Minutes of the East India Company's Directors and Proprietors

The Court Minutes constitute the central record of the business transacted at meetings of the Court of Directors and of the General Court of Proprietors. The Minutes follow the pattern of annual elections to the Court of Directors with the administrative year running April to April. The minutes of the General Courts of Proprietors are included in the same volumes as the minutes of the Court of Directors up to April 1833 (IOR/B/185), and thereafter in a separate series of General Court Minutes (IOR/B/255-273). Both sets of minutes end in 1858 when the East India Company's executive functions were transferred to a Secretary of State for India operating through the newly created India Office. Before October 1807, the Court Minutes also include copies of dissents entered by individual directors against the orders and resolutions passed by the Court as a whole. Later dissents appear in the separate series Appendix to Court Minutes: Dissents (IOR/B/237-246). For most of the seventeenth century, the volumes of Court Minutes also contain minutes of committees in the modern sense, that is, groups of directors appointed to consider and deal with specific aspects of administration (see for instance IOR/B/29). From the 1680s, the minutes of such committees were normally recorded separately from the minutes of the Court - see IOR/D General Committees and Offices. From 1695 (IOR/B/41) the Court Minutes have lists of the directors appointed in April or May to serve on committees for the following year. The Court of Directors recorded its business in a regular pattern, listing letters read or received; notes of action taken, including reference of matters to committees of the Court; warrants signed for payment; reports and recommendations submitted by the committees; drafts of letters to be sent out after approval.

On 31 December 1600 Queen Elizabeth I granted a charter to 'The Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies' which conferred the monopoly of English trade in the whole of Asia and the Pacific. In 1698 a 'New Company' was chartered in opposition to the 'Old Company', adopting the name 'The English Company trading to the East Indies'. In 1702, a Court of Managers was established to oversee the amalgamation of the two companies, which finally took place in 1709 to form 'The United Company of Merchants of England trading to the East Indies'. The name 'East India Company' was officially adopted after the Charter Act of 1833 brought about the cessation of all the Company's commercial activities.The 'Old', 'New' and United Companies operated with similar administrative structures, with a body of proprietors (stockholders) electing an executive body known as the Court, which consisted of 24 directors. The meetings of the directors were known as Courts of Committees until April 1699 (B/41), a committee in this sense being an individual director to whom the day to day management of the Company was committed, jointly with the Governor and 23 others according to the various charters granted from 1600 to 1698.

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