"“I don't think Erik Prince has much idea about the EIC,” John Keay, who wrote The Honourable Company, a history of the corporation, wrote in an email. For most of its history, he noted, the company was a pure corporate concern. When it started taking over territory, the British government began regulating it more closely, appointing its top officers and establishing a board in London that helped run the company. In 1770, the company required a bailout from the British treasury. “Roughly from 1785 until its dissolution in 1858, the EIC was a government surrogate. For ‘achievements’ in India the government could claim the credit, and for failings in India the Company could be made a scapegoat. Would this appeal to Prince?” Keay said. And when the company was dissolved, the end came because of a major popular uprising against it, which led the British government to take over all operations, including the company’s private military. One further result was that all Indians became British subjects—imposing a vastly larger national involvement and liability on London, not to mention what it imposed on the Indians. “It seems to me that the Company's story is the very reverse of what [Prince] is proposing,” Keay said. “It makes the case for government intervention, not retraction.”"