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For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co. UK forward slash radio for I hope

you enjoy the program. Hello I did speak its influence stretched from Western

India to Eastern China via the furthest reaches of the Indonesian archipelago.

It had a fleet of 130, 1,200 ton ships, commanded an army of almost 200,000 troops, and came to

dominate the Indian subcontinent. It funded governments,

toppled princes and generated spectacular amounts of money from trading in

textiles, drugs and spices. But it wasn't an empire, it wasn't even a state. It was a trading company,

the East India Company, founded in 1600. It lasted for 258 years before the British

state gained full control of its activities.

In that time it had redrawn the map of India, provoked an empire into existence, and

reinvented the fashions and foodstuffs of Britain.

But how did the East India Company become so powerful? How did it change

both India and Britain? And how was the idea of a company running a country ever accepted

by the British Crown? We need me to discuss the East India India Company are Linda Collie, Professor of History at the

London School of Economics, Hugh Bowen, senior lecturer in economic and social history at the University

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