<P> 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 française des Indes orientales) during the Carnatic Wars of the 1740s and 1750s . The Battle of Plassey and Battle of Buxar, in which the British, led by Robert Clive, defeated the Indian 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, ruling the whole 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 . </P> <P> By 1803, at the height of its rule in India, the British East India company had a private army of about 260,000--twice the size of the British Army . The company eventually came to rule large areas of India with its private armies, exercising military power and assuming administrative functions . Company rule in India effectively began in 1757 and lasted until 1858, when, following the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the Government of India Act 1858 led to the British Crown's assuming direct control of the Indian subcontinent in the form of the new British Raj . </P> <P> Despite frequent government intervention, the company had recurring problems with its finances . It was dissolved in 1874 as a result of the East India Stock Dividend Redemption Act passed one year earlier, as the Government of India Act had by then rendered it vestigial, powerless, and obsolete . The official government machinery of British India had assumed its governmental functions and absorbed its armies . </P> <P> Soon after the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, London merchants presented a petition to Queen Elizabeth I for permission to sail to the Indian Ocean . Permission was granted, and on 10 April 1591 three ships sailed from Torbay around the Cape of Good Hope to the Arabian Sea on one of the earliest English overseas Indian expeditions . One of them, Edward Bonaventure, then sailed around Cape Comorin to the Malay Peninsula and returned to England in 1594 . </P>

When did the rule of east india company came to an end