The History and Legacy of the British Empire's Most Famous Trading Companies across the World

Perhaps the most famous trade company in all of history, the East India Company served as one of the key players in the formation of the British Empire. From its origins as a trading company struggling to keep up with its superior Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish competitors to its tenure as the ruling authority of the Indian subcontinent to its eventual hubristic downfall, the East India Company serves as a lens through which to explore the much larger economic and social forces that shaped the formation of a global British Empire. As a private company that became a non-state global power in its own right, the East India Company also serves as a cautionary tale all too relevant to the modern world’s current political and economic situation.

After the Englishman Henry Hudson, under the aegis of the Dutch East India Company, sailed by Manhattan in 1609, he returned home with good news and bad news. Like the other explorers before him, he hadn’t been able to find a water route to the Orient. He had, however, returned with maps (confiscated by the English) and beaver pelts. With that, it became clear that the region around the bay that would take Hudson’s name was a very promising new territory for trade and settlement, which would become a serious bone of contention between the Dutch and the English for the rest of the century. In 1614, another Dutch East India merchant, Adriaen Block, entered through the narrows of the East River between Queens and Randall’s Island, a difficult and dangerous passage that later sank numerous ships and that Block named Hell’s Gate (Hellegat). The European world would know the name “Manhates” when Block returned to the Netherlands with new and improved maps.