It was in the year 1600 that the British Queen of the time Queen Elizabeth I gave a Royal Charter to the East India Company of England to travel to the Eastern part of the world, in order to conduct trade with those countries.
Subsequently, the East India Company arrived in India in the year 1608, docking their ships at Surat, one of the popular ports of India at the time. After waging several power struggles with those foreign powers already in India, like for example the Portuguese, the British East India Company was able to quickly establish trading posts and factories in some of the major cities of India. Soon enough, by the end of the seventeenth century, the British had firmly established themselves on Indian soil, and had started ruling the people of the Indian Sub-Continent.
Indians started rebelling towards the English, and in 1857, the First Mutiny was launched, followed by several others, headed by Mahatma Gandhi and other great leaders, until the English could take it no longer and agreed to ‘Quit India’. This happened in the year 1947, when India declared herself an independent nation. Therefore, the British ruled over India for 347 years.