What if the chartered East India companies had gone differently?

Joint-stock companies with armies and monopolies become the vehicle of European expansion in Asia.

If it had gone differently: European trade with Asia stays a matter of small merchant convoys; no company-states, no gunboat empires.

The real history on Wikipedia ↗

Later turning points that leaned on the chartered East India companies. Change it in the game and the ripples reach all of these.

1. 1780The Industrial Revolution. Without it, Growth stays flat and Malthusian; most people alive in 1900 live about as their great-grandparents did.
2. 1868The Meiji Restoration. Without it, Japan stays closed and agrarian; the idea that a non-Western state can industrialise fast has no example.
3. 1870The first globalisation. Without it, The world economy stays a patchwork of regions; no belle-époque boom, and no 1914 shock when it unwinds.