While December 31 may be synonymous with New Year’s Eve celebrations, a single act made on this day in 1600 would have major ramifications for the Indian subcontinent and the Far East, after Queen Elizabeth I granted a formal charter to the London merchants trading to the East Indies, a group of traders who would become better known as the East India Company.
Queen Elizabeth I had granted the charter in the hope that by doing so, the British Empire could break the Dutch monopoly of the spice trade in the region which is now known as Indonesia. However, in the first few decades of its existence, the East India Company had found more joy operating in India compared to the East Indies.
By the 1630s, the company abandoned its East Indies operations almost completely to focus on its activities in India, where it had acquired trade privileges from the Mogul emperors and become involved in the trading of Indian textiles and Chinese tea.
In the early 18th Century, the East India Company became more involved and Indian and Chinese political affairs and became an agent and symbol of British imperialism. Having grown to the point of having its own armed forces, the company was by this point a powerful entity and had already seen off challenges from the rival French East India Company in 1752 as well as the Dutch in 1759 through its use of force.
In 1773, the British government recognised a need to bring the company under control with corruption running rife in its ranks. The Regulating Act was passed which resulted in the company's possessions in India being placed under the management of a British governor general. This would result in the East India Company losing its political and economic autonomy. In 1813, further parliamentary acts ended the company’s trade monopoly in India, and in 1834 it became a managing agency for the British government of India.
An 1857 uprising against British rule in India which was started by a revolt from within the ranks of the company’s Bengal army brought another major consequence for the region, as the British government proceeded to assume direct control over India after the 'Indian Mutiny' had eventually been quelled in 1858.
In 1873, after hundreds of years of influence in Asia, the East India Company was finally dissolved after the East India Stock Dividend Redemption Act had left it obsolete. The government of the British Raj had assumed all the company’s governmental functions and absorbed its military force.
On April 8, 1873, a piece in the Times said of the East India Company that it had "accomplished a work such as in the whole history of the human race no other trading company ever attempted, and such as none, surely, is likely to attempt in the years to come."
Photo: East India Company ensign taken from Wikimedia Commons
