The Company That Conquered India: Rise and Fall of the British East India Company

How did a London trading company with 125 shareholders end up ruling 200 million people? The British East India Company began on December 31, 1600, when Queen Elizabeth I signed a royal charter granting a spice-trade monopoly — and it ended 274 years later as the most powerful corporation in history, with a private army of some 260,000 soldiers, twice the size of Britain's own. This documentary traces the full arc: Robert Clive's impossible victory at the Battle of Plassey in 1757, the Diwani of Bengal that turned merchants into tax collectors, the Bengal famine of 1770, the Tea Act that helped spark the Boston Tea Party and the American Revolution, the opium trade that humiliated China, the corruption trials of Clive and Warren Hastings, and the great rebellion of 1857 that ended company rule and gave birth to the British Raj in 1858. The company itself was formally dissolved in 1874 — but its playbook of corporate power, private armies, and lobbying governments lives on in every modern multinational. An Empire of Money original documentary on business history, colonialism, and the first mega-corporation. Chapters: 00:00 Chapter One — The Charter 03:57 Chapter Two — Plassey 07:21 Chapter Three — The Private Army 10:16 Chapter Four — Tea and Treason 12:42 Chapter Five — The Trial 15:09 Chapter Six — The Rebellion 17:41 Chapter Seven — The End #EastIndiaCompany #BritishEmpire #BusinessHistory #Documentary #EmpireOfMoney #ColonialHistory #BattleOfPlassey #RobertClive #BostonTeaParty #IndianHistory #CorporateHistory #BritishRaj