Charter of 1600

On the last day of the year 1600, Queen Elizabeth I signed a document granting a group of London merchants a monopoly on trade with the East. Nobody signing it imagined it would end, three and a half centuries later, with a Republic of India and its own Constitution. But every single topic in this paper — every court, every charter, every reform — traces its authority back to that one royal charter.

In two minutes

The Charter of 1600 granted the East India Company a monopoly of trade with the East under royal authority, and while it gave the Company almost no judicial power of its own, it is the founding act of legislative authority this entire paper's history begins from.

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