The VOC began establishing trading posts along the Coromandel Coast in the early 17th century. The English also feared the other regional power, the Maratha Confederacy, which had sacked Surat on two occasions. The local authorities were becoming increasingly unhappy with the EEIC who had begun seizing ships of their European competitors and therefore damaging Mughal trade. The EEIC moved its headquarters to Bombay in 1687, when local political pressure at Surat became too intense and required a move. 1660-1685), as a part of the dowry arrangement in his marriage to Catherine of Braganza. Surat did manage to recover, but the EEIC gradually shifted its focus towards the west coast of India to Bombay, then Madras on the eastern Coromandel Coast and finally Calcutta in Bengal.īombay was received as a gift from the Portuguese to the English king, Charles II of England (r. When wee came into the cytty of Suratt, we hardly could see anie living persons, where heretofore was thousands and ther is so great a stanch of dead persons that the sound people that came into the town were with the smell infected … Surat held most of the EEIC’s early attention in India, but its importance declined dramatically when a protracted drought in the 1630s affected all of western India. The East India Companies Spread out from Surat The English then began to establish trading posts up and down the coasts of India, and large English communities were established in the three major trading towns of Calcutta (Kolkata), Madras (Chennai) and Bombay (Mumbai). The EEIC also convinced the Vijayanagara Empire of the south to allow them to open a factory in Madras. Jahangir was not willing to give the king exclusive trading rights but did allow the English the right to compete with the traditional traders. In 1615, Thomas Roe was sent to India as ambassador of King James I, and through lavish gifts and flattery to emperor Jahangir he was able to obtain a farman to trade and establish factories all across the Mughal Empire. This put English trade on a permanent footing in India. The whole affair was witnessed by thousands of people on the shore and so impressed the sardar (governor) of Gujarat that he convinced the emperor that henceforth he should favour the English over the Portuguese. Three of the galleons were grounded and one was sunk, forcing the Portuguese to withdraw. Soon after they arrived, a squadron of four Portuguese galleons and 16 barks confronted them and a pitched battle ensued over a three-day period. In 1612, Thomas Best was sent to Surat from England with a fleet of four ships – the Red Dragon, Hosiander, James and Solomon. The East India Company may have since been overshadowed by modern capitalism, but its legacy is still felt around the world.Large English communities were established in the three major trading towns of Calcutta, Madras, & Bombay. By 1874, the company was a shell of its former self and was dissolved.īy then, the East India Company had been involved in everything from getting China hooked on opium (the Company grew opium in India, then illegally exported it to China in exchange for coveted Chinese goods) to the international slave trade (it conducted slaving expeditions, transported slaves and used slave labour throughout the 17th and 18th centuries). In 1858, after a long wind down, the British government finally ended company rule in India. The subcontinent was now under the rule of the East India Company’s shareholders, who elected 'merchant-statesmen' each year to dictate policy within its territory.īut financial woes and a widespread awareness of the company’s abuses of power eventually led Britain to seek direct control of the East India Company. At its height, it had an army of 260,000 (twice the size of Britain’s standing army) and was responsible for almost half of Britain’s trade. In the years that followed, the East India company forcibly annexed other regions of the subcontinent and forged alliances with rulers of territory they were conquer. The company then built on its victory and drove the French and Dutch out of the Indian subcontinent. Robert Clive, who led the company’s 3,000-person army, became Bengal’s governor and began collecting taxes and customs, which were then used to purchase Indian goods and export them to England. In 1757, however, it seized control of the entire Mughal state of Bengal. The East India Company’s royal charter gave it the ability to “wage war,” and initially it used military force to protect itself and fight rival traders.

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