It essentially controlled India for more than a century, until the British government nationalized it in 1857. The East India Company was a business entity that was granted a charter by the British Crown to trade exclusively with the Indian subcontinent. It then turned around and fought the Opium Wars in order to secure a monopoly on opium trafficking. The East India Company reversed the Roman drain of wealth, which had occurred since the days of Alexander the Great, by shipping vast quantities of opium and Chinese tea to China. The East India Company was a giant that sucked the wealth of the subcontinent dry, almost single-handedly causing the Famine of 1769. The East India Company, a business set up to trade with India, was the first to bring British and Indian soldiers together in battle. It conquered large amounts of India in less than half a century, something the Victorians tried to cover up by saying the British conquered India, when in reality it was a privately held company. The East India Company was a for-profit corporation that existed solely to make money for its investors. The word loot, which originated in India, originally meant to plunder or steal, and was later adopted by the British to describe the plunder of India. Insights from Chapter 10 Insights from Chapter 1 Insights on William Dalrymple's The Anarchy Contents
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