No competition

The sun, it was said, never set on the British Empire during the heydays of its glory as an imperialist power. The jewel in the British Crown was, of course, the East India Company, which initially began as The Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies, following a royal charter issued by Elizabeth I in 1600. This later became shortened to simply the East India Company and also, colloquially, the Honourable John Company – despite the fact that, as its own board of directors frequently recognised in its 250 years of operations, its activities were often anything but honourable.

Nevertheless, the Company, a powerful engine manned by powerful men, brought out the best of adventurism, not just on the high seas but on land as well. The buccaneering style of its merchants and servants catapulted England from an also-ran European entity in the early 18th century to a first-class world power till the time of World War II. This group had subsequently scraped together the relatively small start-up capital of approximately 69,000 pounds sterling, by far the lowest of their continental competitors. This risky enterprise inadvertently gave birth to the first multinational company – one that went far beyond its trading activities, to administer Company Rule with powers of life and death over those it considered its subjects. Eventually, it controlled a significant chunk of the globe.