Imperial venture: The evolution of the British East India Company, 1763-1813

Europe's dominance in the study of the Revolutionary Era obscures the era's many important non-European effects. Equally, scholars of India neglect the important role European imperial rivalry had on the British conquest of India in particular during the Revolutionary Era. These four key factors drove the British East India Company's corporate evolution: the decline of the Mughal Empire, Anglo-French imperial rivalry, Parliamentary reform of the East India Company, and the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Between 1763 and 1813, these factors forced the British East India Company to undergo a radical and rapid transformation from private joint stock company to quasi-governmental institution. The aforementioned factors and their unforeseen consequences compelled the East India Company to develop many of the attributes of a state: an army, a taxation system, a judiciary, bureaucracy, and foreign relations. These factors also compelled the East India Company to conquer India and eliminate its corporate and local rivals. By 1805, the East India Company become the master of India and by 1813 it had established firm control over the Indian Ocean. By 1813, the British East India Company had become a peculiar hybrid, a corporate-state.