Assignment no #1

History of Muslim Struggle in India 1857-1906 (HIS-204)

Topic:
East India Company
Submitted To:
Sir Ghulam Shabbir
Submitted By:
Muhammad Afzaal
(18111503-009)
Department:
BS-History 3rd semester
Content:
1. Introduction
2. Establishment
3. Trade
4. Bases
5. Politics
6. Decline of Mughals
7. British India
8. Downfall of East India Company

East India Company:

 Introduction:
East India Company, also called English East India Company, formally (1600–
1708) Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies or
(1708–1873) United Company of Merchants of England Trading to the East Indies,
English company formed for the exploitation of trade with East and Southeast
Asia and India, incorporated by royal charter on December 31, 1600. Starting as a
monopolistic trading body, the company became involved in politics and acted as an
agent of British imperialism in India from the early 18th century to the middle 19th
century. In addition, the activities of the company in China in the 19th century served as
a catalyst for the expansion of British influence there.

 Establish:
In 1600, a group of London merchants led by Sir Thomas Smyth petitioned Queen
Elizabeth I to grant them a royal charter to trade with the countries of the eastern
hemisphere. And so, the Honorable Company of Merchants of London Trading with the
East Indies or East India Company, as it came to be known was founded. Few could
have predicted the seismic shifts in the dynamics of global trade that would follow, nor
that 258 years later, the company would pass control of a subcontinent to the British
crown.

At the same time as Elizabeth I was signing the East India Company (EAST INDIA
COMPANY) into existence in 1600, her counterpart in India the Mughal emperor Akbar
was ruling over an empire of 750,000 square miles, stretching from northern
Afghanistan in the northwest, to central India’s Deccan plateau in the south and the
Assamese highlands in the northeast. By 1600, the Mughal empire had come of age
and was embarking on a century of strong centralized power, military dominance and
cultural productiveness that would mark the rule of the Great Mughals.

 Trade:
In 1600, a group of London merchants led by Sir Thomas Smythe petitioned Queen
Elizabeth I to grant them a royal charter to trade with the countries of the eastern
hemisphere. And so, the ‘Honourable Company of Merchants of London Trading with
the East Indies’ – or East India Company, as it came to be known – was founded. Few
could have predicted the seismic shifts in the dynamics of global trade that would follow,
nor that 258 years later, the company would pass control of a subcontinent to the British
crown. The company has recently been featured in BBC One’s period drama Taboo –
central character James Delaney, played by Tom Hardy, comes into conflict with the
EIC, which is characterised as a mighty and villainous organisation. 

 Bases:
When the East India Company first visited the Mughal court in the early 17th century, it
was as supplicants attempting to negotiate favourable trading relations with Akbar’s
successor, Emperor Jehangir. The company had initially planned to try and force their
way into the lucrative spice markets of south-east Asia, but found this trade was already
dominated by the Dutch. After east India company merchants were massacred at
Amboyna in 1623, the company increasingly turned their attention to India. With
Emperor Jehangir’s permission, they began to build small bases, or factories, on India’s
eastern and western coasts.Initially a junior partner in the Mughal empire’s
sophisticated commercial networks, in the 18th century, the EAST INDIA COMPANY
became increasingly involved in subcontinental politics.

 Politics:
Initially a junior partner in the Mughal empire’s sophisticated commercial networks, in
the 18th century, the EAST INDIA COMPANY became increasingly involved in sub
continental politics. They grappled to maintain their trading privileges in the face of
declining central Mughal authority and the emergence of dynamic individual successor
states. European competitors also began to have an increased presence on the
subcontinent, with France emerging as a major national and imperial rival during the
War of Austrian Succession and the Seven Years War. This particularly increased the
strategic importance of the East India company Indian footholds, and the country’s
coastline became crucial to further imperial expansion in Asia and Africa. As well as
maintaining a large standing army consisting primarily of spays the East India company
was able to call on British naval power and crown troops garrisoned in India.

 Decline of Mughals:
The rapid rise of the East India Company was made possible by the catastrophically
rapid decline of the Mughals during the 18th century. As late as 1739, when Clive was
only 14 years old, the Mughals still ruled a vast empire that stretched from Kabul to
Madras. But in that year, the Persian adventurer Nadir Shah descended the Khyber
Pass with 150,000 of his cavalry and defeated a Mughal army of 1.5 million men.  At the
same time, the company expanded its influence over local rulers in the south, until by
the 1770s the balance of power had fundamentally changed. Expansion continued and
rivals such as the Maratha people in western India and Tipu Sultan of Mysore were
defeated. 

 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 until 1773
influenced by shareholders’ meetings, where votes could be bought by the purchase of
shares. That arrangement led to government intervention.Meanwhile a series of internal
reforms under governor general Charles Cornwallis in the late 1780s and early 1790s
saw the East India Company administration radically restructured in order to eradicate
private corruption.

By 1803, when the East India Company captured the Mughal capital of Delhi, it had
trained up a private security force of around 260,000, twice the size of the British army
and marshalled more firepower than any nation state in Asia. It was an empire within an
empire, as one of its directors admitted. It had also by this stage created a vast and
sophisticated administration and civil service, built much of London’s docklands and
come close to generating nearly half of Britain’s trade. No wonder that the East India
Company now referred to itself as “the grandest society of merchants in the Universe”.

In the Agra region (1837–38) were exacerbated by the East India Company tax policies,
its laissez faire attitudes towards the grain market, and failures of state relief. While by
the early 19th century British attitudes to India were characterize more by pride and
complacency’ than by self-flagellation criticism of East India Company activities and
their consequences both intended and unintended did not disappear entirely. Rather
these issues remained close to the surface of British public debate. They found
expression through a range of issues sources and media.

 British India:
Hastings survived his impeachment, but parliament did finally remove the EAST INDIA
COMPANY from power following the great Indian Uprising of 1857, some 90 years after
the granting of the Diwani and 60 years after Hastings’s own trial. On 10 May 1857, the
EAST INDIA COMPANY’s own security forces rose up against their employer and on
successfully crushing the insurgency, after nine uncertain months, the company
distinguished itself for a final time by hanging and murdering tens of thousands of
suspected rebels in the bazaar towns that lined the Ganges probably the most bloody
episode in the entire history of British colonialism.

 DECLINE:
Enough was enough. The same parliament that had done so much to enable the EAST
INDIA COMPANY to rise to unprecedented power, finally gobbled up its own baby. The
British state, alerted to the dangers posed by corporate greed and incompetence,
successfully tamed history’s most voracious corporation. In 1859, it was again within the
walls of Allahabad Fort that the governor general, Lord Canning, formally announced
that the company’s Indian possessions would be nationalised and pass into the control
of the British Crown. Queen Victoria, rather than the directors of the EAST INDIA
COMPANY would henceforth be ruler of India.

 Conclusion:
The Company had become the paramount power in India. The long friction between
the Company’s commercial roots and its role as the manager of a territorial empire,
which animated the Sketch of the Political History of India, had ended with the loss of
its monopoly on Indian trade in 1813. Many major authors, who advocated democracy
and authoritarianism for British India, have added weight to the idea that the imperial
project sat paradoxically with the development of liberal democracy in Britain. No other
writer in this period elaborated a historical vision of empire that so completely
expressed the impact of the British conservative reaction to the French Revolution on
late Enlightenment thought
Reference:
https://www.britannica.com/editor/The-Editors-of-Encyclopaedia-Britannica/4419

https://www.historyextra.com/period/tudor/

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.historic-
uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/The-East-India-
Company/&ved=2ahUKEwja18eT1rHlAhWqzIUKHTQHCKgQFjAYegQIBxAB&usg=AOvVaw2znm-
5Suc1O2iWb2NcRBBa