India: Five Recruits to a British Indian military unit: 'Ummee Chund, Indur, Goolzaree, Bukhtawur and Juhaz'. Anonymous watercolour, c. 1815

The East India Company (also the East India Trading Company, English East India Company, and then the British East India Company) was an early English joint-stock company that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and China.

The oldest among several similarly formed European East India Companies, the Company was granted an English Royal Charter, under the name Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies, by Elizabeth I on 31 December 1600. It ceased to trade in 1857.

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