BIRLA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY AND SCIENCE DEPARTMENT OF MANAGEMENT
BUSINESS STRUCTURE AND PROCESS Date: 11/08/2014
ID: 2014H149267P
First organization that changed the world: East India Company
The East India Company (EIC), originally chartered as the Governor and Company of Merchants
of London trading into the East Indies, and more properly called the Honorable East India
Company, was an English, and later (from 1707) British joint-stock company, formed to pursue
trade with the East Indian spice trade but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian
subcontinent, Qing Dynasty China, North-West Frontier Province and Baluchistan. The company
rose to account for half of the world's trade, particularly trade in basic commodities that
included cotton, silk, dye, salt, saltpeter, tea and opium. The modern world began on a freezing
New Year's Eve, in 1600, when Elizabeth I granted a company of 218 merchants a monopoly of
trade to the east of the Cape of Good Hope. Elizabeth also limited the liability of the EIC's
investors, including hers. This made the company the world's first limited liability corporation.
The Company's ships first arrived in India, at the port of Surat, in 1608. Sir Thomas Roe reached
the court of the Mughal Emperor, Jahangir, as the emissary of King James I in 1615, and gained
for the British the right to establish a factory at Surat. Gradually the British eclipsed the
Portugese and over the years they saw a massive expansion of their trading operations in India.
Numerous trading posts were established along the east and west coasts of India, and
considerable English communities developed around the three presidency towns of Calcutta,
Bombay, and Madras. In 1717, the Company achieved its hitherto most notable success when it
received royal dictate from the Mughal Emperor exempting the Company from the payment of
custom duties...