![]() ![]() The biggest prize that galvanised English trade was the seizure of a large Portuguese carrack, the Madre de Deus, by Sir Walter Raleigh and the Earl of Cumberland at the Battle of Flores on 13 August 1592. ![]() : 5 Having sailed around Cape Comorin to the Malay Peninsula, they preyed on Spanish and Portuguese ships there before returning to England in 1594. Elizabeth granted her permission and on 10 April 1591, James Lancaster in the Bonaventure with two other ships, financed by the Levant Company sailed from Torbay around the Cape of Good Hope to the Arabian Sea, becoming the first successful English expedition to India via the Cape. The aim was to deliver a decisive blow to the Spanish and Portuguese monopoly of far-eastern trade. London merchants presented a petition to Queen Elizabeth I for permission to sail to the Indian Ocean. Soon after the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, the captured Spanish and Portuguese ships and cargoes enabled English voyagers to travel the globe in search of riches. Thus started an important element in the eastern design during the late sixteenth century. Drake returned to England in 1580 and became a hero his circumnavigation raised an enormous amount of money for England's coffers, and investors received a return of some 5000 per cent. In exchange for linen, gold and silver, a large haul of exotic spices including cloves and nutmeg were obtained – the English initially not realising their huge value. Drake eventually sailed into the East Indies and came across the Moluccas, also known as the Spice Islands, and met Sultan Babullah. Sailing in the Golden Hind he achieved this, and then sailed across the Pacific Ocean in 1579, known then only to the Spanish and Portuguese. In 1577, Francis Drake set out on an expedition from England to plunder Spanish settlements in South America in search of gold and silver. James Lancaster commanded the first East India Company voyage in 1601 The official government machinery of the British Raj had assumed its governmental functions and absorbed its armies. The company was dissolved in 1874 as a result of the East India Stock Dividend Redemption Act enacted one year earlier, as the Government of India Act had by then rendered it vestigial, powerless, and obsolete. Following the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the Government of India Act 1858 led to the British Crown assuming direct control of India in the form of the new British Raj.ĭespite frequent government intervention, the company had recurring problems with its finances. ![]() Company rule in India effectively began in 1757 after the Battle of Plassey and lasted until 1858. ![]() The company eventually came to rule large areas of India, exercising military power and assuming administrative functions. The company also ruled the beginnings of the British Empire in India. Originally chartered as the "Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East-Indies", the company rose to account for half of the world's trade during the mid-1700s and early 1800s, particularly in basic commodities including cotton, silk, indigo dye, sugar, salt, spices, saltpetre, tea, and opium. The operations of the company had a profound effect on the global balance of trade, almost single-handedly reversing the trend of eastward drain of Western bullion, seen since Roman times. The EIC had its own armed forces in the form of the company's three Presidency armies, totalling about 260,000 soldiers, twice the size of the British army at the time. At its peak, the company was the largest corporation in the world. The company seized control of large parts of the Indian subcontinent, colonised parts of Southeast Asia and Hong Kong. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia), and later with East Asia. The East India Company ( EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. ![]()
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