The East India Company was founded in London in 1600 as a joint-stock trading company. It received a royal charter on December 31, 1600, giving it a monopoly on English trade with Asia. In 1608 the Company’s first ships landed at Surat on India’s west coast. Over the 17th century it built trading “factories” or forts at key ports: Surat, Madras (1639), Bombay (1668), and Calcutta (from 1690s). Early Company agents like Sir Thomas Roe secured permission from Mughal Emperor Jahangir (c.1615) to establish a factory at Surat. By the early 1700s the Company was trading textiles, indigo, saltpeter, tea and spices and had even won an imperial decree (a 1717 “firman”) from Emperor Farrukhsiyar exempting it from customs duties in Bengal. In this period the British gradually eclipsed older European rivals (the Portuguese and Dutch) and built prosperous communities in the three Presidency towns (Calcutta, Bombay, Madras). By the mid-18th century, however, the Company was no longer...
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