The book charts in detail successive voyages by members of the Larkins family, who were leading owners of East India Company ships, showing what it was like to sail to and trade with India in this period. It provides a great deal of material on trade, warfare, developments in seamanship and navigation, the opening up of trade to China, and much more.
Provides a detailed picture of the lives of the commanders and those around them, both at home and at sea. An original and evocative window onto the lives of men who bridged the two worlds of eighteenth century Europe and the Far East.' Professor Nicholas Rodger. This book represents a major contribution to our knowledge and understanding of the East Indian maritime world of the European trading companies. The Dutch East India Company, which ruled large and important parts of what is now Indonesia, and which controlled the highly lucrative trade from the Dutch East Indies to Europe, much of it a monopoly trade in pepper and other spices, was in this period larger and better established than its British counterpart. The book reconstructs and explores the careers of the highlyimportant and influential commanders of the Dutch East Indiamen, the ships which plied the trade routes between the East Indies and the Netherlands. It covers the company's system of examinations, how mates and masters acquired their navigational knowledge, how they lived their lives at sea and on land, and how, making use of the enormous opportunities for private trade, they were able to make substantial fortunes and climb the social ladder. The book contains a wealth of material on the social history of the commanders and those around them, both at home and at sea. JAAP R. BRUIJN is Professor Emeritus of Maritime History at Leiden University. He is one of the leadingmaritime historians in the Netherlands.
The East India Company at Home, 1757–1857 explores how empire in Asia shaped British country houses, their interiors and the lives of their residents. It includes chapters from researchers based in a wide range of settings such as archives and libraries, museums, heritage organisations, the community of family historians and universities. It moves beyond conventional academic narratives and makes an important contribution to ongoing debates around how empire impacted Britain. The volume focuses on the propertied families of the East India Company at the height of Company rule. From the Battle of Plassey in 1757 to the outbreak of the Indian Uprising in 1857, objects, people and wealth flowed to Britain from Asia. As men in Company service increasingly shifted their activities from trade to military expansion and political administration, a new population of civil servants, army officers, surveyors and surgeons journeyed to India to make their fortunes. These Company men and their families acquired wealth, tastes and identities in India, which travelled home with them to Britain. Their stories, the biographies of their Indian possessions and the narratives of the stately homes in Britain that came to house them, frame our explorations of imperial culture and its British legacies.
This critically-commented source edition contains the commercial directions, merchant diary and naval log of four East India Company ships, which sailed from London to Canton, China in 1723, as well as the travelogue of another contemporary trader who sailed from Ostend. It highlights the roles of cooperation and competition in shaping the relations between these and other European companies as well as the everyday lives of European merchants and mariners. The edition thus sheds new light on the history of the East Indies trade during the eighteenth century and its role in encouraging early modern globalization.
This book presents the economic history of the English East India Company’s trade as it functioned from Madras (Chennai) during the second half of the 18th century. It traces the role of trade and commerce as followed by the European EICs to achieve their economic ends, territorial expansion and control of productive resources. The author portrays the nature, contents, volume and changing trends of trade and commerce over a decisive period of Indian economic history. The volume discusses the chief constituents of trade in general, exports, investments, imports and private trade and traders of Madras from 1746 to 1803. Rich in archival resources, this is an essential resource for administrators, students, scholars and researchers of colonial history and modern Indian economic history, besides British trade history.
An overview of the East India Company's policy towards religion throughout its period of rule in India. This wide-ranging book charts how the East India Company grappled with religious issues in its multi-faith empire, putting them into the context of pressures exerted both in Britain and on the subcontinent, from the Company's early mercantile beginnings to the bloody end of its rule in 1858. Religion was at the heart of the East India Company's relationship with India, but the course of its religious policy has rarely been examined in any systematic way. The free exercise of religion, the policy the Company adopted in its early days in order to safeguard the security of its possessions, was challenged by Evangelicals in the late eighteenth century. They demanded that the Company should grant free access to Christians of all Protestant denominations and an end to 'barbaric' Indian religious practices. This gave rise to an unprecedented petitioning movement in 1813, comparable in strength to that for theabolition of the slave trade the following year. It was an important milestone in British domestic politics. The final years of the Company's rule were dominated by its attempts to withstand Evangelical demands in the face of growing hostility from Indians. In the end it pleased no one, and its rule came to a gory and ignominious end. In this compelling account, Penny Carson examines the twists and turns of the East India Company's policy on religious issues. The story of how the Company dealt with the fact that it was a Christian Company, trying to be equitable to the different faiths it found in India, has resonances for Britain today as it attempts to accommodate the religions of all its peoples within the Christian heritage and structure of the state. Penelope Carson is an independent scholar with a doctorate from King's College, London.
Between 1600 and 1800, the promise of fresh food attracted more than seven hundred English, French, and Dutch vessels to Madagascar. Throughout this period, European ships spent months at sea in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, but until now scholars have not fully examined how crews were fed during these long voyages. Without sustenance from Madagascar, European traders would have struggled to transport silver to Asia and spices back to Europe. Colonies in Mozambique, Mauritius, and at the Cape relied upon frequent imports from Madagascar to feed settlers and slaves. In Feeding Globalization, Jane Hooper draws on challenging and previously untapped sources to analyze Madagascar’s role in provisioning European trading networks within and ultimately beyond the Indian Ocean. The sale of food from the island not only shaped trade routes and colonial efforts but also encouraged political centralization and the slave trade in Madagascar. Malagasy people played an essential role in supporting European global commerce, with far-reaching effects on their communities. Feeding Globalization reshapes our understanding of Indian Ocean and global history by insisting historians should pay attention to the role that food played in supporting other exchanges.
This remarkable study of the British East India Company offers great insight into the formation of the Company, its impact on both England and India, and the social forces that shaped its development. With great detail and rich documentation, Ramkrishna Mukherjee examines a period of 258 years, beginning immediately before the Company's birth and ending with its collapse in 1858. This is an engrossing work that reveals much about what is no doubt one of the most important institutions in the history of British colonialism and of world capitalism generally.
The East India Company at Home, 1757–1857 explores how empire in Asia shaped British country houses, their interiors and the lives of their residents. It includes chapters from researchers based in a wide range of settings such as archives and libraries, museums, heritage organisations, the community of family historians and universities. It moves beyond conventional academic narratives and makes an important contribution to ongoing debates around how empire impacted Britain. The volume focuses on the propertied families of the East India Company at the height of Company rule. From the Battle of Plassey in 1757 to the outbreak of the Indian Uprising in 1857, objects, people and wealth flowed to Britain from Asia. As men in Company service increasingly shifted their activities from trade to military expansion and political administration, a new population of civil servants, army officers, surveyors and surgeons journeyed to India to make their fortunes. These Company men and their families acquired wealth, tastes and identities in India, which travelled home with them to Britain. Their stories, the biographies of their Indian possessions and the narratives of the stately homes in Britain that came to house them, frame our explorations of imperial culture and its British legacies.
In this volume, the author has attempted to present a remarkable era of the world's progress through a detailed history of the old East Indiamen. It was the name given to the ships that used to carry the trade between India and Europe. The author writes of a period in which the sailing ship revolutionized British trade and laid the foundations of and almost finished that imposing structure that the Indian Empire represented during the 1820s. It was a time full of romance, adventures, expeditions, and the thrilling pursuit of wealth. Any sailing ship working under any East India trading companies of the central European trading powers of the 17th to the 19th centuries was called East Indiaman. E. Keble Chatterton wrote this history brilliantly, providing every detail on the subject accurately. It is an insightful work on the 17th to 19th-century trade in Europe.
