The East India Company
By 1800, the East India Company ruled one-fifth of the world and deployed an army larger than England's to protect its network of forts and trading posts. Like a sovereign state, it minted currency, collected taxes, and administered justice. Trading in spices, textiles, saltpeter, tea and opium, it became the world's largest company and charted the course of British colonial empire-building for two centuries. The East India Company In 1788, parliamentarian Edmund Burke called the East India Company "a state in the disguise of a merchant." By then, its trade in spices, textiles and opium [...]
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