ABSTRACT
The organisation of the Company in India was naturally that suitable to a purely trading organisation. Each chief ‘factory’ or trading establishment was under the control of a President and a Council consisting of the senior servants of the Company in the factory. Communal life was an important feature of each chief factory. When the Company lost the monopoly of the Indian trade, both had been settled in a manner honourable to England and promising for India. In order to understand how this came about it is necessary to make a brief survey of the development of the Company’s government in India and of its relations to the British Government. India offered scope for patronage on an unlimited scale, and thinking men were profoundly worried lest it should become a major corrupting influence in the English parliamentary system. In 1781 a step towards greater control by the British Government over the affairs of the Company was taken.
