The East India Company wasn’t actually totally dissolved in 1858.

True, after the Government of India Act of 1858, the Crown had taken over all its administrative powers, its territories, and its armed forces. But the Company continued to exist in what historians have called a “vestigial” or “zombie” state until 1874.

From 1858, the Company's Board of Directors was replaced by a new government post, the Secretary of State for India. Shortly after, its administrative functions were shifted across London, from its office in Leadenhall Street to the government’s India Office in Whitehall. The Governor-General's advisory council was replaced by the Council of India, which advised the Secretary of State.

The role of Governor-General of India itself was expanded to become Viceroy and Governor-General of India - the term Viceroy denoting that the holder of the post was a direct representative of the Crown. Charles Canning, who’d been Governor-General since 1856, was kept in post during this transition, and remained there until 1862.

The Company’s headquarters, the grand East India House, was sold off and later demolished in 1861. Most of its employees were pensioned off, some of them very generously.

The philosopher John Stuart Mill is an interesting example. He was a Company man if there ever was one, having worked there since 1823 when he was 17. In 1858, his redundancy package (in modern parlance) included an annual pension of £1,500 (about £130,000 or $164,000 in today’s money), and a gold inkstand.

Mill was offered a position on the Council of India, but turned it down because he couldn’t countenance the new system of government on the subcontinent.

Despite all this, the directors continued to meet, and the Company continued to pay its annual dividend. This began to wind down in 1873, but there remained the issue of compensating the shareholders - and they were compensated generously. One of the deals on offer, alongside various annuity arrangements, was £200 cash for every £100 of stock held. These apparently munificent offers were paid for, in essence, by the Indian taxpayer.

Shareholders met for the last time in December 1873. The last ever dividend was paid out the following April. The Court of Directors had its final meeting at 1:30pm on 13th May. And on 1 June 1874, after close to three centuries of existence, the British East India Company was no more.

The Company persisted as a shell for so long after 1858 because of the deal it had made with the British government in the 1830s. Its charter was renewed by an act of Parliament every 20 years and in the Government of India Act 1833, also known as the Charter Act, Parliament had persuaded the company to hand over its commercial apparatus to the state and become a purely administrative entity.

In return, the government pledged to extend its charter for another 20 years, guarantee its dividend for 20 years beyond that, and raise that guaranteed dividend from 10% to 10.5%. The 1833 act is also where the terms of the final stock buyout (£200 per £100 of stock) originate from. Incidentally, the dividend and the interest on the Company’s enormous debts were again paid for the Indian taxpayers.

After 1834, the East India Company was essentially a giant pension scheme for its investors, backed by the British state and paid for by Indian taxpayers. It had no commercial purpose and it was primarily a managing agency for the British government in India, which allowed it to exercise power without responsibility.

The Mutiny of 1857 and the subsequent outrage in Britain made this arrangement untenable, but it was more or less inevitable that the state would cut out the middle man eventually, and events simply accelerated this trend.