In 1600 the "Company of Merchants of London Trading to the East Indies" obtained a charter, and, in spite of Dutch and Portuguese opposition, soon gained a foothold on the Moluccas and the coast of Malabar, whence it extended in time its dominion to Surat, Bombay, Madras and Calcutta. Here they built forts and established their commerce. From these places the company pushed into the interior, until finally, after repeated struggles with the natives and European rivals, the whole of Hindostan came under English dominion. As its power increased, the company commenced to abuse shamefully the monopoly which it had been granted, by inaugurating a system of plunder and oppression which is perhaps without its equal in the annals of history. These growing abuses led to frequent revolts and seriously imperiled England's dominion in these territories. To remedy these evils, Parliament at the close of the seventeenth century annulled the charter of the company and declared the commerce with the East Indies open to all of the King's subjects. A number of small companies were formed, but in 1702 they all combined and organized the East India Company. Monopoly was again established, but the patience of the natives was exhausted, and England's interests in Hindostan were in a critical condition. At this juncture the East India Company adopted a policy of moderation, and this, together with the aid which the government gave to the company, enabled it to strengthen again its weakened commercial relations and to further enlarge its territory. But the temptation to abuse its power was too great for this strong corporation to be long resisted. Abuses again crept into its management and continued to grow until its charter was finally repealed. The policy adopted by Great Britain for the government of her American colonies during the eighteenth century was less rapacious, but scarcely more just than that pursued in her eastern possessions. To retain those colonies as commercial no less than as political dependencies, Parliament enacted laws compelling their people to trade with the mother country exclusively and laying restraint on their manufactures. But the American pioneers felt that they had brought with them across the ocean the rights of Englishmen; they objected to taxation without representation, and the men who for opinion's sake had left comfortable homes to brave upon a distant shore the dangers of frontier life were prepared, if necessary, to emphasize their objection by armed resistance. England, intent upon maintaining her barbaric system of discriminative duties and commercial monopolies, blindly attempted coercion, but the war which resulted wrested from the English crown its brightest jewel, and the War of 1812 established upon American soil the principle of industrial and commercial liberty.