Charter Acts from 1773 to 1853

The East India Company arrived in India to trade in cloth and spices. By the 1770s it was collecting land revenue in Bengal, running courts, and going bankrupt while its servants went home rich. Parliament in London had never governed an inch of Indian soil, and suddenly it had to decide how to control a company that behaved like a state. The five Charter Acts between 1773 and 1853 are that decision, made in instalments, each one clawing a little more power away from the Company and a little closer to the Crown.

In two minutes

Each Charter Act renewed the Company's trading charter and, in the same breath, took away one more piece of its independence — until by 1853 it governed India with almost no trade left to justify governing at all.

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