company sought a permanent establishment, while Parliament would not willingly allow it greater autonomy and so relinquish the opportunity to exploit the company's profits. In 1712, another act renewed the status of the company, though the debts were repaid. By 1720, 15% of British imports were from India, almost all passing through the company, which reasserted the influence of the company lobby. The licence was prolonged until 1766 by yet another act in 1730.[citation needed]





Saltpetre tradeEdit





Basis for the monopolyEdit

Colonial monopolyEdit

An East India Company coin, struck in 1835




East India Company Army and NavyEdit


Expansion and conquestEdit








A cholera pandemic began in Bengal, then spread across India by 1820. 10,000 British troops and countless Indians died during this pandemic.[76] Between 1760 and 1834 only some 10% of the East India Company's officers survived to take the final voyage home.[77]

In the early 19th century the Indian question of geopolitical dominance and empire holding remained with the East India Company.[a] The three independent armies of the company's Presidencies, with some locally raised irregular forces, expanded to a total of 280,000 men by 1857.[78] The troops were first recruited from mercenaries and low-caste volunteers, but in time the Bengal Army in particular was composed largely of high-caste Hindus and landowning Muslims.


During the wars against the French and their allies in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the East India Company's armies were used to seize the colonial possessions of other European nations, including the islands of Réunion and Mauritius. Many East India ships were seized by the French based on these islands during the Napoleonic Wars. They were taken by the British in a hard fought campaign by 1811 and the French threat defeated. In the middle of 1809 the Colonial Governor of India, the 1st Earl of Minto wanted to conquer the lucrative Dutch owned Spice islands famous for nutmeg, mace and cloves. For the EIC the occupation of these islands meant not only a curtailment of Dutch and French trade and power in the East Indies but also an equivalent gain to the company of the rich trade in spice. In 1810 the islands including Banda Neira, Ambon and Ternate fell to a British invasion with little loss. The following year Java fell to the British which completed the conquest of the Dutch East Indies. Minto appointed Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles as lieutenant governor of Java. The British held on to the islands until the end of the war – the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814 meant that they were handed back to the Dutch. The EIC nevertheless had uprooted a lot of the spice trees for transplantation throughout the British Empire. By the 1790s the EIC had established a number of spice gardens in Penang; by 1815 the gardens had significantly expanded to 13,000 nutmeg trees and as many as 20,000 clove trees.[79]


Opium tradeEdit


In the 18th century, Britain had a huge trade deficit with China. Therefore, in 1773, the company created a British monopoly on opium buying in Bengal, India, by prohibiting the licensing of opium farmers and private cultivation. The monopoly system established in 1799 continued with minimal changes until 1947.[81] As the opium trade was illegal in China, Company ships could not carry opium to China. So the opium produced in Bengal was sold in Calcutta on condition that it be sent to China.[82]

Despite the Chinese ban on opium imports, reaffirmed in 1799 by the Jiaqing Emperor, the drug was smuggled into China from Bengal by traffickers and agency houses such as Jardine, Matheson & Co, David Sassoon & Co., and Dent & Co. in amounts averaging 900 tons a year. The proceeds of the drug-smugglers landing their cargoes at Lintin Island were paid into the company's factory at Canton and by 1825, most of the money needed to buy tea in China was raised by the illegal opium trade.



Regulation of the company's affairsEdit

The British government issues a series of regulations over the years.[84]


The Destruction of Tea at Boston Harbor, 1773


Financial troublesEdit

The company kept good financial statistics.[86]




Regulating Acts of ParliamentEdit

East India Company Act 1773Edit





He got quickly to work, beginning the process of turning the EIC into an administrative service. Hastings first major change was to move all of all the functions of government from Murshidabad to Calcutta....Throughout 1773, Hastings worked with extraordinary energy. He unified currency systems, ordered the codification of Hindu laws and digests of Muslim law books, reformed the tax and customs system, fixed land revenue and stopped the worst oppression being carried out on behalf of private traders by the local agents. He created an efficient postal service, back a proper cartographic survey of India by James Rennell and built a series of public granaries, including the great Gola at Patna, to make sure the famine of 1770–71 was never repeated.... Underlying all Hastings' work was a deep respect for the land he had lived in since his teens....Hastings genuinely liked India, and by the time he became Governor spoke not only good Bengali and Urdu but also fluent court and literary Persian.[89]

East India Company Act 1784 (Pitt's India Act)Edit

The East India Company Act 1784 (Pitt's India Act) had two key aspects:[90]



Act of 1786Edit




East India Company Act 1793 (Charter Act)Edit


East India Company Act 1813 (Charter Act)Edit



  • opened India to missionaries

Government of India Act 1833Edit


  • renewed for another twenty years the company's political and administrative authority
  • invested the Board of Control with full power and authority over the company. As stated by Professor Sri Ram Sharma,[94] "The President of the Board of Control now became Minister for Indian Affairs."
  • initiated a machinery for the codification of laws
  • vested the Island of St Helena in the Crown[95]


English Education Act 1835Edit

View of the Calcutta port in 1848


Government of India Act 1853Edit



Indian Rebellion and disestablishmentEdit





Establishments in BritainEdit










Legacy and criticismsEdit


Panorama of a durbar procession of Mughal Emperor Akbar II, 1806–37. The Emperor is followed by the British Resident.


During the first century of the East India Company's expansion in India, most people in India lived under regional kings or Nawabs. By the late 18th century many Moghuls were weak in comparison to the rapidly expanding Company as it took over cities and land, and built roads, bridges and railways. Work began in 1849 on the first railway, the Great Indian Peninsula Railway, running for 21 miles (33.8 km) between Bombay (Mumbai) and Tannah (Thane).[105] The Company sought quick profits because the financial backers in England took high risks: their money for possible profits or losses through shipwrecks, wars or calamities.



Hastings used Sanskrit texts for Hindus and Arabic texts for Muslims. This is still used in Pakistani and Bangladeshi courts today in civil law. Hastings also annexed lands and kingdoms and enriched himself in the process. His enemies in London used this against him to have him impeached. (See Impeachment of Warren Hastings.)[107]

Charles Cornwallis, widely remembered as having surrendered to George Washington following the Siege of Yorktown in 1781, replaced Hastings. Cornwallis distrusted Indians and replaced Indians with Britons. He introduced a system of personal land ownership for Indians. This change caused much conflict since most illiterate people had no idea why they suddenly became land renters from land owners.[108]

The Mughals, Marathas and other local rulers often had to choose to fight against the company and lose everything or cooperate with the company and receive a big pension but lose their Empires or Kingdoms. The British East India Company gradually took over most of India by threat, intimidation, bribery or outright war.[109]



Widespread corruption and looting of Bengal resources and treasures during its rule resulted in poverty. A proportion of the loot of Bengal went directly into Clive's pocket.[17] Famines, such as the Great Bengal famine of 1770 and subsequent famines during the 18th and 19th centuries, became more widespread, chiefly because of exploitative agriculture promulgated by the policies of the East India Company and the forced cultivation of opium in place of grain.[112][113] When the Company first arrived, India produced over a third of the world's GDP. Critics have argued the company damaged the Indian economy through exploitive economic policies and looting.[114]







Coat of armsEdit

The original coat of arms of the East India Company (1600)
The later coat of arms of the East India Company (1698)




Merchant markEdit



Ships in Bombay Harbour, c. 1731

Ships of the East India Company were called East Indiamen or simply "Indiamen".[119]








Unlike all other British Government records, the records from the East India Company (and its successor the India Office) are not in The National Archives at Kew, London, but are held by the British Library in London as part of the Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections. The catalogue is searchable online in the Access to Archives catalogues.[120] Many of the East India Company records are freely available online under an agreement that the Families in British India Society has with the British Library. Published catalogues exist of East India Company ships' journals and logs, 1600–1834;[121] and of some of the company's daughter institutions, including the East India Company College, Haileybury, and Addiscombe Military Seminary.[122]


Early Governors[123]Edit

See alsoEdit

East India CompanyEdit


Notes and referencesEdit

  1. ^ As of 30 December 1600, the company's official name was: Governor and Company of Merchants of London trading into the East Indies.
  3. ^ "Company Bahadur". Encyclopaedia Britannica.
  5. ^ Henige, David P. (1970). Colonial governors from the fifteenth century to the present : a comprehensive list. University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 0-299-05440-3. OCLC 299459478.
  6. ^ Scott, William. "East India Company, 1817-1827". archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk. Senate House Library Archives, University of London. Archived from the original on 1994. Retrieved 20 September 2019.
  7. ^ Parliament of England (31 December 1600). "Charter granted by Queen Elizabeth to the East India Company". en.wikisource.org. Wikimedia. Retrieved 20 September 2019. Governor and Company of Merchants of London, Trading into the East-Indies
  8. ^ a b Farrington, Anthony (2002). Trading Places: The East India Company and Asia 1600–1834. British Library. ISBN 9780712347563. Retrieved 21 September 2019.
  11. ^ Baladouni, Vahe (Fall 1983). "Accounting in the Early Years of the East India Company". The Accounting Historians Journal. 10 (2): 63–80. doi:10.2308/0148-4184.10.2.63. JSTOR 40697780.
  12. ^ "India - The British, 1600–1740". Encyclopedia Britannica.
  13. ^ Hasan, Farhat (1991). "Conflict and Cooperation in Anglo-Mughal Trade Relations during the Reign of Aurangzeb". Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient. 34 (4): 351–360. doi:10.1163/156852091X00058. JSTOR 3632456.
  14. ^ Brown, Judith M. (1994) [First published 1984]. Modern India: The Origins of an Asian Democracy. Oxford University Press. p. 46. ISBN 978-0-19-873113-9.
  15. ^ Peers, Douglas M. (2006). India under Colonial Rule 1700–1885. Pearson Longmans. p. 30. ISBN 978-0-582-31738-3.
  16. ^ Mills, Lennox A. (Lennox Algernon), 1896–1968. (2012). Ceylon under British rule, 1795–1932 : with an account of the East India Company's embassies to Kandy, 1762–1795. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-136-26264-7. OCLC 821079195.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  18. ^ Richards, John F. (19 August 2011). "The finances of the East India Company in India, c. 1766–1859". www2.lse.ac.uk.
  19. ^ This is the argument of Robins (2006).
  20. ^ a b "5 Fast Facts About the East India Company". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 3 April 2020.
  21. ^ Wheeler, Jack. "Sir Francis Drake and the Sultan". International Strategies For the Globally Minded. Escape Artist.
  22. ^ Lawson 1993, p. 2
  24. ^ a b c d e "Early European Settlements". Imperial Gazetteer of India. II. 1908. p. 454.
  27. ^ Leinwand 2006, pp. 125–127.
  32. ^ The Imperial Gazetteer of India. Volume II: The Indian Empire, Historical. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1908. p. 455.
  35. ^ Gardner, Brian (1990) [1971]. The East India Company: A History. Dorset Press. pp. 23–24. ISBN 978-0-88029-530-7.
  36. ^ Dulles (1969), p106.
  38. ^ a b East India Company (1897). List of Factory Records of the late East India Company: preserved in the Record Department of the India Office, London. p. vi.
  40. ^ a b The battle of Plassey ended the tax on the Indian goods. "Indian History Sourcebook: England, India, and The East Indies, 1617 CE". Fordham University.
  42. ^ Dalrymple, William (24 August 2019). "East India Company sent a diplomat to Jahangir & all the Mughal Emperor cared about was beer".
  43. ^ "The Nutmeg Wars". Neatorama.
  50. ^ Pinkston, Bonnie (3 October 2018). "Documenting the British East India Company and their Involvement in the East Indian Slave Trade". SLIS Connecting. 7 (1): 52. doi:10.18785/slis.0701.10. ISSN 2330-2917.
  51. ^ "East India Company | Definition, History, & Facts". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 21 June 2020.
  52. ^ a b "European Slave Trading in the Indian Ocean, 1500–1850". Ohio University Press • Swallow Press. Retrieved 21 June 2020.
  53. ^ The Acts of the Legislative Council of India, with a Glossary; an Analytical Abstract Prefixed to Each Act, and Copious Indexes. By W. Theobald. 1844.
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Further readingEdit


  • Stern, Philip J. (2009). "History and historiography of the English East India Company: Past, present, and future!". History Compass. 7 (4): 1146–1180. doi:10.1111/j.1478-0542.2009.00617.x.

External linksEdit