Two hundred and thirty six years ago, on this day in 1784, an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain was passed specifically to bring the East India Company's rule in India under the control of the British Government. By 1773, the East India Company was in dire financial straits. So, it sought assistance from the British Government which had by now known too well that the company was in the red for rampant corruption and nepotism by its officials. So, a Regulating Act in 1773 was passed to take control of the company activities. However the Act did not give power to the British Government to rule India.

The idea of the 1784 Act was passed only to improve the previous law, which failed to prevent corruption by way of nepotism and bribery; effect speedier ‘Trial of corruption-accused persons' in the East Indies. This Act was also known as Pitt’s Act after the serving British Prime Minister William Pitt, the Younger. The Act provided for a Board of Control to govern British India jointly, the Crown holding the ultimate authority.

Incidentally, by the late 1400s, Spanish explorers had begun colonising the Americas successfullly amassing huge wealth. So, Britain reduced Spain’s power through private entrepreneurial explorers who were sea explorers permitted by the British Monarch to raid and steal from Spanish ships to split the proceeds between them. Sailors who defied the government or who kept all of the proceeds for themselves, were branded as ‘pirates'.

In 1562, English sailor John Hawkins stole a Portuguese slave ship off the west coast of Africa and sold the enslaved Africans in the Caribbean. Subsequently, England built up a navy and colonised some sovereign lands in the Caribbean. The British surpassed the Spanish and Portuguese in the sale of kidnapped African people. The slave trade also benefitted the British economy as countless related commercial ventures came up including shipbuilding, banking and importing. Bristol and Liverpool flourished due to the slave trade. New companies like the Royal African Company came up to transport slaves from West Africa to the Caribbean particularly Barbados as the centre for excellent sugar farming there. Sugar plantation was a very labour-intensive process. Hence, more and more African slaves were shipped across the Atlantic. The English plantation owners made vast profits from sugar and tobacco trade and the money was reinvested in expanding similar businesses.

Interestingly, competition for trade in the East Indies was much fiercer for several reasons: There were already three major empires in East Asia namely the Ottoman Empire, the Mughal Empire and the Chinese Empire that controlled the trade of cloths and spices. And the Dutch East Indies Company was already established in Indonesia with complete control of the valuable spice trade. So, the East India Company focused its attentions on trade with the Mughal Empire and succeeded in establishing trading posts on the coast of eastern India. These small trading posts would soon become the platform for the British Empire in India. It must be mentioned here that only in 1717, little-known Mughal Emperor ‘Farrukhsiyar' issued royal Farman (charter) granting the company important trading facilities in Bengal which included the permission of export and import British goods in Bengal without paying taxes. England badly needed raw materials that her colonies could supply easily. Lumber, wool, iron, cotton, tobacco, rice and indigo were among the products needed in England. British manufacturers would pick the materials at hopelessly negligible prices and sell the value-added products back in the markets in the Mughal Empire. Thus, India lost at both ends. Its valuable raw materials were virtually stolen and the local manufacturing outfits were forced to close shop.

The East India Company started as a monopolistic trading body, gradually became involved in politics and acted as an agent of British imperialism in India from the early 18th century to the mid-19th century.

Around this time, the American War of Independence had resulted in the loss of thirteen American colonies giving a severe blow to the British trade. So, the British had shifted focus to India.

The 1784 Act provided for not more than six Privy Counsellors, including a Secretary of State and the Chancellor of the Exchequer to be appointed "Commissioners for the Affairs of India". Of these, not fewer than three formed a Board to execute the powers under the Act. The board was presided over by the president, who soon effectively became the Minister for the Affairs of the East India Company. Section 3 of the Act provided that the president was to be the Secretary of State; or failing that, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, or failing that, the most senior of the other Commissioners. The Act stated that the board would henceforth ‘superintend, direct and control' the government of the company's possessions, the acts and operations relating to the civil, military and revenues of the company. The board was supported by a Chief Secretary. The governing council of the company was reduced to three members. The Governors of Bombay and Madras were also deprived of their independence. The Governor-General was given greater powers in matters of war, revenue and diplomacy. By a supplementary Act passed in 1786, Lord Cornwallis was appointed the second Governor-General of Bengal, soon to be elevated to become the de jure ruler of British India under the authority of the Board of Control and the Court of Directors. The Constitution set up by the ‘Pitt's India Act' did not undergo any major changes until the end of the company's rule in India in 1858 after the most shocking jolt given to the British by the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857.

The East India Company eventually lost the Indian empire to the British Crown; and, effectively, the crown ruled India only for only 89 years, not for 200 years as is generally believed.

Though there is no reason to celebrate or observe the fateful date of August 13, 1784, it is certainly important to know how a great nation was enslaved because of a weak and gullible Mughal Emperor Farrukhsiyar, who had no real control over the vast Indian land and people like the legendary Mughal Emperor Akbar who had kept all communities happy by his great governing skills and secular principles.