This is notwithstanding the fact that by the 1680s, the Company was seen as an instrument for the creation of a British Empire in Bharat, which resulted in the Charter of 1683, giving the Company the complete powers to ‘declare and make peace and war with any of the heathen nations of Asia, Africa and America within the charter limits, to raise, arm, train, and muster such military forces as seemed requisite and necessary, and to execute martial law for the defence of their forts, places, and plantations against foreign invasion or domestic insurrection or rebellion’ [emphasis added].
