when did the dutch east india company end
Dutch East India Company The United East India Company, sometimes known as the United East Indies Company (Dutch: Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie; or Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie in modern spelling; abbreviated to VOC), better known to the English-speaking world as the Dutch East India Company or sometimes as the Dutch East Indies Company, was a multinational corporation that was founded in 1602 and became defunct in 1799. It was originally established as a chartered company to trade with India and Indianized Southeast Asian countries when the Dutch government granted it a 21-year monopoly on the Dutch spice trade. The VOC was an early multinational corporation in its modern sense. In the early 1600s, by widely issuing bonds and shares of stock to the general public,[note 5] the VOC became the world's first formally listed public company.[note 6] In other words, it was the first corporation to be ever actually listed on an official stock exchange.[note 7][6] The VOC was influential in the rise of corporate-led globalization in the early modern period. With its pioneering institutional innovations and powerful roles in world history, the company is considered by many to be the first major modern global corporation,[7][8] and at its height was the most valuable corporation ever.[9][10][11]
East India Company During its first century of operation, the focus of the company was trade, not the building of an empire in India. Company interests turned from trade to territory during the 18th century as the Mughal Empire declined in power and the East India Company struggled with its French counterpart, the French East India Company (Compagnie franÃ§aise des Indes orientales) during the Carnatic Wars of the 1740s and 1750s. The battles of Plassey and Buxar, in which the British defeated the Bengali powers, left the company in control of Bengal and a major military and political power in India. In the following decades it gradually increased the extent of the territories under its control, controlling the majority of the Indian subcontinent either directly or indirectly via local puppet rulers under the threat of force by its Presidency armies, much of which were composed of native Indian sepoys.