English East India Company (EEIC)

On 31 December 1600 Queen Elizabeth I granted the East India Company the monopoly to trade with the eastern world for 15 years through a Charter. It was a private company run a board of Directors. The company set up a trading depot,Known as a 'factory' in Surat. The company then sought permission from the Mughal emperor Jahangir to set up factories in all parts of the empire. This becomes clear from the Letter Jahangir Wrote to James I, king of England ,in 1617 after meeting Roe at his court:

The letter of love and friendship which you sent and the presents,token of your good affections toward me,i have received by hand of your ambassador , Sir Thomas Roe ....and have accepted them with great joy and delight....i have givem my general command to all the Kingdoms and ports of my dominions to receve all the merchants of the English as the subjects of my friend...i have commanded all my governers and captains to give them freedom answerable to their own desires; to sell ,buy , and to transport in to their country at their pleasure.

Thus,Jahangir granted them permissiom to trade in his territories at surat ( in Gujarat ) on the west coast and Hugli ( in West Bengal ) in the east . These and other locations on the peninsula became centres of international trade in spices ,cotton , sugar, raw silk ,saltpetre ,calico and indigo.
In 1662,EEIC got the island of Bombay (Mumbai) from King Charles II , who had received it as a wedding gift when he married a Portuguese princess. Soon they established factories in Ahmedabad , Agra, masulipatnam ,Madras , Patna, Balasore , Dacca and Hughli. In 1698 they acquired three villages that grew into calcutta . The company fortified Bombay, Madras and Calcutta. From the beginning their objective was not only to have free trade in India but also to maintain a monopoly . For this they were ready to use force against the Indian rulers and their foreign rivels. The British never neglected their even during times of war and often cleverly used diplomacy and fraud The trading company was satisfied in the beginning with bringing goods and precious metal into India and selling Indian textiles and spices in Europe , as there was increasing constantly and so the Indian rulers encouraged EEIC's factories in India.