East India Company (1600–1858)

Standalone card for the British East India Company: the canonical load-bearing instance of the Mercantile JSC class (machine:joint-stock-company-mercantile-1602), promoted to its own card because it satisfies ≥2 of the promotion criteria (distinct wallerstein trajectory from class; own ≥3-phase snapshot arc; referenced as target by ≥2 couplings on other atlas cards including british-empire-state-machine-1815). Chartered December 31 1600 by Elizabeth I (15-year monopoly on Asian trade). Operational grammar across three phases: (1) MM-Dawn 1600–1757: chartered monopoly over Indian Ocean and Southeast Asian trade; Surat factory 1612; Bombay acquired 1668 as Catherine of Braganza dowry; armed merchantmen + factor-and-supercargo networks extract spice, cloth, and silver rents; (2) MM-Day-early 1757–1813: Battle of Plassey 1757 → de facto Bengal sovereignty; Regulating Act 1773 + India Act 1784 introduce parliamentary oversight; Cornwallis Permanent Settlement 1793 locks in cadastral template for Bengal; company transitions from trade corporation to quasi-sovereign territorial-administrative apparatus; fiat_progress_credibility peaks; (3) MM-Day-late 1813–1858: Charter Act 1813 strips Indian-trade monopoly; 1833 strips China-trade monopoly; EIC becomes purely administrative agent; Opium Wars 1839–1842 (Hong Kong cession); Indian Mutiny / Sepoy Rebellion 1857 → Government of India Act 1858 dissolves EIC; governance transfers to Crown (Raj begins November 1 1858). The EIC's outputs are load-bearing: the Bengal opium–China trade finances British imperial expansion; the colonial land-survey and administrative template becomes the institutional DNA of British India; the sepoy army model prefigures Crown military logistics. In 2026 the EIC is historical (dissolved 1858) but its institutional byproducts are load-bearing forward couplings into DM platforms and post-colonial administrative forms. [STUB-targets] used for Indian Colonial Railway, Qing modernization, Foxconn, Mercantilist Trade Policy pending Batch 2 card authoring.