With five acts, he gave it an amazing array of rights without responsibilities. By the 1670s, the company could mint its own coin, maintain its own army, wage war, make peace, acquire new territories and impose its own civil and criminal law—and all without any accountability, save to its shareholders. This was pure capitalism, unleashed for the first time in history. Combined with the gradual fragmentation of Mogul control, which had begun after Akbar’s death in 1605, it would prove to be almost unstoppable.
