The Company had always needed powerful friends at Court and in Government to keep its trading monopoly.

But the new ‘nabobs’ of the Company’s service were returning with fortunes questionably made and as large as those of the landed aristocracy. The Establishment had had enough.

Parliament set out to curb Company rule in India.

In 1773 a Regulating Act made Calcutta the seat of government under a Governor General. The India Act of 1784 set up a Parliamentary Board of Commissioners for the Affairs of India. By 1813 the Company’s monopoly of Asian trade was limited to China. By 1833 even that was abolished.

After 231 years the Company’s trading days were over.