British Empire/Catalogs
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Organisations
East India Company
A limited liability company that was granted a royal charter in 1600, giving it a monopoly of trade to the east of the Cape of Good Hope, and which was dissolved in 1874. It traded in cotton, silk, indigo dye, salt, saltpetre, tea and opium, mainly in India, and it raised a standing army of some 200,000 men which it used to gain political control of most of 18th century India. [1].