East India Company:

Establishment:

The East India Company was established in 1600 as a joint-stock association of English merchants who received, by a series of charters, exclusive rights to trade to the 'Indies'. The government owned no shares and had only indirect control. The 'Indies' were defined as the lands lying between the Cape of Good Hope and the Straits of Magellan, and the Company soon established a network of warehouses or 'factories' throughout south and East Asia. Over a period of 250 years the Company underwent several substantial changes in its basic character and functions.

Commercial Treaty with Mughals:

In 1612, James I instructed Sir Thomas Roe to visit the Mughal Emperior Nuruddin Salim Jahangir to arrange for a commercial treaty that would give the company exclusive rights to reside and build factories in Surat and other areas. In return, the company offered to provide the Emperor with goods and rarities from the European market. This mission was highly successful.
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.

Exclusive rights given by King CharlseII:

In an act aimed at strengthening the power of the EIC, King Charles II provisioned the EIC (in a series of five acts around 1670) with the rights to autonomous territorial acquisitions, to mint money, to command fortresses and troops and form alliances, to make war and peace, and to exercise both civil and criminal jurisdiction over the acquired areas.

EIC and Mughal Tussle:

In 1689 a Mughal fleet commanded by Sidi Yaqub attacked Bombay. After a year of resistance the EIC surrendered in 1690, and the company sent envoys to Aurangzeb's camp to plead for a pardon. The company's envoys had to prostrate themselves before the emperor, pay a large indemnity, and promise better behaviour in the future. The emperor withdrew his troops and the company subsequently reestablished itself in Bombay and set up a new base in Calcutta.

United East India Company:

The original company faced opposition to its monopoly. A period of rivalry between the Old and New Companies after 1698 resulted in the formation in 1709 of the United Company of Merchants trading to the East Indies. The United Company was organized into a court of 24 directors who worked through committees. This 'new' East India Company was transformed during the second half of the eighteenth century from a mainly commercial body with scattered Asian trading interests into a major territorial power in India with its headquarters in Calcutta.

Major Business:

particularly trade in basic commodities that included cotton, silk, indigo dye, salt, saltpetre, tea and opium.
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.

Military Expansion:

In its first century and half, the EIC used a few hundred soldiers as guards. The great expansion came after 1750, when it had 3000 regular troops. By 1763, it had 26,000; by 1778, it had 67,000. It recruited largely Indian troops, and trained them along European lines.
The company continued to experience resistance from local rulers during its expansion. Robert Clive (first Eng Governer of Bengal) led company forces against Siraj Ud Daulah, the last independent Nawab of Bengal, Bihar, and Midnapore district in Odisha to victory at the Battle of Plassey in 1757.

East India’s right to collect revenue:

in 1765 Mughal Emperor grants Diwani of Bengal - right to collect land revenue -to East India Company.

Anglo Masore Wars:

Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan, the rulers of the Kingdom of Mysore, offered much resistance to the British forces. Having sided with the French during the Revolutionary War, the rulers of Mysore continued their struggle against the company with the four Anglo-Mysore Wars. Mysore finally fell to the company forces in 1799, with the death of Tipu Sultan.

Regulating Acts of Government:

1) East India Company Act 1773:
The Parliament of Great Britain imposed a series of administrative and economic reforms; this clearly established Parliament's sovereignty and ultimate control over the Company. The Act recognised the Company's political functions and clearly established that the "acquisition of sovereignty by the subjects of the Crown is on behalf of the Crown and not in its own right."

2) The Board of Control [East India Company Act 1784 (Pitt's India Act)]:

The bill differentiated the East India Company's political functions from its commercial activities. In political matters the East India Company was subordinated to the British government directly, similar act was passed in 1786.

3) East India Company Act 1793 (Charter Act)

This Act clearly demarcated borders between the Crown and the Company. After this point, the Company functioned as a regularised subsidiary of the Crown, with greater accountability for its actions and reached a stable stage of expansion and consolidation.

4) ACTS OF 1813 AND 1833:

Acts of Parliament of 1813 and 1833, which opened the British trade with the East Indies to all shipping and resulted in the Company's complete withdrawal from its commercial functions. The Company continued to exercise responsibility, under the supervision of the Board, for the government of India until the re-organisation of 1858.

5) Government of India Act 1853

This Act provided that British India would remain under the administration of the Company in trust for the Crown until Parliament should decide otherwise.

Changes in the status of company in 1857:

With the India Act of 1858 the Company and the Board of Control were replaced by a single new department of state, the India Office, which functioned, under the Secretary of State for India, as an executive office of United Kingdom government alongside the Foreign Office, Colonial Office, Home Office and War Office. The Secretary of State for India inherited all the executive functions previously carried out by the Company, and all the powers of 'superintendence, direction and control' over the British Government in India previously exercised by the Board of Control. Improved communications with India - the overland and submarine telegraph cables (1868-70), and the opening of the Suez Canal (1869) - rendered this control, exercised through the Viceroy and provincial Governors, more effective in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. It was only with the constitutional reforms initiated during the First World War, and carried forward by the India Acts of 1919 and 1935, that there came about a significant relaxation of India Office supervision over the Government of India, and with it, in India, a gradual devolution of authority to legislative bodies and local governments. The same administrative reforms also led in 1937 to the separation of Burma from India and the creation in London of the Burma Office, separate from the India Office though sharing the same Secretary of State and located in the same building. With the grant of independence to India and Pakistan in 1947, and to Burma in 1948, both the India Office and the Burma Office were dissolved. The company settled down to a trade in cotton and silk piece goods, indigo, and saltpetre, with spices from South India. It extended its activities to the Persian Gulf, Southeast Asia, and East Asia.

Dissolution of Company:

Despite frequent government intervention, the company had recurring problems with its finances. 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. The official government machinery of British India had assumed its governmental functions and absorbed its armies.