Author: John Keay
Publisher: HarperCollins
Year: 1993
Language: English
Pages: 475
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0006380727
Description
The first accessible narrative history of the English East India Company which has appeared for some time. Keay recounts his story with skill and anecdotal lightness.
Over two centuries, the East India Company f\grew from a loose association of Elizabethan tradesmen into the Grandest Society of Merchants in the Universe - a huge commercial enterprise which controlled half the world's trade and also administered an embryonic empire. A tenth of the British exchequer's total revenue derived from customs receipts on the Company's UK imports; its armed forces exceeded those of most sovereign states. Without it there would have no British India and no British Empire.
John Keay reconstructs this epic of expansionist endeavor from the journals and records of the Company's employees; the first experimental voyages to the East; the earliest, often disastrous, settlements; the later, often inglorious wars; and the often venal administrations. The story sweeps from southern Africa to north-west America, and from the reign of Elizabeth I to that of Victoria, abounding in bizarre locations and roguish personalities. From Bombay to Singapore and Hongkong, the political geography of today is undeniably the creation of the Company.
MEDIA COMMENTS:
Lively and thoroughly literate. An outstandingly wise and balanced account. - Geographical Journal
Keay retells the story with skill and anecdotal lightness. Spices are aromatic, mosquitoes bite, the seas roar in Keay's fact-crammed book, and the narrative races as in a novel. - The Independent
Enough rumbustious adventure stories to shock and delight any armchair reader. - Financial Times
Contents
Acknowledgement and Author's Note
Preface
PART ONE: A QUIET TRADE 1600-1640
Islands of Spicerie
This Frothy Nation
Pleasant and Fruitfull Lands
Jarres and Brabbles
The Keye of All India
PART TWO: FLUCTUATING FORTUNES
These Frowning Times
A seat of Power and Trade
Fierce Engageings
Renegades and Rivals
Eastern Approaches
PART THREE: A TERRITORIAL POWER 1710-1760
The Dark Age
Outposts of Effrontery
One Man's Pirate
The Germ of an Army
The Famous Two Hundred Days
PART FOUR: A PARTING OF THE WAYS
Looking Eastward to the Sea
The Transfer of Power
Too Loyal, Too Faithful
Tea Trade Versus Free Trade
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index