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60 free East India Company trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The East India Company began as 218 London merchants with a fifteen-year monopoly on trade beyond the Cape of Good Hope and ended as the ruler of a subcontinent with an army twice the size of Britain's. This quiz covers the whole 274 years: Drake and the Spice Islands, Elizabeth I's charter of 31 December 1600, James Lancaster and the Red Dragon, the Amboyna setback, Sir Thomas Roe at Jahangir's court, Bombay arriving as a royal dowry, the Anglo-Mughal War, Henry Every's pirate haul, and the saltpetre and tea that made the money. The second half is the Company as a state: Clive and Plassey, the diwani of Bengal, the famine of 1770, the credit crash of 1772 and the tea that ended up in Boston harbour, sepoys and Enfield cartridges, the rebellion of 1857, the Government of India Act 1858, the last vestigial years managing tea for the government, and the London relics from East India House to Haileybury. Easy questions ask which country chartered it and what it traded; the expert tier asks for governors, acts and dates. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the East India Company, the Battle of Plassey, Robert Clive, the Boston Tea Party and the 1857 rebellion, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question. If you like this, try our quizzes on the British Empire, the Mughal Empire and Indian history.
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Q 01In which year was the East India Company founded?
1600
Elizabeth I granted the charter on 31 December 1600; the company lasted until 1874.
Q 02Which monarch granted the East India Company its founding charter?
Elizabeth I
The petition came from George, Earl of Cumberland, and 218 others.
Q 03What was its original chartered name in 1600?
Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East-Indies
The 1697 rival was the English Company; the 1708 merger produced the United Company.
Q 04For how many years did the original charter grant the company a monopoly on English trade east of the Cape of Good Hope?
Fifteen
Unlicensed traders faced forfeiture of ship and cargo and imprisonment at the royal pleasure.
Q 05Roughly how large were the company's three presidency armies at their peak?
About 260,000 soldiers
That was twice the size of the British Army at certain times.
Q 06Whose 1577-80 voyage to the Spice Islands, returning a 5,000 percent profit, helped inspire English trade with the East?
Francis Drake
Drake obtained cloves and nutmeg from Sultan Babullah in the Moluccas.
Q 07Which Portuguese carrack, captured in 1592, was the largest vessel ever seen in England and galvanised the East Indies trade?
Madre de Deus
Its rutter, or mariner's handbook, revealed the routes to China, India and Japan.
Q 08Who was named the company's first governor in the 1600 charter?
Thomas Smythe
Business was first transacted at the Nags Head Inn in Bishopsgate before East India House on Leadenhall Street.
Q 09Who commanded the company's first voyage in 1601, and aboard which ship?
James Lancaster on the Red Dragon
He seized a Portuguese carrack in the Malacca Straits and set up factories at Bantam and in the Moluccas.
Q 10The EIC's early struggles in the spice trade were mainly due to competition from which rival?
The Dutch East India Company
The Dutch stronghold in the islands drove the English to focus on India instead.
Q 11Which 1612 naval victory over the Portuguese, near Surat, encouraged the company to seek a foothold on the Indian mainland?
Swally
It was fought at Suvali in Gujarat.
Q 12Where was the company's first Indian factory established in 1611?
Masulipatnam
It was on the Andhra coast of the Bay of Bengal; Surat followed in 1615.
Q 13Which English ambassador negotiated trading rights for the company at the court of the Mughal Emperor Jahangir?
Sir Thomas Roe
Jahangir wrote to James I promising the English "free liberty without any restraint".
Q 21The 1757 battle that opened the way to company rule in Bengal was fought where?
Plassey
Robert Clive beat Nawab Siraj-ud-Daulah after bribing his commander Mir Jafar.
Q 22Whose betrayal of Nawab Siraj-ud-Daulah made the 1757 victory over him possible?
Mir Jafar
Clive promised to make him Nawab of Bengal in return.
Q 23What was Robert Clive's official position, which made him the founder of company rule in eastern India?
First British Governor of the Bengal Presidency
He is known as Clive of India and was made a baron.
Q 14Bombay came to England as part of whose dowry?
Catherine of Braganza
Portugal ceded it on her marriage to Charles II.
Q 15A Dutch attack on which company factory in 1623 pushed the English to abandon the Spice Islands for Bengal?
Amboyna
The company then spent a century cultivating the Mughal dynasty and trading peacefully.
Q 16How did the Anglo-Mughal War of 1686-1690 end for the company?
Complete defeat; it swore fealty to get its factories back
Its envoys had to prostrate themselves before Aurangzeb and pay a large indemnity.
Q 17The pirate Henry Every's 1695 capture of which Mughal treasure ship nearly ended English trade in India?
Ganj-i-Sawai
Its loot of up to 600,000 pounds is called the richest ship ever taken by pirates, and it triggered the first worldwide manhunt.
Q 18Which Mughal emperor's death in 1707 plunged Bengal into the anarchy the company exploited?
Aurangzeb
Delhi was soon routinely controlled by Maratha, Afghan or usurper armies.
Q 19Which powers did Charles II grant the company in a series of acts around 1670?
To mint money, command troops, make war and peace and exercise jurisdiction
These rights turned a trading firm into a proto-state.
Q 20What were the company's locally raised, European-trained soldiers called?
Sepoys
A few thousand disciplined sepoys with field cannon repeatedly beat far larger Mughal armies.
Q 24Clive's defence of which fort in 1751, with only about 500 men, made his name?
Arcot
Madras could spare him just 200 Europeans, 300 sepoys and three small cannons.
Q 25In 1765 Clive obtained a firman granting the company the diwani, or revenue rights, of which three regions?
Bengal, Bihar and Odisha
The grant came from the Mughal emperor Shah Alam and effectively handed the company Bengal.
Q 26The Great Bengal Famine under company rule in 1770 is estimated to have killed how many people?
10 million
The company used torture to extract taxes and reduced much of the population to poverty.
Q 27Which primary gunpowder ingredient did the company sell to the Crown "by the candle" in the 1670s?
Saltpetre
Bidding at those auctions ran as long as an inch of candle stayed alight.
Q 28Which Mughal emperor first extended hospitality to English traders in Bengal, the richest region of his empire, in 1634?
Shah Jahan
By 1717 customs duties for the English in Bengal had been waived entirely.
Q 29A rival "parallel" East India Company was floated by Parliament in which year, before the two merged in 1708?
1697
The old company's stockholders quickly bought 315,000 pounds of the new one and dominated it.
Q 30By 1720 roughly what share of British imports came from India, almost all through the company?
15%
The figure reasserted the influence of the company's parliamentary lobby.