East India Company

Definition

An English trading company founded in 1600 which expanded its Asian trade and eventually exercised military and political power over much of India.

Used by AQA and OCR

Paper 2

A trading organisation founded in 1600 that developed its own armed forces and became a territorial ruler in India.
The East India Company, founded in 1600, was a trading organisation, not originally the government of India. It established permanent trading stations during the seventeenth century. These were bases where merchants could organise trade and store goods.
Revise: Expansion in India
An English trading company established by royal charter in 1600, whose powers later included governing overseas settlements and raising armed forces to protect its trade.
Revise: Land

1
Explain how a cause produced expansion: profits encouraged the East India Company to protect its trading interests with armed forces and seek political control.
2
Distinguish the Crown from the East India Company: Bombay passed to the Crown through the Portuguese marriage settlement, then to the Company in 1668.
3
Keep the East India Company within 1688–c.1730. Do not use its later conquest of Bengal as evidence that it already ruled India during this period.

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Paper 2, Paper 3

The East India Company was founded in 1600 to conduct overseas trade. Over the following centuries it expanded its influence in Asia and eventually exercised military and political control over much of India. Its activities created jobs for British traders and administrators abroad, but also brought people from the Indian subcontinent to England.
Revise: Religious Refugees and Global Trade Migration
An English trading company which organised commerce with Asia through ships, trading posts and agreements with Asian rulers.
Revise: Chartered Companies and Global Trade
A trading company founded in 1600 whose commerce brought goods including Indian cotton textiles and Chinese tea to Britain.
Revise: Consumerism and the British Infrastructure of the Slave Trade

Paper 1

The English trading company chartered by Elizabeth I in 1600 to organise trade with the East.
On 31 December 1600, Elizabeth I granted a royal charter to the East India Company. The charter gave it an exclusive right to conduct English trade within a wide eastern trading area, subject to specified restrictions. Other English subjects could not simply compete there without the company’s permission.
Revise: Trade with the east