Short answers, pulled from the story.
The East India Company received its royal charter from Queen Elizabeth I on the 31st of December 1600. This charter granted the corporation a monopoly on English trade with all countries east of the Cape of Good Hope and west of the Straits of Magellan for fifteen years.
A group including Stephen Soame, Thomas Smythe, and Richard Hakluyt met to discuss the venture on the 22nd of September 1599. They invested £30,133 and later secured the royal charter that established the Governor and Company of Merchants of London trading into the East Indies.
Following the death of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb in 1707, the company assumed direct control of Bengal and shifted its primary profit source to taxation. Factories became fortresses and administrative hubs for tax collectors, leading to events like the Great Bengal famine of 1770.
The company began selling opium to Chinese merchants in the 1770s which led to addiction outbreaks and the First Opium War starting in 1839. The Treaty of Nanjing in 1842 forced the Qing dynasty to allow British merchants to sell opium and ceded territory including Hong Kong to Britain.
Formal dissolution occurred on the 1st of June 1874 following the East India Stock Dividend Redemption Act 1873. Stockholders who did not agree to commute holdings had their stock compulsorily redeemed by payment of £200 for every £100 of stock held on the 30th of April 1874.