Destruction of East India Company Factory

Date: February 26, 1775 • Location: Kudat, Malaysia

The British East India Company factory on Balambangan Island is destroyed by Moro pirates.

The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company that was founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed for Indian Ocean trade, initially with the East Indies, and later with East Asia. The company gained control of large parts of the Indian subcontinent and Saint Helena prior to 1834. At its peak, the company was the largest corporation in the world by various measures and had its own armed forces in the form of the company's three presidency armies, totalling about 260,000 soldiers, twice the size of the British Army at certain times.