Monday, 24 August 2015

24th AUGUST 1608 FIRST SHIP "HECTOR " ARRIVED IN SURAT OF EAST INDIA COMPANY

East India Company 
or John Company. The Hector, a British galleon of the third voyage chartered by the John Company underWilliam HawkinsTapati, near Surat. This was the first ship to fly an English flag off the coast of India. arrived on August 24, 1608 at the entrance to the River 


SURAT -GUJARAT COAST 1608
Textiles from India

Although the English arrived at Surat in 1608, it was several years before a permanent factory was established. The long presence of the Portuguese on the west coast of India, pre-dating Mughal control, made unhampered access for other Europeans more problematical than on the east or 'Coromandel' coast, or at the open port of Bantam.

Surat, the outlet for the textile manufactures of Gujurat and the embarkation point for the annual Haj pilgrimage, was the most important centre for the overseas trade of the Mughal Empire. As well as providing textiles to be exchanged for pepper and spices in Southeast Asia, it offered the possibility of participating in and imitating existing trade networks westwards to Persia, a source of raw silk, and into the Red Sea, where Egyptian and Turkish merchants made annual purchases of Gujarati textiles with silver. Surat was also, of course, the first major Asian port city within reach of ships rounding the Cape of Good Hope.
Red Fort
The British Library		The Delhi Gate of the Red Fort at Agra, by an Indian artist, early nineteenth century. The Mughal emperor Shah Jahan established Delhi as his capital and built the Red Fort in 1638 to house the imperial court. (BL shelf-mark OIOC Add.22716)

Existing arrangements between the Mughal local authorities and the Portuguese, who held a string of fortified bases along the coast north from Goa, backed up by regular naval patrols, were not to be easily overturned. The English had to demonstrate that they could be even more of a menace at sea and that they were capable of defeating Portuguese attacks. This they proceeded to do over the next few years. Sir Henry Middleton plundered the Red Sea shipping in the summer of 1612 and Portuguese fleets were beaten off with great loss, within sight of Surat, in December 1612 and January 1615. Even so, the Mughal authorities would not finally admit the English without Imperial permission, which led to a remarkable series of early contacts with the Mughal court.

The magnificence of the Mughals
Babur, a Turkic adventurer who claimed descent from the Mongol conqueror Timur or Tamerlaine and who had gained control over Afghanistan, invaded India in the mid-1520s. At his death in 1530 the new arrivals had established a loosely knit empire extending from Kabul to the borders of Bengal. mselves 'Mughal' or 'Mongol', the first generations spoke Turkish. Their successors adopted the Persian language and culture to create perhaps the world's most civilised centre of power, albeit ruthless, filled with all the magnificence and luxury that Asia could supply.

Babur's grandson Akbar, who occupied the throne from 1556 to 1605, consolidated Mughal rule over the whole of northern India, taking in Sind, Kashmir, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Orissa and Bengal, forming a partnership with the Hindu Rajputs to govern through a centralised bureaucracy with officers of state and provincial authorities under his personal direction. More open-minded than most contemporaries, Akbar married a Rajput princess, invited Jesuits, Brahmins, Jains and Zoroastrians to religious discussions, and abolished the poll tax that had customarily been levied on non-Muslims. Throughout his life he had a love of painting, maintaining artists at his court who produced illustrated manuscripts of Persian classics, Indian texts, histories, biographies, portraits and, to satisfy his curiosity about the outside world, copies of European prints and depictions of European manners and customs. Akbar's son Jahangir (reigned 1605-27) continued the tradition of artistic patronage, priding himself as a connoisseur of painting and thereby offering a fascinating opening for the first English diplomatic exchanges.

William Hawkins, commander of the Hector, left the ship at Surat in 1608 and travelled up to Agra to seek permission for a permanent trade. Even though he had nothing to offer as presents except broadcloth, he made a favourable impression on Jahangir, not least because he could speak Turkish and could match the Emperor's consumption of wine. Pressed to remain, he was made a captain of 400 horse, he married an Armenian Christian girl chosen by Jahangir and, dressed as a Muslim nobleman, he took his place among the courtiers. 
European lady
The British Library
A European lady with a dog, by a Deccani artist, c.1640. (BL shelf-mark OIOC Johnson 14.7)
Despite such personal standing, a grant of trading privileges was not forthcoming, so he and his wife left Agra for Surat at the end of 1611, getting on board Middleton's fleet in January 1612. He died before reaching England. His widow remarried Gabriel Towerson (who was executed at Amboina in 1623), returned to India with him, and then elected to remain there among her relatives rather than sail for Bantam. Her subsequent fate is not recorded.

Gifts to an emperor
While the Company's Directors issued strict injunctions against anyone following Hawkins' example, reports of Jahangir's artistic tastes now caused them to address the question `What do you give to an Emperor?'. The fleet of 1614 carried out 78 oil paintings: 41 of them, commissioned in London, were portraits of the King, the Queen, Sir Thomas Smythe, assorted lords, ladies and citizens, and two fanciful depictions of the 'Great Magoll' and 'Tamberlaine'; the rest, brought from studios in Rouen, depicted classical and religious subjects like Mars and Venus, the Judgement of Paris, and Adam and Eve, offering ample opportunity to portray fair and beautiful women. Such novelties were gratefully received but failed to secure permission for an English factory. This had to await the arrival of a 'proper' ambassador in 1615.

Influenced by the unanimous opinion of its servants on the spot that mere merchants had little status at the Mughal court, the Company's Directors persuaded King James I to despatch a special representative at their expense. The man selected, Sir Thomas Roe, was an established courtier, a close friend of Prince Henry (until his death in 1612) and Princess Elizabeth. Roe remained in India for almost three years. His diary (which is in the British Library's collections) describes the magnificence and intrigues of Jahangir's court. Roe had plenty of experience of courts and their conspicuous consumption, but the apex of the enormous human and natural resources of the Mughal Empire was another world.

At Ajmer in March 1616 Roe was received in audience by Jahangir. The Mughal, wearing pure white clothing `adorned with more jewels than any other monarch in the world', was seated on a throne raised four feet above the floor, in a hall canopied with hangings of cloth of gold, silk and velvet, with rich Persian carpets underfoot, and with seven of the 1614 oil paintings (including the portraits of the King, the Queen and Sir Thomas Smythe) arranged behind him. It is hard to imagine the other great Asian empire, Ming China, granting such an honour to a 'red-haired barbarian'. The outcome of the embassy was not some formal treaty of commerce between the two rulers, a totally alien concept that Roe soon had to forget. Instead he received an Imperial edict or farman assuring good usage of the English, together with a farman from Prince Khurram, the new Viceroy of Gujarat (who succeeded as Shah Jahan in 1628), granting favourable conditions of trade at Surat.

Farmans and forts
The Portuguese position in India had been weakened, though there was still serious fighting to come. From Surat the English began to participate in the Red Sea and Persian trades, as well as sending cargoes of textiles to Bantam. In 1617 Shah Abbas of Persia granted a farman for English trade at Isfahan and the Gulf port of Jask. 
Fort William
The British Library
Fort William, Calcutta, by George Lambert and Samuel Scott, c.1730. The painting is one of a set of six views commissioned by the Company for the Court of Directors' room at East India House in London. (BL shelf-mark OIOC F45)
In 1619 a new commodity, coffee, was bought at Mokha for sale in Persia. In 1622 the English Company's ships helped the Persians to capture the fortress of Hormuz, the key to the Gulf, receiving as their reward an annual share of the customs revenue of Bandar Abbas, to where the trade was now transferred.

On the other side of India the 1611 settlement at the Golconda port of Masulipatam on the Coromandel coast had maintained a fairly flourishing textile trade to Bantam. In 1639 an invitation to settle from the naik or local Hindu ruler of the coastal districts around the small town of Madraspatam, far to the south, was eagerly accepted by the English Company. As well as granting territory and trading rights, thenaik also licensed the construction of a fortress. Fort St George at Madras was the first of its kind for the English Company, comparable to the earlier Portuguese bases and to the VOC's efforts further east. It was followed by the castle at Bombay, an island commanding a superb harbour 160 miles south of Surat, ceded to the Portuguese by the Sultan of Gujarat in 1534. In 1661 it was transferred to King Charles II as part of the dowry of his Portuguese bride, Catherine of Braganza. He in turn handed it over to the Company, who made it their headquarters for India in 1674.

From the 1650s the English had also begun trading in Bengal under a farman from Shah Jahan, eventually settling their main factory at the village of Sutanati on the river Hugli, which became the city of Calcutta. Permission to fortify was granted by the Mughal Nawab of Bengal in 1696 and Fort William was completed in 1702. At the turn of the eighteenth century the English presence in India consisted of a sprinkling of small factories along the west and east coasts, and inland as far as Patna, plus three strong points at Bombay, Madras and Calcutta. All owed their existence to Indian permission, partnership and complicity in the business of making money.

The trade in textiles
What of the textiles that had driven all this effort to the main production centres of Coromandel, Gujarat and later Bengal? The ready availability of raw cotton, silk and dyestuffs in all three areas had stimulated, over centuries, the growth of a village-based hand-loom industry that gave employment to hundreds of thousands of highly skilled weavers, dyers and washers, producing enormous quantities of different kinds of cloth for specific market requirements throughout Asia. A definitive glossary of types has yet to be compiled. 
cloth merchant
The British Library
A cloth merchant, seated in his shop, selling chintz to a customer, by a Tanjore artist, c.1800. (BL shelf-mark OIOC Add.Or.2531)
Among the more familiar are fine muslins, printed or painted chintz and palampores, plain white baftas, diapers and dungarees, striped allejaes, mixed cotton and silk ginghams, and embroidered quilts. Some cloths were patterned in the loom, others had gold or silver threads woven into them. But the supreme Indian achievements lay in the mastery of colour-fast dyeing techniques, and the fabulous designs and colour combinations produced by hand-painting and wood-blocking. English traders always referred to them as `piece goods'--each piece was usually about a yard wide (the width of the loom) and between ten and twenty yards long depending upon type.

Originally intended to facilitate the purchase of pepper and spices in Indonesia, once the first cargoes of cloth reached England demand at home grew rapidly--as early as 1620 50,000 pieces of painted and printed chintz were brought in, while as late as the 1750s Indian textiles accounted for 60 percent of the total value of the Company's sales in London. A typical eighteenth-century order, to Bengal for the season 1730-31, called for 589,000 pieces of 38 different types, sub-divided into 98 varieties.

Procurement of such quantities followed long-established practice. The English factors engaged Indian brokers who were paid a fixed percentage to negotiate and manage contracts with local authorities, village headmen and weaver families for the delivery of stated numbers of particular types by specified dates, and who guaranteed the safety of cash advances by the Company for the purchase of yarn and dyestuffs. The weavers, the ancillary craftsmen and the cultivators of the raw materials were at the bottom of the chain. Frequently devastated by climate, famine and war, they were always subject to varying degrees of pressure and exploitation, while the landholders, the brokers and the Company grew rich on their skills.

This session is adapted from pp.54--71 of Trading Places: The East India Company and Asia 1600-1834 by Anthony Farrington, published by The British Library, 2002.
Session 3
Session 2Session 4
Arrival of William Hawkins in court of Jahangir Share on emailShare on facebookShare on twitterShare on printShare on google May 31, 20112 Comments In 1607, William Hawkins commanded the ship “Hector” for East India Company on a voyage to Surat and Aden loaded with letters & presents from King of England James I. He arrived in Surat in August 1608, but the road ahead was not a cakewalk. As soon as Hector sailed in, it was captured by the Portuguese. William Hawkins was told that all the ports belong to the “King of Portugal” and none ought to come here without his license. But, he was later let leave and receive a pass for his journey to Agra. He was helped by the Viceroy of the Burhanpur midway and after much labor, toil and many dangers; he was able to reach Agra on April 16, 1609. Akbar who was contemporary of queen Elizabeth-I was little known in England, but when Hawkins arrived, there was a different personality sitting on the throne who was not at all known in England. But Captain Hawkins was received by this new emperor Jahangir with all Indian hospitality and warmth. His letter was read in the court with the help of a Portuguese Jesuit. Then he was taken to the private audience chamber and they had a conversation for some 3 hours. Hawkins was well versed in Turkish and Jahangir and some of his ministers also knew Turkish, the native tongue of Babur. So the discussions took place in Turkish. Hawkins was able to acquire a footing in the court of Jahangir and in due course of time he got so intimacy with the “talented drunkard” emperor that no Europeans had ever afterwards. Jahangir called him “English Khan“. This English Khan was able to persuade the emperor to grant a commission for an English factory at Surat but under the Pressure of the Portuguese Viceroy, the grant was withdrawn. Hawkins lived in the court of Mughal emperor till 1611, tried to reverse the orders, but the Portuguese influence over the King was impregnable. He returned in disgust on November 2, 1611. He died a couple of years later. 
http://www.gktoday.in/arrival-of-william-hawkins-in-court-of-jahangir/
The East India Company

The East India Company had the unusual distinction of ruling an entire country. Its formed for the exploitation of trade with East and Southeast Asia and India, incorporated by royal charter on December 31, 1600., a group of merchants who had incorporated themselves into the East India Company were given monopoly privileges on all trade with the East Indies. 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.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 mid-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.

The company was formed to share in the East Indian spice trade. This trade had been a monopoly of Spain and Portugal until the defeat of the Spanish Armada (1588) by England gave the English the chance to break the monopoly. Until 1612 the company conducted separate voyages, separately subscribed. There were temporary joint stocks until 1657, when a permanent joint stock was raised.

The company met with opposition from the Dutch in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) and the Portuguese. The Dutch virtually excluded company members from the East Indies after the Amboina Massacre in 1623 (an incident in which English, Japanese, and Portuguese traders were executed by Dutch authorities), but the company’s defeat of the Portuguese in India (1612) won them trading concessions from the Mughal Empire. The company settled down to a trade in cotton and silk piece goods, indigo, and saltpetre, with spices from South India. It extended its activities to the Persian Gulf, Southeast Asia, and East Asia.

After the mid-18th century the cotton-goods trade declined, while tea became an important import fromChina. Beginning in the early 19th century, the company financed the tea trade with illegal opiumexports to China. Chinese opposition to this trade precipitated the first Opium War (1839–42), which resulted in a Chinese defeat and the expansion of British trading privileges; a second conflict, often called the Arrow War (1856–60), brought increased trading rights for Europeans.

The original company faced opposition to its monopoly, which led to the establishment of a rival company and the fusion (1708) of the two as the United Company of Merchants of England trading to the East Indies. 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. This led to government intervention. The Regulating Act (1773) and Pitt’s India Act (1784) established government control of political policy through a regulatory board responsible to Parliament. Thereafter, the company gradually lost both commercial and political control. Its commercial monopoly was broken in 1813, and from 1834 it was merely a managing agency for the British government of India. It was deprived of this after the Indian Mutiny (1857), and it ceased to exist as a legal entity in 1873.

Story of the East India Company

1. Early voyages : On 13 February 1601, four British ships set sail for the pepper producing islands of Sumatra and Java. In charge of the voyage was James Lancaster, a member of the newly founded Company - then known as the 'Company of Merchants of London Trading with the East Indies'. The Company had been established a year earlier by a royal charter, which granted it a monopoly over all English trade with the East. This kind of restriction on competition was typical of late Elizabethan overseas trade: there were many risks involved in this type of trade (shipwreck, pirates, and war were frequent dangers), and so investors needed to ensure that they could safeguard their profits as much as possible.

The ships sailed around the coast of South Africa and across the Indian Ocean to Sumatra where two ships stopped at Aceh. The other two ships arrived at the busy port of Bantam in December 1602. They were carrying a cargo of woollen cloth and different kinds of iron. The problem was that Sumatrans were not very interested in trading their precious spices for these goods - given the climate in Sumatra, wool seemed particularly useless to the natives. So Lancaster acted quickly: he decided to capture a Portuguese carrack (a large ship) and steal its rich cargo of gold, silver and Indian textiles. These goods allowed him to buy pepper at Aceh. Soon he noticed that pepper was even cheaper in Bantam (Island of Java), and he traded more cloth there.

All four ships, filled with pepper, arrived back in London in 1603. Many sailors had died on the voyage. They had all lived in cramped conditions, their diet was poor and sickness was common. Over the next 9 years 11 more voyages left the Thames for the factory that James Lancaster had set up at Bantam. The East India Company had begun.

2. The Mughal Empire: The English had been trading their woollen cloth at Bantam market, but it soon became clear that they would do better to barter with other Asian goods, especially Indian textiles. For this reason they needed to dispose of their broadcloth and to find other Asian goods for barter. India, with its rich textiles, seemed to offer the answer.

The Mughal Empire covered northern and central India. It was perhaps the world's most civilised centre of power. Its glittering court at Agra, Delhi and Lahore, was filled with all the magnificence and luxury that Asia could supply.

The Portuguese had traded directly with India for over 100 years before the first English East India Company ships reached Surat. The Company was not welcome, and in 1611 it asked King James to send an ambassador, Sir Thomas Roe, to visit the Mughal Emperor, Jahangir. The Emperor ruled over a prosperous civilisation that produced many goods, and had many different religions (the Mughals were Muslim).

In 1608, William Hawkins, commander of the Hector, was sent to askthe Mughal Emperor about trade with England. He impressed Jahangir with his grasp of Turkish and ability to drink copious amounts of wine, but he failed to get an agreement for an English factory. It took the arrival of a proper amabassador, Sir Thomas Roe, sent by King James I in 1615, before the Company was able to set up a base in India. From Surat the Company could send Indian textiles to the market at Bantam.

Highly skilled dyers and weavers in India produced cloth with beautiful colour-fast designs. This successful industry created an enormous amount of cloth for markets throughout Asia. In England, demand for Indian textiles grew fast, and many patterns for the new English textile industry came from India. By 1750, Indian silks, cottons and calicoes made up 60 per cent of the company's sales.

By 1750, the Mughal Empire was in a state of collapse. Regional states emerged in India and the Company began to get involved in power politics. It raised its own armies and prepared for war.

Having seen off the rival French in the Carnatic, in 1765 the Company assumed the Diwani of Bengal. A trading company from England was now responsible for the civil, judicial and revenue administration of India's richest province, with some 20 million inhabitants. It was now a regional state in India.

3. The British in India: By 1750, the Mughal Empire had been weakened by a series of wars, and was breaking up into smaller states. The Company took this as an opportunity to extend its territory in India.

In 1757, the Nawab of Bengal captured the Company's settlement at Calcutta. The Company had refused to stop strengthening its walls against a possible attack by the French. The Company recaptured the settlement at the Battle of Plassey, and took control of the whole of Bengal, India's richest province.

From this time on, the East India Company became more of a ruling power than a trading company in India. While the Company grew richer on the profits of its trade, land taxes shot up, and millions of Indians died in terrible famines. Over the following two decades, millions more would be disposessed of their land, and have their local industries crippled by the actions of the Company.

The British government became concerned about the Company's ability to govern its territories and in 1783 it decided to make Calcutta the centre of government under a new Governor-General.

The first person appointed to this role was Warren Hastings. Power gradually slipped away from the Company into the hands of the British government.

By 1813 the Company's trade was limited to China, but these powers were abolished in 1833. The Company lingered on until 1857 when there was a rebellion in Bengal by the "Sepoys", who were Indian troops employed by the Company. This is believed to be India's first war of Independence. The Company was abolished in 1858.

EAST INDIA COMPANY TIMELINE

A History of Connections

This is a story of trade and exploration, of ambition and foresight, of silk and spice, of tea and cricket, of timber and gunpowder, of cities and ports. It is the story of how a band of traders created a company that far exceeded the sum of their ambitions, uniting distant markets, bringing people together, building and sustaining an empire. It all starts in 1600 and continues on today.

1600 ROYAL CHARTER

The Company of merchants of London trading into The East Indies is granted a royal charter by Queen Elizabeth I, established with 125 shareholders and £72,000 of capital. Sir Thomas Smythe is The Company’s first Governor. Elizabeth also limited the liability of the EIC’s investors as well as her liabilities in granting a Royal Charter. This made The Company the world’s first limited liability corporation.

1601 THE FIRST VOYAGE

Five vessels leave Woolwich for the Spice Islands or East Indies led by James Lancaster holding six letters of introduction from The Queen, each with a blank space for the name of the local King. Lancaster intended to trade Iron, lead and British broad cloth for Spice, but made little impression the Dutch controlled trade, and the broad cloth was deemed to heavy to be of value by those living in the tropics.

1608 LANDING IN INDIA

Ships belonging to The Company dock at Surat and in the next two years establishes its first “factory” as trading posts were called, in the town of Machilipatnam of the Coromandel coast of The Bay of Bengal. Landing in India gave The Company access to spices not controlled by Dutch traders.

1615 FIRST TREATY WITH MUGHAL EMPEROR

Sir Thomas Roe was instructed by James 1 to arrange a commercial treaty with Emperor Nurudin Salim Jahangir. This gave The Company exclusive rights to reside and build factories around Surat in exchange for rare commodities from Europe. This provided a secure base for operations to wage trade wars with Portuguese and Dutch governments and merchants.

1668 EXPANSION

By 1668 The Company had established factories in Goa, Chittagong,Bombay, Madras and three small villages in the east of India called Sutanati, Gobindapore and Kalikata which was renamed Calcutta in 1690. The major factories became the walled forts of Fort William in Calcutta, Fort St George in Madras and Bombay castle, which developed into the great Indian Cities of today. Of these forts Fort William remains active as the HQ of the Eastern Command of the Indian Army.

1684 TRADE WITH CHINA

The Company receives Chinese permission to trade from Guangzhou (Canton) importing silk, tea and porcelain. Trade was made with the Chinese Hongs (trading companies) who controlled trade within China. In England, the demand for tea booms, in 1664 The Company placed an order for Tea for 100lbs, by 1750 annual imports had reached 4,727,992Lbs. Having initially traded tea for silver, the English are concerned that too much silver is leaving their shores. They begin to trade the highly addictive drug opium for tea, this leads directly to the opium wars between Britain and China, as the Chinese government tries to stop this trade.

1667 LONDON WEAVERS ATTACK EAST INDIA HOUSE

Weavers, dyers and linen drapers in England protest that imports of Indian cloth are threatening their own industries. They riot and attack East India House in London. Initially, The Company responds by re-exporting Asian textiles to other countries in Europe. But market forces soon overshadow the cries of protesters, and Asian textiles continue to be hugely popular in England throughout the 18th century.

1733 ST HELENA, THE FORGOTTEN COFFEE

The East India Company bring coffee plants and seeds from Yemen to St Helena on board the ‘Houghton’ from the Red Sea port of Mocha. Napoleon Bonaparte, exiled to the island in 1816, remarked on the quality of St Helena coffee. St Helena coffee is unique, as it is not just a pure Arabica coffee, but produced from asingle type of Arabica bean known as Green Tipped Bourbon Arabica. This coffee is still grown in St Helena today and is amongst the worlds finest, respected and rare coffees.

1754 SEVERN YEARS WAR

The French and British East India Companies and their respective Indian allies were at war with each other. The East India Company led by Robert Clive defeat the French ally, Siraj Ud Daulah, at the battle of Plassey ending the rule of the last independent Nawab of Bengal. This is judged to be one of the pivotal events leading to the formation of the British Empire in South Asia. The resulting central administration and governance starts a process that leads eventually to the formation of unified India.

1773 BOSTON TEA PARTY

The Boston Tea party was driven by resistance throughout British America against the Tea Act, passed by the British Parliament in 1773. Colonists objected to the Tea Act because it violated their right to be taxed only by their own elected representatives. Men thinly disguised as Mohawk Indians dumped 342 chests overboard three ships, the ‘Dartmouth’, the ‘Eleanor’ and the ‘Beaver’, loaded with tea from The East India Company.

1784 EAST INDIA COMPANY ACT

The East India Company had grown into a powerful political and trading organisation, rivaling that of the British Government, in effect ruling many of The British Empires territories. The bill differentiated The East India Company’s political functions from its commercial activities. In political matters The East India Company was subordinated to the British government directly. The process was slow and required subsequent parliamentary acts to allow The British Government to fully separate The Company’s political control from its commercial activities.

1813 THE CHARTER ACT

This asserted the sovereignty of the British Crown over the Indian territories held by The Company. It renewed the Charter of The Company for a further twenty years but ended its Indian trade monopoly except for trade in tea. At this point The East India Company was forced to open India to missionaries, who had previously been banned.

1848 DARJEELING TEA ESTABLISHED

Robert Fortune, a botanist, was hired by The Company to obtain the finest tea plants from China to establish plantations in India. He disguised himself as Chinese ‘from a distant province’, hired an interpreter, a precaution as the Chinese were extremely protective of their virtual monopoly on tea production. His efforts resulted in the shipment of 20,000 plants to the Himalayas, establishing Darjeeling as one of the finest tea producing regions in the world, and India as the dominant world tea producer it is today.

1873 EAST INDIA COMPANY STOCK REDEMPTION ACT

By the time of The Act’s passing, The Company had been effectively dissolved anyway, as The Crown assumed all governmental responsibilities held by The company by The Act for the Better Government of India. The Company’s 24,000-man military force was incorporated into the British Army, leaving it with only a shadow of the power it had wielded years earlier. Queen Victoria was the ruling monarch at the time, and thanks to her new authority over India, became the first monarch to use the title Empress of India.

“It accomplished a work such as in the whole history of the human race no other company ever attempted and as such is likely to attempt in the years to come”

Battle of Plassey (1757)
The Battle of Buxar
Jalianwala Bagh Massacre
The Non-Cooperation Movement
THE CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE MOVEMENT
Quit India Movement
The Bengal Famine
India’s Struggle For Independence
Chronology of communal violence
Kashmiri Pandits

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