ABSTRACT
The East India Company thereby is transforms from an enterprise primarily serving and protecting the commercial interests of presidencies along coastal India and other posts in Asia to a territorial governor exercising the powers of state in association with its mercantile responsibilities. The discrete and abrupt change in the fortunes of the Company marked the start of British imperial rule in India. The Mughal empire the Company subsequently displaces is hardly a historical episode, lasting as it did from the start of Akbar's reign to the death of Shah Alam. The East India Company is a peculiarly English institution, an amalgam of the commercial drive of the middle classes and the developing tradition of constitutional government as both were affects by British expansion. The idea of a permanently settled tax agreement between governors of the Company and owners of land in Bengal developed gradually in the controversies the matter among the Company's servants and the directors in the home office.
