East India Company N/A

The East India Company was founded at the end of the sixteenth century to enable London merchants to compete with those of the Dutch East India Company, which had obtained a monopoly of trade to the Spice Islands, and had succeeded in raising the price of pepper. It was incorporated by Royal Charter 31 December 1600, as a joint stock company with a Governor, a Deputy Governor and a Council elected annually in April by the Adventurers. In 1610 1611 bases were established in Bengal, and gradually the company came to dominate India as a result of the downfall of the Mughal dynasty. In 1698 it was newly established by Act of Parliament and new arms were granted. The Indian Mutiny forced the British Parliament to take the government of India into its own hands in 1858. The Company had become in some ways as powerful as the British Government, with its own standing army, its own navy, the power to raise taxes, and a vast bureaucracy with a dubious reputation for lining its own pockets.