The Honourable Company
-
-
5.0 • 1 Rating
-
-
- $12.99
-
- $12.99
Publisher Description
A history of the English East India company.
During 200 years the East India Company grew from a loose association of Elizabethan tradesmen into "the grandest society of merchants in the universe". As a commercial enterprise it came to control half the world's trade and as a political entity it administered an embryonic empire. Without it there would have been no British India and no British Empire. In a tapestry ranging from Southern Africa to north-west America, and from the reign of Elizabeth I to that of Victoria, bizarre locations and roguish personality abound. From Bombay to Singapore and Hong Kong the political geography of today is, in some respects, the result of the Company. This book looks at the history of the East India Company.
About the author
John Keay is the author of four acclaimed histories: 'The Honourable Company', 'Last Post', about the imperial disengagement of the Far East; the two-volume 'Explorers of the Western Himalayas' and 'India: A History'. His books on India include 'India Discovered', 'Into India' and 'The Great Arc: The Dramatic Tale of How India was Mapped and Everest was Named'. John Keay is married with four children, lives in Scotland and is co-editor with Julia Keay of the 'Collins Encyclopaedia of Scotland'.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
For 213 years, beginning around 1700, the ``incorrigible pioneering'' of merchant traders of the East India Company furthered the ``peculiarly diffuse character'' of the British Empire. British author Keay tells an ambitious story with sweep and brio, encompassing the company's origins as a ``bane of bedraggled pioneers'' in search of spices in the remote Indonesian archipelago; its role in the 1690 founding of Calcutta (an episode of ``commercial greed and political mayhem''); and the opening up of China in 1700, which was to become the company's most profitable trade. Keay not only portays some of the adventurers and potentates who encountered one another but also grasps the details of trade, some more momentous than others: one missive from London to India mixed declarations of war with Spain and complaints about a bar bill. The company's monopoly charter was eventually broken not by rival traders but by British manufacturers wanting more overseas outlets for their products. If, as Keay notes, there are ``enough incomplete histories of the Company to justify a health warning,'' then this book is a salubrious contribution. Photos not seen by PW.
