Editing East India Company (section)

==== Expansion in present day South Asia ====
{{see also|List of Anglo-Indian wars}}
The company, which benefited from the imperial patronage, soon expanded its commercial trading operations. It eclipsed the Portuguese [[Estado da Índia]], which had established bases in [[Goa]], [[Chittagong]], and [[Bombay]]; Portugal later ceded Bombay to England as part of the [[dowry]] of [[Catherine of Braganza]] on her marriage to King [[Charles II of England|Charles II]]. The East India Company also launched a joint attack with the Dutch [[United East India Company]] (VOC) on Portuguese and Spanish ships off the coast of China that helped secure EIC ports in China,<ref>{{cite journal |title=Gabriel Tatton's Maritime Atlas of the East Indies, 1620–1621: Portsmouth Royal Naval Museum, Admiralty Library Manuscript, MSS 352 |first=Sarah |last=Tyacke |author-link=Sarah Tyacke |journal=Imago Mundi |volume=60 |issue=1 |year=2008 |pages=39–62 |doi=10.1080/03085690701669293|s2cid=162239597 | issn = 0308-5694 }}</ref> independently attacking the Portuguese in the [[Persian Gulf Residency|Persian Gulf Residencies]] primarily for political reasons.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Chaudhuri |first=K. N. |year=1999 |title=The English East India Company: The Study of an Early Joint-stock Company 1600-1640 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Dyn3oh06ue8C&pg=PA64 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |isbn=9780415190763}}</ref> The company established [[trading post]]s in [[Surat]] (1619) and [[Chennai|Madras]] (1639).<ref name="Cadell1956">{{cite journal |last1=Cadell |first1=Patrick |title=The Raising of the British Indian Army |journal=Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research |date=1956 |volume=34 |issue=139 |pages=96, 98 |jstor=44226533}}</ref> By 1647, the company had 23 factories and settlements in India, and 90 employees.<ref>{{cite book |last=Woodruff |first=Philip |author-link=Philip Mason |year=1954 |title=The Men Who Ruled India: The Founders |url=https://archive.org/details/menwhoruledindia0001unse/page/55/mode/1up |volume=1 |publisher=St. Martin's Press |page=55}}</ref> Many of the major factories became some of the most populated and commercially influential cities in Bengal, including the walled forts of [[Fort William, India|Fort William]] in Bengal, [[Fort St George]] in Madras, and [[Bombay Castle]].{{citation needed|date=May 2023}}

The first century of the Company, despite its original profits coming primarily from piracy in the [[Maluku Islands|Spice Islands]] between competing European powers and their companies,<ref name="Dalrymple2019">{{Cite book |last=Dalrymple |first=William |title=The anarchy: the relentless rise of the East India Company |date=2019 |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing |isbn=978-1-63557-433-3 |location=London (GB)}}</ref> saw the East India Company change focus after suffering a major setback in 1623 when their factory in [[Amboyna massacre|Amboyna]] in the Moluccas was attacked by the Dutch. This compelled the company to formally abandon their efforts in the Spice Islands, and turn their attention to Bengal where, by this time, they were making steady, if less exciting, profits.<ref name="Dalrymple2019"/> After gaining the indifferent patronage of the [[Mughal Empire]], whose cities were 'the megacities of their time' and whose wealth was unrivaled outside of Asia in the 17th century,<ref name="Dalrymple2019"/> the Company's first century in the Mughal-ruled areas was spent cultivating their relationship with the Mughal Dynasty, and conducting peaceful trade at great profit. At first it should be said the EIC was drawn into the Mughal system, acting as a kind of vassal to Mughal authority in present-day Bangladesh: it was from this position that the Company would ultimately outplay and outmanoeuvre all competing powers in the region, to eventually use that very system to hold power itself.<ref name="Dalrymple2019"/> What started as trading posts on undesirable land were developed into sprawling factory complexes with hundreds of workers sending exotic goods to England and managing protected points to export English finished goods to local merchants. The Company's initial rise in Bengal and successes generally came at the expense of competing European powers through the art of currying favours and well-placed bribes, as the Company was matched at every step with French expansion in the region (whose [[Louis XIV's East India Company|equivalent company]] carried substantial royal support). Throughout the entire century the company only resorted to force against the Mughals once, with terrible consequences.<ref name="Dalrymple2019"/> The [[Anglo-Mughal war (1686–1690)]] was a complete defeat, ending when the EIC effectively swore fealty to the Mughals to get their factories back.

The East India Company's fortunes changed for the better in 1707 when Bengal and other regions under Mughal rule fell into anarchy after the death of the Mughal Emperor [[Aurangzeb]].<ref name="Dalrymple2019"/> A series of large-scale rebellions, and the collapse of the Mughal taxation system led to the effective independence of virtually all of the pre-1707 Mughal fiefs and holdings, with their capital Delhi routinely under the control of Maratha, Afghan, or usurper generals' armies. The EIC was able to take advantage of this chaos, slowly assuming direct control of the province of [[Bengal]], and fighting [[Carnatic wars|numerous wars against the French]] for control of the east coast of the subcontinent. The Company's position in the Mughal court as it fell apart made it possible to sponsor various powerful people on the subcontinent as they individually contended with others, steadily amassing more land and power in India to themselves.{{Citation needed|date=June 2024}}

In the 18th Century, the primary source of the Company's profits in Bengal became taxation in conquered and controlled provinces, as the factories became fortresses and administrative hubs for networks of tax collectors that expanded into enormous cities. The Mughal Empire was the richest in the world in 1700, and the East India Company tried to strip it bare for a century thereafter. Dalrymple calls it "the single largest transfer of wealth until the Nazis."<ref name="Dalrymple2019" /> What was in the 17th century the production capital of the world for textiles was forced to become a market for British-made textiles. Statues, jewels, and various other valuables were moved from the palaces of Bengal to the townhouses of the English countryside. Bengal in particular suffered the worst of Company tax farming, highlighted by the [[Great Bengal famine of 1770]].<ref name="Dalrymple2019" />

The primary tool of expansion for the company was the Sepoy. The [[Sepoy]]s were locally raised with European training and equipment, who changed warfare in present-day South Asia. Mounted forces and their superior mobility had been king on the region's battlefields for a thousand years, with cannon so well integrated that the Mughals fought with cannon mounted on elephants; all were no match to line infantry with decent discipline supported with field cannon. Repeatedly, a few thousand company sepoys fought vastly larger Mughal forces numerically and came out victorious. Afghan, Mughal and Maratha factions started creating their own European-style forces, often with French equipment, as the chaos intensified and the stakes were raised. Ultimately, the company won out, generally through as much diplomacy and state-craft as through fraud and deception. The gradual rise of the East India Company within the Mughal network culminated in the [[Second Anglo-Maratha War]], in which the Company successfully ousted the Maratha, the Empire's official protectors, at the high water point in their rise to power, and installed a young Mughal Prince as Emperor, with the Company as the de jure protectors of the Empire from their position of direct control in Bengal. This relationship was repeatedly strained as the Company continued its expansion and exploitation, however it lasted in some form until 1858, when the last Mughal Emperor was exiled as the Company was disbanded and its assets were taken over by the British Crown.<ref name="Dalrymple2019" />

In 1634, the Mughal emperor [[Shah Jahan]] extended his hospitality to English traders to [[Bengal]], the richest region of the empire,<ref>{{cite web|url=https://theprint.in/pageturner/excerpt/east-india-company-sent-a-diplomat-to-jahangir-all-the-mughal-emperor-cared-about-was-beer/281255/|title=East India Company sent a diplomat to Jahangir & all the Mughal Emperor cared about was beer|first=William|last=Dalrymple|website=[[ThePrint]] |date=24 August 2019|access-date=24 August 2019|archive-date=24 August 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190824144031/https://theprint.in/pageturner/excerpt/east-india-company-sent-a-diplomat-to-jahangir-all-the-mughal-emperor-cared-about-was-beer/281255/|url-status=live}}</ref> and in 1717 customs duties were completely waived for the English in Bengal. By then, the Company's mainstay businesses were in cotton, silk, opium, [[indigo dye]], [[Potassium nitrate|saltpetre]] and tea. Meanwhile, the Dutch, the Company's most aggressive competitors, had expanded their monopoly of the spice trade in the [[Straits of Malacca]] by ousting the Portuguese in 1640–1641. With reduced Portuguese and Spanish influence in the region, the EIC and VOC entered a period of intense competition, resulting in the [[Anglo-Dutch wars]] of the 17th and 18th centuries. The British were also interested in trans-Himalayan trade routes, as they would create access to untapped markets for British manufactured goods in Tibet and China.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=English |first=Richard |date=1985 |title=Himalayan State Formation and the Impact of British Rule in the Nineteenth Century |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3673223 |journal=Mountain Research and Development |volume=5 |issue=1 |pages=61–78 |doi=10.2307/3673223 |jstor=3673223 |issn=0276-4741}}</ref> This economic interest was showcased by the [[Anglo-Nepalese war|Anglo-Nepalese war (1814–1816).]]