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The East India Company was formed by 218 knights and Queen Elizabeth I who granted its Royal Charter on December 31st [[1600]]. However, it made little impression on the [[Dutch]] control of the [[spice trade]] and could not establish a lasting outpost in the [[East Indies]] in the early years. Yet it succeeded beyond measure in establishing military dominance and a political empire for [[Britain]] in the East.
By the early nineteenth century, the East India Company extended across most of [[India]], [[Burma]], [[Singapore]] and [[Hong Kong]], and a fifth of the world's population was under its authority. The Company had at various stages defeated [[China]], occupied the [[Phillipines]], conquered [[Java]] and imprisoned [[Napoleon]] on its island of [[St. Helena]]. It had solved its cash crisis needed to buy tea, by illicitly exporting Indian-grown [opium] to China.
It was the largest single commercial enterprise the world had ever seen, with revenues derived not only from trade but also through tax-collecting. Yet as it became the administrative arm of the [[British Empire]], the Company attracted men of selfless zeal [[Bentinck]], [[Lawrence]] and Edwardes who saw their work in India as an opportunity to bring an enlightened regime to bear on a country that had suffered under previous conquerors.
When the East India Company finally reverted to the [[Crown]] in [[1874]], the [[Times]] reported, "It is just as well to record that it accomplished a work such as in the whole history of the human race no other company ever attempted and as such is ever likely to attempt in the years to come."
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