page_title: East India Company
section_title: Indian Rebellion and disestablishment
hierarchical_section_title: East India Company / Indian Rebellion and disestablishment
context_page_description: The East India Company, also known as the Honourable East India Company, East India Trading Company, the English East India Company or the British East India Company, and informally known as John Company, Company Bahadur, or simply The Company, was an English and later British joint-stock company. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies, and later with Qing China. The company ended up seizing control of large parts of the Indian subcontinent, colonised parts of Southeast Asia and Hong Kong after the First Opium War, and maintained trading posts and colonies in the Middle Eastern Gulf called Persian Gulf Residencies.
  Originally chartered as the "Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East-Indies", the company rose to account for half of the world's trade, particularly in basic commodities including cotton, silk, indigo dye, salt, spices, saltpetre, tea, and opium. The company also ruled the beginnings of the British Empire in India.
context_section_description: The Indian Rebellion of 1857 (also known as the Indian Mutiny or Sepoy Mutiny) resulted in widespread devastation in India: many condemned the East India Company for permitting the events to occur. In the aftermath of the Rebellion, under the provisions of the Government of India Act 1858, the British Government nationalised the company. The Crown took over its Indian possessions, its administrative powers and machinery, and its armed forces.
  The company remained in existence in vestigial form, continuing to manage the tea trade on behalf of the British Government (and the supply of Saint Helena) until the East India Stock Dividend Redemption Act 1873 came into effect, on 1 January 1874. This Act provided for the formal dissolution of the company on 1 June 1874, after a final dividend payment and the commutation or redemption of its stock. The Times commented on 8 April 1873:
  It accomplished a work such as in the whole history of the human race no other trading Company ever attempted, and such as none, surely, is likely to attempt in the years to come.
caption: Capture of the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar and his sons by William Hodson in 1857
exif: {"Image Software": "Picasa", "Image DateTime": "2012:09:29 20:04:00", "Image Artist": "Picasa", "Image Tag 0x1001": "1499", "Image Tag 0x1002": "1037", "Image ExifOffset": "2206", "Image XPAuthor": "Picasa", "Image Padding": "[]", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2012:09:29 20:03:15", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2012:09:29 20:03:15", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "00", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "00", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "948", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "618", "EXIF ImageUniqueID": "c962c673cd9cb0a6c65ea01fd5171540", "EXIF Padding": "[]"}