THE EAST INDIA COMPANY has fascinated and divided historians, yet its importance for the development of the British Indian Empire is one of the few aspects of the Company's history on which there is some measure of consensus. Founded in London in 1600 as a monopolistic joint stock venture to engage in speculative trade with the Far East, the Company struggled through its first 150 years of existence. There were major problems both at home and abroad, notably the effects of civil war in the 1640s and, more seriously, the disintegration of the Mughal Empire from the late seventeenth century onwards. The latter development, however, precipitated major changes in the Company. Forced to defend itself against some of the new Indian states emerging from the fragmenting Mughal Empire, as well as older European rivals, the Company became a military as well as a commercial organisation. A turning point came in 1757, when hostilities with Sirajudaullah, Nawab of Bengal, prompted the annexation of that province by the Company. It set in train a process of expansion which by 1830 saw the East India Company establish itself as effective ruler of India. By then, recurrent financial crises had forced the Company to solicit the help of the British state, which was forthcoming, but at the price of government control over the organisation.