23. The modern Indian Navy has its roots in the East India Company
India has a long naval tradition, which existed before the arrival of the English, French, and Dutch, but the modern Indian Navy’s roots can be traced to the East India Company in the 1600s. In 1612 the EIC built a port facility at Suvali, a small village near Surat, to support a navy to protect commerce from piracy. The naval force was formalized as the Honourable East India Company’s Marine in September, 1612. The small navy was kept busy dealing with pirates along the coast and in river estuaries, and during its patrols, its officers, who were British employees of the EIC, charted much of the Indian and Chinese coasts.
In 1686, the navy had outgrown the port of Suvali, and the force’s headquarters was moved to Bombay and renamed the Bombay Marine. From 1824 – 1826 the Bombay Marine fought in the First Anglo-Burmese War, a conflict between the EIC and Burma, which ended in a victory for the EIC and territorial expansion in Burma. At the end of the war, which was not the end of EIC territorial expansion, the British East India Company – a private company – had its own army, its own navy, had conquered territory in its own name, and controlled half of the world’s trade, from an office building in London.